THE RHETORIC OF TRAGIC CHOICE: WHEN NAVIGATION DEMANDS SACRIFICE

Abstract

This article provides a philosophical analysis of tragic choice as a specific mode of navigation within contemporary publicity, where forward movement becomes possible only at the cost of a pre-acknowledged loss. Unlike situations of disorientation or information scarcity, tragic choice emerges under conditions of extreme clarity: all options are known, all consequences are foreseeable, yet no decision can be "correct" in a normative sense. In this mode, navigation ceases to be a search for the optimal path and transforms into the management of inevitable damage.

The analysis centers on the mythological episode of Scylla and Charybdis, treated not as an allegory of danger but as a model for public decision-making in the absence of acceptable alternatives. Scylla is interpreted as a figure of guaranteed, localized sacrifice that allows for the preservation of elective agency and the assumption of responsibility for the trajectory. Conversely, Charybdis represents the logic of total risk, where responsibility dissolves into the scale of potential catastrophe. Odysseus's choice of Scylla is conceptualized as a rejection of the "catastrophe alibi" and an acceptance of tragic responsibility. The subsequent analysis focuses on the episode of Thrinacia, where tragic choice is no longer exercised but delegated. The violation of the taboo on the Island of the Sun is interpreted as the collapse of the decision-making structure itself: knowledge no longer restrains action, and sacrifice is produced automatically, without a subject to claim it. In this context, Thrinacia serves as a model for contemporary cancel culture, where violence is enacted not through a conscious act, but through procedures, repetition, and collective reaction devoid of addressed responsibility. The article demonstrates that tragic choice does not vanish in modern publicity but is radically transformed: from recognized sacrifice to delegated violence without a subject. This shift destroys navigation as a collective movement, leaving only a solitary continuation of the path for those capable of not delegating responsibility even in a situation of irreversibility.