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Hamartia (Ancient Greek: ἁμαρτία) is a word most famously used in Aristotle's Poetics, where it is usually translated as a mistake or error in judgment. In Greek, the word hamartia is rooted in the notion of missing the mark (hamartanein) and covers a broad spectrum that includes accident and mistake^[1], as well as wrongdoing, error, or sin.^[2] In Nicomachean Ethics, hamartia is described by Aristotle as one of the three kinds of injuries that man can commit against another man. Hamartia is an injury committed in ignorance (when the person affected or the results are not what the agent supposed they were).^[3] In the Bible hamartia is the Greek word used to denote "sin."^[4]

In Greek tragedy, the concept of hamartia as an error in judgment or unwitting mistake is applied to the actions of the hero. For example, the hero might attempt to achieve a certain objective X; by making an error in judgment, however, the hero instead achieves the opposite of X, with disastrous consequences. Aristotle cites the example of Oedipus^[5], who acts to prevent the fulfillment of the prediction that he would kill his father and marry his mother, but by his actions instead causes those very things to happen. In other cases, a hero might undertake an action with no real objective in mind, but which has disastrous consequences unforeseen by the hero; Aristotle cites the example of Thyestes^[6], who attends a banquet to reconcile with his brother Atreus, not knowing that he is being fed his own children. In terms of plot mechanics, the hero's hamartia is the cause of his peripeteia, or reversal of fortune. The Greek word also relates to drama techniques and themes used for theatre and play.

While the modern popular rendering of hamartia as "tragic flaw" is broadly imprecise and often misleading, it cannot be ruled out that the term as Aristotle understood it could sometimes at least partially connote a failure of morals or character:

Whether Aristotle regards the “flaw” as intellectual or moral has been hotly discussed. It may cover both senses. The hero must not deserve his misfortune, but he must cause it by making a fatal mistake, an error of judgement, which may well involve some imperfection of character but not such as to make us regard him as “morally responsible” for the disasters although they are nevertheless the consequences of the flaw in him, and his wrong decision at a crisis is the inevitable outcome of his character (cf. Aristot. Poet. 6.24.).^[7]

Aeschylus' The Persians provides a good example of one's character contributing to his hamartia. Xerxes' error would be his decision to invade Greece, as this invasion ends disastrously for him and Persia. Yet this error is inextricably bound up in Xerxes' chief character flaw: his hubris.^[8] A morally-tinged understanding of hamartia such as this can and has been applied to the protagonist of virtually every Greek tragedy. For example, Peter Struck comments on Oedipus the King:

The complex nature of Oedipus' "hamartia," is also important. The Greek term "hamartia," typically translated as "tragic flaw," actually is closer in meaning to a "mistake" or an "error," "failing," rather than an innate flaw. In Aristotle's understanding, all tragic heroes have a "hamartia," but this is not inherent in their characters, for then the audience would lose respect for them and be unable to pity them; likewise, if the hero's failing were entirely accidental and involuntary, the audience would not fear for the hero. Instead, the character's flaw must result from something that is also a central part of their virtue, which goes somewhat awry, usually due to a lack of knowledge. By defining the notion this way, Aristotle indicates that a truly tragic hero must have a failing that is neither idiosyncratic nor arbitrary, but is somehow more deeply imbedded -- a kind of human failing and human weakness. Oedipus fits this precisely, for his basic flaw is his lack of knowledge about his own identity. Moreover, no amount of foresight or preemptive action could remedy Oedipus' hamartia; unlike other tragic heroes, Oedipus bears no responsibility for his flaw. The audience fears for Oedipus because nothing he does can change the tragedy's outcome.^[9]

Thus, while the concept of hamartia as an exclusively moral or personal failing is foreign to Greek tragedy, the connotation is not entirely absent.

In a medical context, a hamartia denotes a focal malformation consisting of disorganized arrangement of tissue types that are normally present in the anatomical area.^[10][11] A hamartia is not considered to be a tumor, and is distinct from a hamartoma, which describes a benign neoplasm characterized by tissue misarrangement similar to a hamartia (i.e. tissue types that are typical of the area but arranged in an atypical manner).

1. ^ Aristotle. Nicomachean Ethics. V.8 1135b12-20.
2. ^ Bremer. Hamartia
3. ^ Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics. 1135b
4. ^ The Resurgence Greek Project
5. ^ Poetics 1453a
6. ^ ibid.
7. ^ Thus n.1 to the www.perseus.tufts.edu English translation of the Poetics[1].
8. ^ R. Caldwell ("The Pattern of Aeschylean Tragedy," TAPA 101 (1970), pp. 77-94) cites with approval the conventional wisdom that the Persians "is the one play in the entire extant literature - not just in Aeschylus - which is genuinely and fully founded upon hubris."
9. ^ Struck 2000 [2]
10. ^ http://books.google.com/books?id=QUTuvcB68DEC&pg=PA377&lpg=PA377&dq=hamartia+hamartoma&source=web&ots=PRBtaWxWBL&sig=xoueqxp01Boh8j-dEAEpsK96Stg#PPA377,M1
11. ^ http://www.mercksource.com/pp/us/cns/cns_hl_dorlands.jspzQzpgzEzzSzppdocszSzuszSzcommonzSzdorlandszSzdorlandzSzdmd_h_02zPzhtm

• Tragic hero
• Victory disease