3 tragedy, and tragedy is the imitation of life (the mimesis of the Ancient Greeks). Harsh reality is recreated and incorporated within each person. 10. We do not always understand reality, and we only know certain aspects of it, grasped by the spirit, with the aid of imagination. Thus, everyone has his or her own interpretation of reality, and there is very little that we can know. The Law itself, contrary to positivists’ assumptions, still has much to learn from other branches of human knowledge –especially, in my view, from literature and the arts, which prepare us to face the enigmas and mysteries of life, such as the violent death of our beloved ones. 11. The Law involves, in my view, a system not only to regulate human relations but also, based on the values it contains, for emancipation.9 Insofar as it is open to the perennial teachings of literature, it sets itself free from the pretension of legal “scientificity,” which removes it from the reality of daily life. It opens itself to humanist values present in literature, and it sets itself against the cold “rationality” of juridical positivism and of allegedly “legal-scientific” analysis. The Law itself thereby expresses, with aid from the humanities, the principles and values that must guide human relations and existence. The Law, thus enriched, establishes close links with the reality of each one’s life. 12. Tragedy has accompanied human beings over the centuries. It has reflected key traits of human experience and fragility. Human beings have identified with it over the centuries. By consistently evoking grief and compassion, tragedy reveals much regarding human beings and about the hidden depths of life. Human condition –as one can clearly see, for example, in Homer’s beautiful epic (and tragic) poem, the Iliad-10, is marked especially by deprivation, and the vision that happiness can hardly be total and lasting, as human beings must endure their own finite nature,11 without knowing what tomorrow has in store for us. 13. In its unending current relevance, tragedy gives the impression that it can happen to anyone, as it actually does, and –as I pointed out in my Separate Opinion in the “Street Children” case (Villagrán Morales et al. versus Guatemala Case, Reparations, 2001, para. 7)- it can happen at any time in life (to children, youths, 9 . A.A. Cançado Trindade, "A Emancipação do Ser Humano como Sujeito do Direito Internacional e os Limites da Razão de Estado," in: Quem Está Escrevendo o Futuro? 25 Textos para o Século XXI, Brasília, Ed. Letraviva, 2000, pp. 99-112. 10 11 . From the late 8th or early 7th century B.C. . J.M. Redfield, Nature and Culture in the Iliad - The Tragedy of Hector, rev. ed., Durham/London, Duke Univ. Press, 1994, pp. 87-88 and 216-217. – Homer’s warriors knew that they would never be in complete control of their own destiny, and they became means, things, in a senseless struggle for power, incapable even of “submitting their actions to their thoughts.” As Simone Weil noted so perceptively, the terms “opressors and opressed” almost lose their meaning in face of the powerlessness of all before the machinery of war, converted into a machine that destroys spirits and fabricates unawareness; S. Weil, Reflexiones sobre las Causas de la Libertad y de la Opresión Social, Barcelona, Ed. Paidós/Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona, 1995,pp. 81-82, 84 and 130-131. As in Homer’s Iliad, there are no victors nor vanquished ones, they are all taken over by the force, possessed by war, degraded by brutality and massacres; S. Weil, "L'Iliade ou le Poème de la Guerre (1940-1941)", in Oeuvres, Paris, Quarto Gallimard, 1999, pp. 527-552.