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Volume 24, Numbers 3 & 4 (2000) reprinted by permission Legal Studies Forum THE TRAGEDY OF LAW AND THE LAW OF TRAGEDY IN SOPHOCLES’ ANTIGONE MARK S. HOWENSTEIN* Antigone stands at the height of Greek tragedy and at the origins of legal philosophy. Hegel deemed it to be “one of the most sublime, and...consummate works [of the aesthetic spirit],”1 and legal thinkers continue to be inspired by Antigone’s “unflinching firmness [which] shakes the entire foundation of arbitrary government.”2 In this great work, the tragedy of law and the law of tragedy come together in a distressingly all-too-familiar way. Sophocles wrote Antigone in 442 B.C. Although it was the first completed work of his Oedipus Cycle, it recreates the final events of the saga. The first two plays disclose the central themes that draw the trilogy to its tragic conclusion: the driving inevitability of fate, the devastating divisiveness of hubris, and the redemptive possibilities of suffering. These three forces of fate, hubris, and redemption pervade Antigone–defining the dialectic of law and tragedy that lies at its core. Oedipus the King, the first play of the trilogy, depicts the downfall of Oedipus, king of Thebes, as he comes to realize the underlying horror of his existence. Throughout the play his insatiable hunger for knowledge propels him down a dreadful path of self-discovery. His relentless inquiry into the causes of King Laius’ death reveals that he has unknowingly killed his father and married his mother, and has incestuously begotten four children by her. Overcome by disgrace, he gouges out his eyes and goes into exile, attempting to escape the misery that he alone has wrought. So Oedipus falls–from revered king of Thebes and solver of the riddle of the sphinx to a self-blinded, thoroughly degraded parricide, who is banished from Thebes and driven into exile. The tragic devastation of this fall is rivaled only by the peaceful resignation through which he reconciles himself with his fate and reaffirms his humanity in Oedipus at Colonus. For years Oedipus silently endures his suffering, probing ever further into the depths of his guilt. After years of wandering with only his daughter Antigone by his side, he comes at last to his final resting place at Colonus, a sacred grove dedicated to the Furies3–a most appropriate place to make peace with his tormented soul. During the course of this work, Oedipus is transfigured and resurrected. The desperate self-renunciation with which he went into exile gradually evolves into a transcendental reaffirmation of life through which he comes to embrace his fate. He stands: cursing Creon’s attempts to lure him back to Thebes; condemning his two sons, who are vying for his kingdom, to die by one another’s hands; and consoling his two daughters as he triumphantly approaches his death. Oedipus the King depicts man’s insatiable striving to know that drives him to the abyss of his being, from which he recoils in horror. Incessantly conscious activity consumes itself, leaving only passive resignation in its wake. In this regard, it is the great archetype of Schopenhauer’s sense of tragedy as the repre-sentation of the overwhelming misfortune and terror of life–“the unspeakable pain, the wretchedness and misery of mankind, the triumph of wickedness, the scornful mastery of chance, and the irretrievable fall of the just and the innocent”–from which the only possible escape is consummate self-renunciation.4 In contrast, Oedipus at Colonus portrays the serenity that may yet come after years of thoughtfully enduring the suffering which flows from this terrifying human experience. At Colonus, Oedipus is regenerated to act anew in a transcendentally recreative way. A higher form of activity emerges out of such solemn perseverance, one which overcomes, however momentarily, the tragedy of human existence. According to Nietzsche, “[t]his activity (so different from his earlier conscious striving, which had resulted in pure passivity) will extend far beyond the limited experience of his own life.”5 Oedipus at Colonus follows Oedipus the King with a reaffirmation of life that surpasses mere self-renunciation–providing the basis of both Hegel’s and Nietzsche’s criticisms of Schopenhauer’s understanding of tragedy. Together, the Oedipus plays depict the tragic progress of all great human action: the destructive conflict that inspires synthetic recreation. The profound poet tells us that a man who is truly noble is incapable of sin; though every law, every natural order, indeed the entire {moral world, may} perish by his actions, those very actions will create a circle of higher consequences able to found a new world on the ruins of the old.6These two tragedies form the ground from which Antigone arises. The driving inevitability of fate marches through them, while the ever present temptation of hubris threatens to level every call to greatness. Although this collision between will (hubris) and world (fate) prepares the way for Oedipus’ mysterious redemption, these plays do not culminate in a final reconciliation of these tragic forces, but rather with a sense of foreboding–of collisions yet to come, and higher orders yet to be attained. The Oedipus plays reveal, but do not resolve, the dialectic of law and tragedy. It is left to Antigone to fully develop this theme, and to effectuate its proper resolution. He issues his first command–a proclamation which will prove as fateful as that of Oedipus to uncover the murderer of Laius at any cost. Eteocles is to be given a sacred burial due a hero, while the body of Polyneices is to be left exposed to the elements to rot and to be eaten by wild beasts–a punishment befitting a traitor.7 Eteocles, who died as a man should die, fight-ing for his country, is to be buried with . . . all the ceremony that is usual when the greatest heroes die; but his brother, Polyneices, who broke his exile to come back with fire and sword against his native city and the shrines of his fathers’ gods . . . is to have no burial: no man is to touch him or say the least prayer for him; he shall lie on the plain, unburied; and the birds and the scavenging dogs can do with him whatever they like.8Creon’s edict triggers the down-fall of each of Antigone’s four main characters, just as Oedipus’ decree in Oedipus the King drove him to his own demise. This law, which Creon willfully commands, Ismene submissively obeys, Haimon rationally contests and Antigone resolutely defies, propels the action of the play to its tragic conclusion, in which both Antigone and Haimon have killed themselves, and Creon and Ismene are left utterly broken and alone. Antigone raises two fundamental questions: What is law? And what is the appropriate standpoint to be taken toward law? It does so by presenting four distinct standpoints toward law in a series of three interdependent, mutually destructive conflicts, each of which regards law in a substantially different way. These three conflicts reveal Antigone’s overwhelming devastation as well as its transcendent possibilities. All of the preliminary dialogues of this work set the stage for this confrontation, while all of its subsequent action is directly determined by it. Creon:Already in this initial exchange, it is obvious that there will be no reconciliation between these two antagonists so long as they remain so recalcitrant to one another. It becomes ever more apparent that there is no common ground between them. Creon’s outraged accusations collide with Antigone’s defiant justification, driving them both to their inevitable doom. This dialogue sets the unequivocal boundaries of the ensuing conflict. Where Creon sees only blatant guilt in Antigone’s “breaking the given laws and boasting of it,” Antigone claims that “there is no guilt in reverence for the dead.” When Creon demands punishment for her insolent deeds, Antigone claims: “I should have praise and honor for what I have done.” And while Creon distinguishes between the wicked traitor and the just hero, arguing that no death rites are due the enemy, Antigone questions: “Which of us can say what the gods hold wicked?”, asserting that “there are honors due all the dead.” In her most revealing self-assertion, Antigone declares: “It is my nature to join in love, not hate”10–a remark that not only discloses the extent of their estrangement from one another, but opens a possibility for their reconciliation as well. Although it is quite apparent from this dialogue that Antigone and Creon hold substantially divergent understandings of law, the depth of this divergence is only intimated by the degree of their acrimony toward one another. Neither of them truly understands the other. Indeed, it is probable that mutual under-standing is not possible at all. Understanding, like communication, is grounded in commonality. As Nietzsche has noted, what is not common cannot be communicated, or understood. “To understand one another, it is not enough that one use the same words; one [must] also use the same words for the same species of inner experiences; in the end one [must] have one’s experience in common.”11 Although both Antigone and Creon are of the nobility, they by no means share common life-experiences. Antigone’s accursed lineage and incestuous birth isolate her from all others (with the possible exception of Ismene, her sister). Of Creon’s origins, little is known. As a woman in ancient Greece, Antigone is thoroughly marginalized, as Creon so often maintains. Furthermore, for an untold number of years, Antigone wandered with Oedipus in exile, suffering fully the misery of his horrible deeds, while Creon enjoyed all the luxuries of palace life in Thebes. Antigone’s return to her devastated homeland, the war torn city of Thebes, and to her two deceased brothers contrasts sharply with Creon’s sudden rise to power. (Of Creon’s origins, little is known.) Such uncommon life-histories generate substantially divergent inner life-experiences which tend to exacerbate their underlying lack of commonality, and inhibit their ability to mutually understand, or communicate with, one other. Creon and Antigone talk past one another, becoming ever more adamant in their positions and ever more infuriated by the other’s lack of understanding. In a peculiarly modern way, this initial confrontation between Creon and Antigone represents a conflict of laws–a collision between two standpoints regarding the essence of law. According to Creon, who stands as the autocratic ruler, law is the product of his willful command. “This is my command. . . . That is my will. Take care that you do your part.” Throughout the play, Creon calls his law: “my command,” “my will,” “my voice” and “my right”12–always focusing on law as a thing of his own making, in accordance with his rights and powers as king. This law “must be obeyed, in all things, great and small, just and unjust.”13 In contrast, according to Antigone, who stands as the autonomous subject, law is a gift of the gods and of one’s tradition–a gift that one receives as one’s own. Throughout the play, Antigone calls the law that she obeys: “the demands of the dead,” “the laws of the gods,” “the final Justice that rules the world below” and “the laws of heaven.”14 The law that moves her is not of her own making, but is rather a law that has been given to her and that she has made her own. This law is supreme, and all kingly edicts to the contrary are “weakness itself against the immortal unrecorded laws of God.”15 Both of these standpoints toward law are more fully developed in two other conflicts that compose this play. Both of these encounters occur between primary family members–settings that promise slightly less antagonism, as well as prior common ground, for the confrontations to come. These supplementary collisions serve to temper these two antithetical standpoints, thereby revealing what is at issue in their opposition to one another. According to Creon, ruling is grounded in the incontestable power of the sovereign and the absolute subservience of his people. I’ll have no dealings Whoever is chosen to govern should be obeyed– Unconditional obedience and unbridled command are mutually constitutive of this type of ruler. Both must be secured by the sovereign by neutralizing every form of opposition to his rule.18 The power of this sovereign necessarily rests upon a public order that estab-lishes his unopposed command by way of unconditional obedience, and vice versa. Haimon is only too aware of this frightful truth and its imminent dangers. His beloved Antigone has been sentenced to death for violating this public order. So he challenges his father, proposing certain limits on his power to rule. According to Haimon, ruling is grounded in reason, morality, the good of the city and the laws of the gods, and the ruler must act accordingly. Yet Haimon is in an awkward position to assert himself. As Creon’s unmarried son, he is subject to his father’s will. Therefore he begins by invoking public opinion, but soon his deference fades and he admonishes his father openly. Reason is God’s crowning gift to man . . . But since we are all too likely to go astray,However, what appears to be a direct challenge to his father’s authority is only a fervent plea for him to be flexible in his judge-ment, to be openly receptive to change should change be in order, and to listen and learn “from those who can teach.” Unfortu-nately, this plea falls on deaf ears. Creon is incapable of heeding anyone–overwhelmed as he is by his overpowering will. Nevertheless, deep within this plea lies a premonition and a warning to his father: to beware of the crime of hubris. The man who maintains that he alone is right, “that only he has the power to reason correctly, the gift to speak...turns out [to be] empty.” According to Aristotle, hubris is the great sin of the unrestrained will, and the tragic flaw (hamartia) in Creon’s character. It ultimately alienates him from all those he should, but cannot, love–from his son, from his niece, and even from the gods. This warning, like the plea that contains it, goes unheeded by Creon. And so father and son collide on the way to their tragic demise. Creon: Creon:What a contrast to the stand that Creon had previously taken, when he was accused of treason!21 How quickly has he forgotten those costly lessons regarding such hasty and unbridled judgement. In the final analysis, Creon and Haimon collide over two radically divergent understandings of the essence of ruling which are grounded in two antithetical standpoints of the ruler toward law. Creon asserts the power of authoritarian rule, while Haimon upholds the justice of rational rule. Creon’s rule is that of a close-minded despot, whereas Haimon envisions a ruler who is an openly receptive subject as well. According to Creon, law is the product of the ruler’s willful command. Law is the ruler’s creation, an assertion of his will. Thus, the proper relation between this ruler and the law is one of a creator to his creation–evoking a standpoint of willful closure. As Nietzsche so clearly perceived, this type of ruler must fore-close any opposition that challenges the authority of his will, even his own creation, since his all-powerful will must overcome every obstacle that comes before it, including the very laws of its own making. “Whenever the living commands, it hazards itself. Indeed, even when it commands itself, it must still pay for its commanding. It must become the judge, the avenger, and the victim of its own law.”22 In this sense, ruling is willful self-assertion and the imposition of law upon one’s subjects, and the inevitable attitude of this ruler to the law so created is one of arrogance, adamance and eventual repulsion. According to Haimon, law is given to the ruler–a gift that he passes on to his people. Thus, the proper relation between this ruler and the law is one of a receiver of a gift to the gift so received, necessitating a standpoint of open receptivity. This ruler must be ever open to his tradition, listening attentively to the voices of custom, reason and justice, and especially the gods, to be able to receive and convey such a gift. In this sense, ruling is attend-ing to the law and sharing it with one’s subjects, and the appropri-ate attitude of this ruler to the law so received is one of wonder, thanks and humble obedience.23 Ultimately, Creon stands as the classical tyrant, who is neither bound by his own law, nor by any other criterion outside of his all-powerful will. His law is a law of willful assertion and of appearance–of manifest power, and of ‘orders backed by threats.’24 Creon is haunted by appearance, specifically by any appearance of weakness in himself or instability in his govern-ance. He maintains order and commands the obedience of his sub-jects explicitly by way of threats, which need only appear to be real. However, such a law of pure self-assertion verges on hubris, and a law of threat must be apparent to instill obedience, since compliance can only be coerced through the threat-value of this law. In other words, if Creon’s subject does not believe that a threat will be executed, she will not obey the law. Therefore, he makes his threats clear and imminent. But what if the threat does not appear as a threat to this subject? What if the subject is not afraid to die (Creon’s typical threat)? Law as threat relies upon fear, as well as belief. If the subject is not afraid, the threat cannot compel her obedience. This is yet another reason why Creon’s law never reaches Antigone or Haimon. Neither of them is afraid of his threats, because neither of them is afraid to die. I knew I must die, even without your decree:Indeed, Creon’s understanding of law and of the proper stand-point of the ruler toward law requires a specific type of subject–one who will cower before, and submit to, these orders backed by threats. Ismene, unlike Antigone, represents such a subject. Antigone opens with the two sisters thrown into a abysmal situation. Besides losing both of their brothers in mortal combat with one another, they have now been forbidden to fulfill their duty to bury one of them. And so their suffering mounts. Ismene, dear sister,A mood of desperation engulfs them, one which pervades the entire play. Through their plight, the sisters confront the underlying horror of their existence: that they alone are responsible for the evil and the injustice into which they have been thrown: that no matter how helpless they may feel before the forces which have befallen them, they must respond accordingly. The ensuing dia-logue presents the collision between their conflicting responses to their common tragic fate. Out of the depths of her desperation shines the resolution of Antigone’s response. “Ismene, I am going to bury him. Will you come?”27 There is no question about what she will do. Her action is absolutely predetermined from the beginning. Although Antigone does justify her action, she does so out of a prior conviction to act and only in response to the provocation of others. The only question is whether Ismene will join her. But though Ismene will falter, Antigone is desperately determined to act. I will bury him; and if I must die,Antigone’s resolve is striking. She fully embraces this action as her own–maintaining throughout the play the same resolute pur-pose that originally moves her to act. But while her determination is so evident, her identity (who she is) remains concealed in the mysterious depths of her fateful deed. This is rather un-settling, since her resolution emanates precisely from who she is, and this identity is bewildering indeed.29 Antigone is Polyneices’ loving sister, whose duty it is to administer the sacred burial rites to her brother. As the last descendant in the line of Laius, the final burden of this accursed lineage has fallen on her alone. As this ancient curse presses to its conclusion, she hastens to bury her brother and to snatch him from the clutches of his tragic fate. Antigone is the chosen one, the champion of the gods, who must right the wrong inflicted upon her brother at any cost. Her disgust with this injustice and her obsession to remedy this wrong drive her on. She cannot wait for divine intervention–whether by fate, the Furies or the gods them-selves. She alone must right this wrong! Is it her duty which calls her so? Or has she fallen into tempta-tion to be a god herself? Is her self-righteous resolve simply another insidious form of hubris, the great flaw of the tragic hero? Antigone is a terribly impatient human being . . . –whose thirst for justice, whose passion for the ideal, are such that they cannot wait even for God. . . . [By plunging] ahead alone [to set things right] . . . , she challenges more than Creon, who is only a despicable human agent . . . . She becomes an inspired ‘anti-god’, who challenges the gods themselves. . . . And thus she is destroyed.30Yet Antigone is also the sister-daughter of Oedipus, for whom death is no longer a threat but a long-awaited solace. She alone attended to her self-blinded father during his long years in exile. She alone suffered with him through all the horrors of his abominable deeds. She alone is so painfully aware of the tragic fate that hovers over her family–drawing them all to their doom. She alone remembers, as no other possibly can. In her god-forsaken solitude, she cries out in agony of her incestuous birth to the only being who can truly appreciate and harbor her horrid secret. Unspeakable horror of son and mother mingling:Can one plagued by so much misery and enclosed in such solitude not yearn for the solace of a peaceful death, especially when her only confidants lie waiting there? In several crucial passages, Antigone explicitly embraces her impending death.32 Is she merely prepared to die to assure her brother’s burial? Or is she resolved to sacrifice herself for the sake of an ideal? Or rather is she simply seeking the one place where she may still feel welcome and at home? [Antigone] provokes the death sentence [compelling Creon] to send her to the one house upon this earth in which she can speak freely of who she is[–]the tomb of her father. Thus she forces Creon to bury her alive. For in her live burial she can . . . cry out the truth of her identity . . . . She is the bride of death and Creon has merely been the vulgar instrument of her will and of her solitude.33 Antigone’s action is not only one of self-affirmation and self-fulfillment, it is also one of self-consummation. It is the ultimate actualization of her most fundamental commitments and con-victions–the great deed in which she literally consumes herself. Who she is has determined what she will do, and what she will do will be to enact the totality of her being. The contrast between Antigone’s embrace of her action and Ismene’s rejection of it could not be greater. Ismene responds to Antigone’s proposal with a list of excuses for not joining in this action–for not acting at all: because the law forbids it; because the personal danger is too great; because she is a woman; and because she is helpless before the power of this law. Bury him! You have just said the new law forbids it.Each of these excuses is grounded in the overwhelming power of Creon’s law, rather than in its inherent justice. Ismene is caught in a moral dilemma. More than any other character, she suffers the injustice of Creon’s law, since she knows this law to be unjust and yet succumbs to it. Thus, she begs for forgiveness from the dead. Ismene refuses to join in Antigone’s action, because she is persuaded by external coercion, rather than by internal conviction. Creon’s edict is strong. The danger is evident. The coercion is overwhelming. And the obstacles are great. So she falls before the apparent impossibility, as well as the imminent dangers, of this action. “But can you do it? I say that you cannot. . . . Impossible things should not be tried at all.”35 For Ismene, what is has come to govern what ought to be. Ismene’s tragedy lies in the choice she has made. Through this fateful choice, she does not affirm or fulfill herself, but rather resigns herself to Creon’s law, and therefore, to Creon’s will and to Creon’s world. Who she is has become totally determined by that law. Ismene has made her choice, and Antigone leaves her with it. Here the sisters part36–victims of their divisive responses to their common tragic fate. Yet, as incompatible as these two stand-points may be, they do belong together, for only in contrast to one another is the depth of their divergence fully appreciated. Antigone’s resolution is most striking in contrast to her sister’s submission and her self-affirmation shines like a star in the night against the impenetrable darkness of Ismene’s self-resignation. Unlike Antigone, who enters the play completely predetermined, Ismene is trapped in a moral dilemma which unfolds as the play proceeds. Unlike Antigone, who is who she must be, Ismene is who Creon’s law says she must be; and unlike Antigone, who stands by her deed until her death, Ismene recants her inaction when she discovers how far she has fallen and how alone she will be.37 Alas, it is too late! Antigone and Ismene collide through their conflicting responses to their common tragic fate. Their fate has driven them to confront their mutual responsibility for the evil and the injustice into which they have been thrown. Ismene recoils in horror, only to fall into the depths of Creon’s law, while Antigone embraces the opportunity to act and to be who she must be. Ismene’s resignation (Schopenhauer) and Antigone’s reaffirmation (Hegel and Nietzsche) represent the two classic responses to the tragedy of being human. Together, they reveal what it means to obey the law. In the final analysis, the sisters collide over two radically divergent understandings of obedience, which are grounded in two antithetical standpoints of the subject toward law. Antigone embraces the burden of her autonomy, while Ismene cowers before Creon’s law. According to Antigone, law is a gift of the gods–a gift that is given to every subject to be received and to be made one’s own. Thus, the proper relation between this subject and the law is one of a receiver of a gift to the gift so received, necessitating a standpoint of open receptivity. This subject must be ever open to receive such a gift– waiting patiently and attentively for its bestowal, and in turn, appropriating what is given as one’s own. In this sense, obedience is attending to the law and acting accordingly, and the appropriate attitude of this subject to the law so received is one of wonder, humility and grateful appropriation. According to Ismene, law is imposed upon the subject to compel her compliance with its commands. Thus, the proper relation between this subject and the law is one of a slave to her master–evoking a standpoint of subservient enclosure. This subject is enslaved by the will of her sovereign. In this sense, obedience is submitting to the will of another, and the attitude of this subject to the law imposed upon her must be one of fear, helplessness and resignation. Ultimately, Antigone stands as the autonomous subject, who is bound to a law that is given to her and that she makes her own. Any law to the contrary must be defied. Her law is a law of open receptivity and appropriation–of committed and responsible self-rule. And yet, she becomes absolutely closed to Creon’s law. Antigone is plagued by the burden and ambiguity of her auto-nomy, for though the law that she receives requires her open recep-tivity, the law that she makes her own invites her willful closure. Thus, Creon’s law never reaches her. Antigone, paradoxically no less than Creon, is adamantly closed to any law other than her own. In other words, Antigone’s resolute determination may be her most tragic flaw (hamartia), as well as her greatest strength–especially in her confrontation with a willful ruler such as Creon. Adamant antagonism can only lead to mutual destruction. Indeed, Antigone’s understanding of law and of the proper standpoint of the subject toward the law envisions a certain type of ruler–one who receives and appropriates law in a similar way to his subjects. Haimon, unlike Creon, represents such a ruler. Antigone is a tragedy of appearance–full of characters who are overly concerned with appearance, and those who appear other than who they are. This is particularly true of the two main characters. Creon constantly asserts the power of his law–not out of any authentic sense of his overwhelming majesty, but because he so fears any sign of weakness in his rule. In contrast, Antigone projects an affirmative assertion of her will before the tragic inevitability of her fate, but one which is pervaded by hubris, as well as an underlying renunciation of the will to live. What originally appears as praiseworthy, zealous resolve begins to show signs of excessiveness, bordering on outright hubris; and what once appeared as authentic self-affirmation fades away into the self-renunciation of a death wish. Nothing is quite as it seems. Antigone encompasses both of the great classical responses to the tragedy of being human. The key to her universal appeal lies in this uncanny, Janus-like identity, for she is a unity of opposing forces that eventually tear her apart, and yet in the very process mysteriously redeem her. In Antigone, self-affirmation collides with self-renunciation exposing the groundlessness of the human condition. Antigone’s impatience before the gods reflects her ethical one-sideness through which she violates the absolute justice that she claims to represent, while her death wish reveals the inherent fatality of her obsessive idealism: there is no place in this world for uncompromisable ideals. However, such tragic rupture alone cannot sustain the alleged propriety of her standpoint toward law, and her autonomy, though laudable, is a two-edged sword that isolates her, while claiming to “join together in love.” Though Creon’s law clearly prompts the tragic progress of the play by severing those who belong together, polarizing them in response to its divisive command, Antigone’s standpoint toward law subtly completes this process by offering its promise of union in the midst of the disintegration that it has fostered. In the end, there is nothing so destructive as the power, the injustice and the ramifications of Creon’s law. This law provokes every major collision that occurs in the play, triggering the downfall of each of the main characters. The magnitude of the devastation is overwhelming–beginning with the deaths of Polyneices and Eteocles, and culminating with those of Antigone, Haimon and Eurydice, as well as the total collapse of Creon and Ismene. With Antigone, the Oedipus Cycle reaches its tragic conclusion–an utter wasteland! Only Creon’s conversion and Antigone’s law of love offer any hope of a possible recreation “of a new world on the ruins of the old”–a hope that is as fraught with problems as it is pregnant with possibility. Many great thinkers have pondered the meaning of tragedy, but few have uncovered its truth. Few thinkers have fully appreciated its latent mystery. Aristotle, Schopenhauer,38 Hegel and Nietzsche offer diverse viewpoints regarding the essence of tragedy. Together these theories illuminate the possibilities and inherent limitations of Creon’s conversion and Antigone’s law of love, while pointing beyond them to their problematic ground. Ultimately, the meaning of tragedy lies here–caught in the collision between will and world, among the clashing forces of fate, hubris and redemption. According to Hegel, past, present and future are fused together in the tragic moment. In this moment the past is preserved, while the future presents its profuse possibilities, even as the present is brought to ruin. This coalescence of time is crucial to the Hegelian project which promotes possibility as the horizon in which actuality occurs. The destruction of what is and what has been occurs within the context of what will be, and this actual destruction is a necessary condition for such possibility to come to be. Such temporal fusion discloses the limits of Creon’s conversion, as well as its transcendent possibilities. According to Hegel, both Creon and Antigone are possessed by the ethical principles that they claim to represent. Their colli-sion reaches such tragic proportions, precisely because they so embody the ethical one-sidedness of their particular standpoints toward law. In the process, they become so identified with the principles grounding these standpoints that their confrontation becomes one of clashing forces, rather than merely of conflicting characters.40 For Hegel, Creon personifies the positive forces of public law and order, while Antigone personifies the eternal principles of familial love and duty–both of which are essential aspects of the absolute justice they each claim to represent. Nevertheless, they push their partial positions to the extreme. Such fanaticism not only negates the ideal of the other, but transgresses this absolute ideal as well. As a result of their obsessive idealism, neither Antigone nor Creon grants any legitimacy to the standpoint of the other. Antigone not only disobeys Creon’s law, she contemptuously defies it. She acknowledges only the power of Creon’s law, never its justice, and holds this power to be “weakness itself against the immortal unrecorded laws of God”–its threat of death unmoving to one who “thinks Death a friend.”41 Similarly Creon never acknowledges Antigone’s law throughout their initial confrontation with one another. Apparently, he never hears her law, since he talks only of her “breaking the given laws and boasting of it.”42 Only in subsequent dialogues with Haimon and Teiresias does Creon acknowledge Antigone’s law at all–initially by deprecating it, but eventually, by submitting to it.43 Although Antigone hears Creon’s command, this law never speaks to her. She acknowledges his law as a coercive fact, but never as an obligation to which she is bound. In contrast, Creon, who has been deaf to Antigone’s law, gradually comes to hear it–initially hearing only its demands which he ignores, but eventually hearing its truth as well. It comes to speak to him, but though he obeys, it is too late! The great mystery of this collision between Antigone and Creon is that they are both equally right and equally wrong. Although Antigone rightfully buries her brother according to the customary laws of the dead, Creon rightfully prosecutes her for violating his edict. Although Antigone rightfully claims the supremacy of the divine law over Creon’s law, Creon rightfully asserts the necessity of his law for the preservation of the polis, in and through which the laws of the gods are kept.44 As Steiner has noted, both Antigone and Creon . . . are right. This is the very substance of a tragic collision. Antigone is right when she says that she must bury her brother, that the laws of blood and of the family, the ancient archaic rights of kinship, cannot be altered by political decree. Creon is right when he proclaims that the law of the city must overrule individual feelings, that there can be no security for human conscience outside a polis, outside the discipline of a body-politic, and that finally, the interests of the body-politic must supersede those of the individual.45However, as much as Antigone and Creon may differ, they essentially belong together–both as catalysts for, and as complements to, one another. Their reciprocal antagonism pushes them to the extremes from which they negate one another–thereby revealing their under-lying partiality and mutual transgression of the ethical ideal. Although this common transgression condemns them both, it is only through such mutual destruction that absolute justice can be vin- dicated, and Creon’s positive law and Antigone’s familial love be thereby reconciled with one another.46 Toward the end of Antigone, Creon asserts his most radical defiance of the gods–clearly showing the depths of his fall into hubris. After Teiresias, the soothsayer, has cautioned him to mend his ways and beware of excessive pride, Creon proclaims, No, Teiresias:Teiresias predicts that the king will pay dearly for his pride–corpse for corpse: one for Antigone whom he has buried before her time, and another for Polyneices to whom he has denied a proper burial. This prophecy haunts Creon. In a sudden reversal, he renounces his wrongdoings. Oh it is hard to give in! but it is worse The laws of the gods are mighty, and a man mustBut it is too late! Antigone has already hung herself in the solace of her tomb, and in despair at the loss of his beloved Antigone, Haimon kills himself in front of his father. Finally Eurydice kills herself, cursing Creon for killing their son. Though repentant, Creon is left absolutely broken and alone. I look for comfort; my comfort lies here dead. Whatever my hands have touched has come to nothing. Fate has brought all my pride to a thought of dust.49Why is Creon’s conversion too late? On its surface, Creon’s conversion seems to be shamelessly inauthentic. He does not repent because of any sudden insights into the laws of reason, justice or the gods, as his conflict with his son makes perfectly clear. Nor does he repent because of Teiresias’ status or the truth of what he says, as his rebuking of the prophet attests. Only after Teiresias has threatened that he will suffer corpse for corpse for his crimes does Creon repent. Creon repents because he is afraid that Teiresias’ prophecy may come true. Fear motivates him to repent to avoid these dreadful consequences. It is the power and might of the laws of the gods, not their justice or holiness, which holds him in awe, and he repents because he is intimidated by them. Creon stands before the laws of the gods in the only way he knows–as a slave before his master. These laws are not gifts. He does not openly receive them, and he does not make them his own. These laws are imposed upon him, coercing him to act according to their will. His conversion will waver accordingly. Creon’s conversion appears shameless and inauthentic–purely a matter of convenience. Unfortunately, it comes too late, and he suffers the ravages of his fate despite his change of heart.50 Thus, his conversion is ineffectual as well. Whether he will emerge from his demise a more hardened tyrant, or will somehow come to learn the lessons of his tragic fate is the great question that concludes the tragedy. Though Creon’s conversion opens a clearing for the possible reintegration of the principles of familial love and duty with the dictates of positive law and public order, this reconciliation cannot simply reduce these ethical principles to written, positive law. Such a resolution would not reintegrate these laws together, but would rather subordinate one law to the other–inverting the priority of the ideal and the real, and degrading the eternal, living law to its temporally grounded expression in positive law. According to Hegel, this reconciliation must somehow preserve the essential difference between these two types of law as it reintegrates them into a greater whole. Antigone is mysteriously silent about this outcome, leaving its actual form open to specula-tion. This reconciliation is best conceived as a possibility that lies before us to infuse the letter with the spirit of the law–a possibility, the actualization of which inevitably initiates another dialectical opposition, leading once more to mutual destruction and further reconciliation. For Hegel, this process reveals the persistent, progressive self-realization of the absolute ideal. For Nietzsche, it is quite another matter. We must understand Greek tragedy as the Dionysian chorus which discharges itself ever anew in an Apollonian world of images. Thus the choral parts with which the tragedy is interlaced are . . . the womb that gave birth to the . . . entire world of the stage. . . . In several successive discharges this primal ground of tragedy radiates this vision of the drama which . . . represents not Apollonian redemption through mere appearance but . . . the shattering of the individual and his fusion with primal being.51According to Nietzsche, tragedy throws one before the underly-ing horror and absurdity of human existence by forcing one to confront the essential groundlessness of the human condition. In the work of tragedy, such groundlessness emanates from the radical individuation of the tragic hero–the hubris that separates man from man, man from world and man from the gods. The isolation and alienation into which he so falls makes the hero, and through him the spectator as well,52 exceptionally vulnerable to those great forces of life that threaten annihilation–the terrible destructiveness of world history and the indiscriminate cruelty of nature. The two classical responses to this fateful moment are those of tragic pessimism and tragic optimism. Tragic pessimism entails an escape or withdrawal into inaction by renouncing the individuating will. Tragic optimism promotes self-overcoming through willful action–a reaffirmation of life in all its tragic wonder. For Nietzsche, the only salvation from this sinkhole of inaction lies in artistic illusion the Appollonian drama, which masks this horror and makes it sufferable. In the tragic moment, art fashions a world that tem-pers, and even beautifies, the overwhelming suffering and destructiveness of excessive human individuation. Here, when the danger to his will is greatest, art approaches as a saving sorceress. . . . She alone knows how to turn these nauseous thoughts about the horror . . . of existence into notions with which one can live.53According to Nietzsche, the Dionysian chorus is the origin of the Apollonian fall as well as the source of redemption–the Nietzschean mask par excellence. In the course of the tragedy, the chorus masks the repugnance of human individuation by generating a world of dramatic conflict that draws the spectator near. This very conflict sets the stage for the spectator’s downfall through that of the tragic hero. Thus, the chorus reveals what it seeks to conceal: the disintegra-tion lurking behind excessive human individuation. However, for Nietzsche the end of tragedy is not the disintegration of the individual, but rather the redemptive reintegration that it fosters. This view of things . . . provides us with all the elements of a profound and pessimistic view of the world together with the mystery doctrine of tragedy: the funda-mental knowledge of the oneness of everything existent, the con-ception of individuation as the primal cause of evil, and of art as the joyous hope that the spell of individuation may be broken in augury of a restored oneness.54 1. Radical Individuation and the Law of Hubris and Nemesis Antigone’s first two Choral Odes celebrate the two most essential elements of tragic action–the self-confident greatness of man which all-too-often falls into hubris, and the tragic fate (nemesis) that inevitably chastises one whose will has gone awry. According to Aristotle, this law of hubris and nemesis directs the course of tragic action–from the rise of the tragic hero, through his sudden reversal of fortune (peripeteia), to his imminent ruin. The tragic flaw (hamartia) that causes this downfall, and the purging of pity and fear (catharsis) that is its effect, can only be understood within the context of this tragic plot and the law that governs it. “The Ode to Man,” which follows Creon’s proclamation of his edict and his order to apprehend the man who has dared to transgress his law, boldly sings the praises of the strangeness (deinon) of man and the wonders of his law.55 Man alone has dominion over all the earth. Of all creatures, he alone ventures forth away from his home to conquer the unknown and the contingencies of life to which he is so fatefully vulnerable. He is the measure of all things and orders all things according to his will–striving to bring order to the chaos of his world through his law. Numberless are the world’s wonders, but noneThis Ode depicts Creon’s standpoint toward law and toward his world. Creon orders his world through law by asserting his will upon the objects of his power. Law maintains the public order necessary to preserve his power, though at significant cost. Death pervades his law–initially by empowering it, yet finally by overpowering it as well. Creon is deinon. For he is overwhelmed by the power and might of the laws of the gods, not by their majesty or justice, though he vehemently opposes them until he is nearly so destroyed. Creon’s law is the law of excessive individuation–the law that severs man from man, man from world, and man from his gods. Creon’s law manifests the under-lying horror of being human–the groundless isolation, alienation and vulnerability that fester at the core of human existence. What can be more striking in this regard than the haunting image of Creon, “the walking dead man”, with which this tragedy ends! Creon’s law separates man from man: brother from brother, hero from traitor, sister from sister, father from son, man from women,57 elder from youth, and ruler from subject. This law triggers the downfall of each of the main characters by polarizing them into increasingly adamant opposition to one another, until they are all mutually destroyed. Creon’s law also alienates ruler and subject from their law and from their world. Through Creon’s law, the polis establishes rational order in a barbaric world. Yet his subjects do not rule themselves. They are ruled by Creon’s law–a law to which he can never be bound as tyrant. Finally, Creon’s law severs man from the gods by distinguishing the law of the gods from the laws of man, and then claiming human authority over the divine law. Such arrogant disregard for the divine order (hubris) requires nemesis to reestablish the appropriate relation between Creon and his gods. “The Ode to Fate,” following Creon’s collision with Antigone and his condemnation of her, warns against the evils of such excessive pride. The wrath of the gods awaits all who dare to challenge their power, or who otherwise desecrate what is holy. Fortunate is the man who has never tasted God’sThe law of hubris and nemesis pervades the Oedipus Cycle. This most fundamental law of tragedy is already disclosed in the second Choral Ode of Oedipus the King, and its desperate warning is as applicable to Creon as it was to Oedipus: nemesis inevitably levels the tyrant and all who dare to “outrage God’s holy law.” The tyrant is a child of PrideCreon’s hubris separates him from all those he should, but cannot, love–from his son, his niece, his nephew, his subjects, his law, and even his gods. His excessive pride wills a law of separa-tion that completely severs him from his world, and therefore is essentially self-destructive. His hubris condemns him to suffer the wrath of the gods–corpse for corpse. By the end of the tragedy, he realizes the evil of such radical individuation. But it is too late! Most of those with whom he should be reunited are dead. But though Creon’s disintegration is the apparent end of Antigone, it opens a horizon of possibilities regarding his redemptive rein-tegration and the resurrection of law. Love, unconquerable . . .Love emerges in the Oedipus Cycle as an antidote to excessive individuation and the disintegration that it fosters. In his final words to his daughters at Colonus, Oedipus has already revealed this redemptive power of love. “And yet one word frees us of all the weight and pain of life: that word is love.”62 Unfortunately, Antigone’s love is not that of her father. Antigone claims her law to be one of love–a law of juncture and unity. Yet by the time of her death, she has severed her-self from all those she should, but cannot, love all but the dead. Though she seeks to join together, she only tears herself apart. Antigone shuns her sister for not supporting her attempted burial of Polyneices, and then for claiming to share in her thwarted deed. She scarcely thinks of Haimon, her beloved, or the suffering that he will endure as a result of her death. And her break with Creon, her uncle, is especially severe. There is even some question whether she may not have severed her relation with the gods by overzealously pursuing her cause. Antigone suffers such deprivation. Although she is keenly aware of the lack of justice in the world, she lacks the patience to respond to it appropriately. Antigone has always lived with injustice: the injustice of her incestuous birth, the untold injustices inflicted upon her father, and now the flagrant injustice of Creon’s law and Polyneices’ exposure in death. Antigone is starving for justice, and her hunger is insatiable. She is so obsessed with righting these wrongs that she can no longer await the reparations of fate, the Furies, or even the gods. Antigone’s love emanates from her suffering. Her love is a love of lack, as her love of the dead who can no longer love her clearly reveals. Such love can only be requited in death–for only in death can she be reunited with those she loves.63 Antigone’s love is neither redemptive, nor reintegrative, but is rather purely reactive–obsessively seeking what it lacks in complete disregard of all else. Such love must remain embedded in the very separation that is its origin. As Nietzsche has noted, there are two kinds of sufferers: . . . those who suffer from the overfullness of life . . . and those who suffer from the impoverishment of life. . . . Regarding all aesthetic values I now avail myself of this main distinction . . .” Is it hunger or overflow that has here become creative?”64Unlike Oedipus, whose love emanates from an overfullness of life, Antigone’s love is one of impoverishment. Oedipus grows wise in his old age; Antigone dies young, exhausted by the obsessive idealism of her youth. Though she recalls her father’s love, she has not yet matured into the wisdom that comes after years of silently enduring one’s suffering and probing the depths of one’s guilt. In the fifth century B.C., Empedocles presented a cosmology that conceived the process of creation to be a cycle of integration and disintegration. According to Empedocles, the universe began as a fusion of elements in a primordial unity ruled by Love. However, in time differentiation and disintegration entered the universe under the power of Strife. Eventually, Love reunites what Strife has torn asunder, and the process begins anew. Thus, Love attracts and brings together what belongs together as one, while Strife repels and tears apart what belongs apart as many. Both forces are equally essential to life. Like Love and Strife, Creon’s law separates while Antigone’s law rejoins. claims to rejoin together. Both individuation and reintegration are necessary for the development and the fulfillment of the human being. Yet the Oedipus Cycle does not end here. Though the forces of individuation and reintegration will continue to ravage the tragic hero, though the powers of will and world will collide in ever more destructive ways and though the law of hubris and nemesis will prevail over all who fall before it, there remains one funda-mentally unanswered question: How will one act in response to this human predicament? Will one withdraw into inaction through a renunciation of will, or will one reaffirm life through willful self-assertion? Will Schopenhauer’s tragic pessimism or Hegel’s tragic optimism prevail? This quandary is the great challenge posed by tragedy. In the second Choral Ode of Oedipus the King, reverence is revealed as the appropriate standpoint to be taken toward law. Reverence is born of the awe of the gods and the reception of their law. Reverence cultivates humility and tempers the individual will. Thus, the “Ode to Reverence” clears the way for Oedipus’ redemption, though it will only come in the waning years of his life once awe has inspired him to act with humility. Let me be reverent in the ways of right, . . . let no fair ambition be denied;While reverence sustains the proper relation between man, his law and his gods, amor fati presents the proper relation between man and his world. The love of fate is one of the most profound lessons of Greek tragedy. However, it is so bound to hubris and nemesis that it is often overlooked, as if destruction was the final end of tragedy. Nevertheless, divine retribution is meant to reestablish a balance or appropriate boundary between will and world, or more radically, to reconstitute the will itself. Amor fati transforms the will from either pessimistic self-renunciation or optimistic self-affirmation to open receptivity toward that which is given and that which one makes one’s own. Amor fati is born of the awe attending one’s encounter with the world in which one lives–as Heidegger has represented it, the wonder that beings are as they are: the wonder of being itself. Amor fati cultivates humility, and humility amor fati, thereby tempering the will in relation to its world. Amor fati is love of all in all its tragic wonder. As Nietzsche has so eloquently stated: My formula for greatness in a human being is amor fati: that one wants nothing to be different, not forward, not backward, not in all eternity. Not merely bear what is necessary, still less conceal it . . . but love it.66Oedipus represents a love that emanates from profound suffering, thoughtfulness and affirmation–from an overfullness, rather than impoverishment, of life. In Oedipus, wisdom, reverence and amor fati come together in a way that overcomes the horror of human existence by reaffirming the fullness of life out of the depths of human tragedy. Antigone’s interminable impatience and premature death foreclose any such reintegration on her part, while Creon’s conversion opens the possibility for his future redemption, but only after years of thoughtfully enduring his suffering. Thus, the Oedipus Cycle comes full circle, and the Choragos chides: There is no happiness where there is no wisdom; Big words are always punished,A world seems to separate us from Sophocles’ appreciation of the tragic mystery of life. His fusion of wisdom, reverence and happiness is in direct opposition to Socrates’ equation of know-ledge, virtue and happiness–the conception that so dominates our modern world. While the tragic standpoint thoughtfully receives what is given and recognizes sin as grounded in willful separation, the Socratic method reconceives sin as a product of ignorance to be overcome by an act of will–the will-ful acquisition of knowledge. Both Sophocles and Socrates were frightfully aware of the evils of unbridled will. But while Sophocles relied upon the forces of fate (nemesis) to vindicate acts of hubris, and the power of tragedy to induce redemptive reintegration, Socrates internal-ized this process–seeking to tame the will through reason. Perhaps this is why Greek tragedy appears so foreign to us– because it speaks from a world view so radically different from our own. However, before we discard its lessons prematurely, we may wish to consider how will turns its ‘master’ into a slave, and how the world continues to call it to account for its willful transgressions. Though we may have forgotten the law of tragedy in our willfully determined, the modern world, its being is not solely predicated upon our thoughtfulness. Our salvation may well be. Anarchy, anarchy! Show me a greater evil!ANTIGONE at 212. 19. ANTIGONE at 212-14. In Haimon’s plea, one can already hear the desperate cry of the ancient Greeks for salvation from a degenerating world–the cry which so moved Socrates to raise the rule of reason over the tyranny of the passions! Creon, as much as any other Sophoclean character, represents the instincts gone awry, and the desperate need for reason to control them. 20. ANTIGONE at 214-15. 21. See OEDIPUS THE KING at 31-32. 22. Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra (in THE PORTABLE NIETZSCHE) 226 (New York: Viking Press, 1968) (Kaufmann trans.). 23. The ambiguity of obedience permeates Antigone. Here, it retains much of its root meaning [fr. L. ob-audire: to listen to]. 24. See H.L.A. Hart, THE CONCEPT OF LAW, ch. 2 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1961) for a critique of this concept of law. 25. ANTIGONE at 203, and 188. Haimon concludes his confrontation with his father in a similar vein–threatening to take his own life should his father not change his course. 26. ANTIGONE at 185-86. 27. ANTIGONE at 187. 28. ANTIGONE at 188-89. 29. Antigone is a classic example of the fundamental identity of character, thought and action, which according to Aristotle is one of the essential foundations of tragedy. Aristotle, POETICS, VI, 2-17. 30. George Steiner, ANTIGONE 8-9 (Williton, Somersett: Messrs. Cox, Sons & Co., 1979) (The Twelfth Jackson Knight Memorial Lecture, delivered at the University of Exeter, March 2, 1979). This interpretation is based on Friedrich Holderlin’s translation of Antigone, specifically 921-23: “Could it be that I have sinned against the gods? Why is it that they now leave me all alone?” 31. ANTIGONE at 220. 32. See id. at 208, 221: “O tomb, vaulted bride-bed in eternal rock, Soon I shall be with my own again . . . [my father, my mother, and dearest Polyneices].” 33. Steiner, supra note 30, at 7. This interpretation is based on Søren Kierkegaard, EITHER/OR, vol. I, “The Ancient Tragic Motif as Reflected in the Modern.” 34. ANTIGONE at 187-88. 35. ANTIGONE at 189. 36. At this rupture (ln. 71-81), the Greek “dual-form” which has literally bound the sisters together is abandoned. See Gisela Dibble, “Antigone: From Sophocles to Holderlin and Brecht,” in Karelisa V. Hartigan (ed.), LEGACY OF THESPIS: DRAMA PAST AND PRESENT (Lanham, Maryland: University Press of American, 1984). 37. ANTIGONE at 206-7. 38. Though Schopenhauer presents an insightful counterpoint to the theories of Hegel and Nietzsche, his tragic pessimism will only be treated peripherally in contrast to these other thinkers. The self-renunciation with which his theory culminates is too mired in the present–specifically its inability to change or transcend the past due to its limited horizon of future possibilities. 39. Hegel called this process aufhebung–a German term that defies precise English translation. Though often translated as “overcoming”, an unfortunate choice of words that connotes mastery and conquest, this term must suffice so long as the preservative and transformative aspects of such tragic destruction are retained. 40. Following Aristotle’s subordination of character to thought and action, Hegel finds the obsessive identification of the tragic hero with the finite cause or principle which he represents to be the basis of his tragic flaw (hamartia). 41. ANTIGONE at 203. 42. ANTIGONE at 204. 43. ANTIGONE at 218, and 228-29 respectively. 44. This claim that public law and order depends upon the implementation of public justice is one that Socrates will repeat in the Crito. Sophocles, like Plato, was well aware that there was no possibility of order outside the polis: that only anarchy, barbarism and chaos ruled the hinterland, however virtuous the individual. 45. Steiner, supra note 30, at 5. 46. This vindication brings the spectator before the awesome power of the absolute. In this way, Hegel refocuses Aristotle’s catharsis away from the tragic hero to those grand forces that loom over him and finally destroy him. This reinterpretation of catharsis opens a clearing for Nietzsche’s understanding of tragedy. 47. ANTIGONE at 226. 48. ANTIGONE at 228-29. 49. ANTIGONE at 238. The final lines of Antigone depict the horror and desolation that now descend upon Creon–“the walking dead man.” [1167] The eerie similarities between this ending and that of Oedipus the King invoke images of Nietzsche’s eternal return and amor fati–opening another gateway into the mystery of this tragedy. 50. Creon’s linear conception of time makes any conversion already too late, especially in so far as it attempts to “unwill” ‘what has been’–an attempt that is destined to fail. This past is forever beyond his reach. See Friedrich Nietzsche, “Of Redemption,” in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, and Phillippe Nonet, What Is Positive Law? 100 Yale L. J. 667 (1990). 51. Friedrich Nietzsche, THE BIRTH OF TRAGEDY 65 (New York: Vintage Books, 1967) (Kaufman trans.) 52. Like Aristotle, Nietzsche appreciated the redemptive value of tragedy for the spectator as well as the hero. By identifying with the tragic hero, the spectator not only suffers her downfall (catharsis), but is redeemed through her as well. 53. Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy, supra note 51, at 60. German Idealism conceived art metaphysically–as fabrication and appearance, and as a source of human transcendence and redemption. Art is one of the three great vehicles (with religion and philosophy) through which spirit manifests itself in human history. Partaking of both art and religion, tragedy is a particularly powerful medium for such spiritual revelation. 54. Id. at 74. 55. Deinon is an ambiguous term connoting the overwhelming power that instills terror, the sublime awe that resonates therein, and the violent use of power against itself. Thus it harbors the collision between will and world–revealing the heights and depths of human experience. Martin Heidegger, AN INTRODUCTION TO METAPHYSICS 146-65 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987) (Manheim trans.) and Martha Nussbaum, THE FRAGILITY OF GOODNESS 67-79 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1986). 56. ANTIGONE at 199. 57. Creon repeatedly confuses Antigone’s gender for her cause, justifying his condemnation of her on the basis of gender alone. 58. ANTIGONE at 209-10. 59. OEDIPUS THE KING at 44. 60. ANTIGONE at 206. 61. ANTIGONE at 218. 62. OEDIPUS AT COLONUS at 161-62. 63. See Nonet, supra note 50 for a discussion of the inter-play between love, death and the eternal “too late.” 64. Friedrich Nietzsche, THE GAY SCIENCE 370 (New York: Vintage Books, 1974) (Kaufmann trans.). This same distinction is crucial to Hegel’s thought. According to Hegel, Streben connotes a wanting from lack that one strives to fulfill, while Trieb connotes a wanting from overfullness which drives one to give out of excess. Thus, love can be either a striving to fill an existing lack, or a drivenness to give out of over-abundance. 65. OEDIPUS THE KING , at 44. 66. Friedrich Nietzsche, “Why I Am So Clever” in ECCE HOMO 258 (New York: Vintage Books, 1969) (Kaufmann trans.) 67. ANTIGONE at 238. |
