The term tragic traditionally refers to the essence of tragedy. Conversely, every tragedy presupposes the aesthetic category of the tragic, which constitutes the main criterion for its consideration as a tragedy. Thus, the tragic has always been automatically and almost exclusively associated with a realm of literature occupied by tragic drama, and primarily, ancient tragic poetry.

This reasonable aesthetic correlation of the two concepts (just as the comic belongs to comedy, so the tragic constitutes the essential character of tragedy) is, however, not infallible. Classical philologists, theater scholars, philosophers, and dramaturges have, at various times, supported positions that seemed to call into question this theoretically necessary relationship or, at best, suggested that the significant scope of the terms tragic / tragedy has expanded so much that their relationship is not only placed on a different level from that of classical theater considered in its entirety but also is not seen as exclusive.

In the following chapters, an attempt is made to present the views of some philosophers of modern and contemporary Europe who have expressed opinions on the tragic or on the essence of tragedy itself, or on both concepts in mutual combination. Depending on the perspective adopted at each time, the concept of the tragic is sometimes subsumed under the aesthetic phenomenon (that is, under tragedy) by means of which it has, one might say, acquired a historicity; at other times, it is highlighted as an indirect datum of consciousness that, before any aesthetic processing, is primarily connected with the experience and dialectic of human individual existence.

The process of coupling the tragic with tragedy is linked to the traditional, aesthetic consideration of the tragic. According to this view, the term tragedy is attributed, on its part, to a specific cultural event that took place in a specific location and at a certain period: in 5th century BC Athens.