Politics and Man's Fate in Sophocles' "Antigone"
Author(s): Alfred R. Ferguson
Source: The Classical Journal , Dec., 1974 - Jan., 1975, Vol. 70, No. 2 (Dec., 1974 - Jan.,
1975), pp. 41-49
Published by: The Classical Association of the Middle West and South, Inc. (CAMWS)
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POLITICS AND MAN'S FATE IN SOPHOCLES'
ANTIGONE
Oedipus solved the riddle of the Sphinx, but innate in the ans
"man," is the most enigmatic question of all: "What is man?" a que
posed by Sophocles in each of the seven extant tragedies. Of thes
question finds its most forceful expression in the Theban plays:
these in Antigone the question is asked in the specific political co
of the relationship between the individual and the state. Thus, the an
to the question "What is man?" while inevitably involving the br
ethical and moral considerations also, for Sophocles, in this perhap
greatest of his seven extant tragedies, involves the actions of his
tagonists in the narrower context of a specific political situation.
Therefore, the moral and ethical considerations of man's natu
emerging from the turbulent conflict in Antigone are inextricably b
to Sophocles' perception of man as a naturally political anima
generis. The problem of the good state is to Sophocles the same a
problem of the good man, even as it was to Plato some fifty years he
for the state as for men, goodness and the pursuit of goodness is equ
with wisdom, and wisdom is equated with Justice, or Dike. But
imagination of the tragedian in Antigone and of the idealistic philoso
in the Republic envisioned far different conclusions to man's que
Dike.
Sophocles' dramatic career, along with the careers of his companion/
competitor dramatists Aeschylus and Euripides, spans that era of tumid
concern over man's nature and his political nature swelling the fifth-
century body of Athenian opinion. Their work is the dramatic issue of
the great discussions and debates generated by the kinetic flux of tra-
ditional Attic life. The break-up of a static, hereditary social and politi-
cal order; the power-plays of would-be tyrants and demagogues; the
factional and internecine struggles for power; the influx of new modes
of thought and feeling, new world-views, and new wealth from an ex-
pansive foreign trade; the primacy of Athenian military and naval power
in the Aegean, with a resultant imperialist foreign policy; the sempi-
ternal threat of now Spartan, now Persian-and Athenian-military ad-
venturism and aggression: all conspired to challenge a priori values and
ways of being traditionally accepted without question.
Fifth-century Greek tragedians regarded themselves as teachers of
morals and ethics as well as poets-the Great Dionysia their classroom,
the drama's agon their lesson, the intellectual ferment of the time their
scenic backdrop. Sophocles was the most popular, most respected of
41
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42 ALFRED R. FERGUSON
lecturers: in 468 about the age of 27 or 28 h
tition with Aeschylus, after which he won eig
the annual competition, never failing to ta
held several high public offices including a
the Samian war.' Throughout Sophocles' ac
creative life it was, for both students and
Electra says, "A time for asking questions
symbiotic, coeval questions that are the hallm
eras: "What is man?" and "What political s
shelter human history from the sweep of irr
that demolish the conscious, coherent, artf
doxical answer to these questions emergent
of Antigone is not one succeeding eras, in p
deified individualism, have readily adopted
Conventional critical wisdom perceives A
individual conscience, inspired with the cate
rebellion against the arbitrary, hence imm
state, represented by Creon. Hence, the ro
as heroine and villain. "Antigone . . . the s
conscience against the cruelty and inhuma
ity . . . ."2 enunciates the sine qua non of m
Antigone.
Remarks such as these issue from a post-
the state as a collection of discreet individuals
a degree of unlimited personal license in ex
contract" between the individual and the st
is perceived as meeting individual and collec
conscience or standard of values. And the p
as heroine and Creon as villain issues from
and philosophical convention that assigns
rebel and none to that against which he reb
But do these dispositions mesh with Soph
state? Was the polis and all it embodied in
regarded by spectators at the Great Dionys
before them so readily, handily divide itself i
issue? Was the norm of political behavior
century Athens? Was it simply a matter of ad
toms and traditions presumed to have been
this the way Dike in human relations was
Finally, and most important, does the Promet
1V. Ehrenberg, Sophocles and Pericles (Oxford 1
2T. B. L. Webster, Sophocles (Oxford 1936) 18.
cussion of the play in Lectures on the Philosop
264 and, for a radically different position, W. M
Tragedy, Antigone," GRBS 9 (1968) 389-407, an
Sophocles' Antigone," Arethusa 4 (1971) 49-52.
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POLITICS AND MAN'S FATE IN SOPHOCLES' Antigone 43
Romanticism or empiricism, the presumption that all human problems
are in fact or principle comprehensible or soluble, apply to Sophocles'
perception of man's nature and human destiny.2
Nothing, says the chorus of elders in Antigone, is more "wondrous"
than man. He dominates the earth, the seas, and even to an extent his
own destiny: his intellect, his reason, his skill isolate him from the fatal
hazards other animals must chance. He has taught himself language,
and
.... the feelings that make the town
he has taught himself ....
Clever beyond all dreams ....
When he honors the laws of the land and the god's sworn right
high indeed is his city; but stateless the man
who dares to dwell with dishonor. (354-371)1
A commonplace of fifth-century Athenian thought was to see the in-
dividual as a natural political being, and to see in the creation of the
community, the polis, his highest achievement-an organic expression
of natural law. The opening theme of the Politics, that the state is the
highest good of all, and embraces all the rest, states an assumption so
basic to the political thought of the time it served as the first principle
and point of departure not only for Aristotle's comparatively realistic,
pragmatic perception of the state in the Politics but also for Plato's un-
compromising idealism in the Republic. Society, the community, the
state, the polis-all were synonymous terms for the highest good man
was capable of. The worst sin he could commit was that which intro-
duced disruption, disharmony, and "corruption" (in terms of Oedipus
Rex especially) into the sacred precincts of the polis. The worst fate
was not death (q.v., Oedipus at Colonus), but to be "stateless." If the
dominant feature of fifth-century Attic political thought is lost sight of,
that feature shared by Sophocles with Plato and Aristotle and shaped by
their reflections (and many critics do lose sight of that dominant feature),
few will be the responsible descriptions given of the inherent political
philosophy informing Sophocles' plays.
Perhaps the main basis for naming Antigone the "standard-bearer of
human conscience" is Sophocles' remark, noted by Aristotle in the
Poetics, that he, Sophocles, drew men as they "ought to be" whereas
Euripides draws them "as they are" (. . . hoion koi Sophokles ephj
autos men hoious dei poiein, Euripidin de hoioi eisin, 25.1460b).
Usually this is taken to mean that Sophocles shows us how men ought
to be. But it could also mean that he is showing us how men ought to
3Sophocles, Antigone, tr. E. Wyckoff, in The Complete Greek Tragedies, ed. D.
Grene and R. Lattimore (Chicago 1959) II. I have used this translation through-
out.
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44 ALFRED R. FERGUSON
be drawn-that is, how they ought to be pres
manifest nature and their actions might be
the human condition. (Cf. G. F. Else, A
1967] 68.) Moreover, viewing Sophocles' p
to the Athenians of exemplary morality i
not impelled to mortal sin are steeped in
tion dwell in such abject misery (e.g.
Antigone) they are absolute for death--c
contradictory to the Homeric love of life an
temper.
The famous choral ode cited earlier, reminiscent of Hamlet's apostro-
phe on man ("What a piece of work is man . . ."), serves roughly the
same purpose in Antigone as in Shakespeare's play-a reminder to the
spectators of the duality of human fate, the Janus-faced nature of human
destiny. Thus are we warned: in spite of man's noblest creations and
his cleverness "beyond all dreams" (and, paradoxically, because of
these god-like qualities), this "quintessence of dust," in Hamlet's words,
may in the fullness of his grandeur "dwell with dishonor," setting upon
himself an ineluctable, inexplicable nemesis. Why this should be so no
one can say; but that it is so Sophocles does say, again and again in
the seven extant tragedies. That all good men seek justice--a three-part
principle in Sophocles' terms: harmony and proportionality in human
relations; obedience to the harmonious and proportionate laws of the
gods; harmony and proportion in the relations of the self with the self-
that all good men seek these qualities is axiomatic (there are no pre-
meditatively evil men in Sophocles plays). But that the best of men,
such as Oedipus, are doomed, or damned, to failure is an equal axiom.
From this iron-clad paradox there is no escape. Thus it has ever been;
thus it shall ever be.
Antigone willfully violates the "laws of the land" by scattering the
ritualistic three handfuls of dust over the corpse of her brother. She
does so out of her absolute dedication to the gods' decree issued to the
individual conscience of all men-that the human spirit is sacred and
inviolable unto death and beyond, and that the living therefore shall
show forth their cognizance of this sanctity by ritual attentions to the
dead. The dead shall not be wantonly abandoned by the living to the
disintegrative forces of nature out of respect to the spirit that is, once
contained in the now-broken vessel that was. This is justice, this is
Dike. But prior to Antigone's civil disobedience Creon, newly arrived in
office, full of the high pomp and panoply of power, confident of the
union of Dike with his law, asserts:
You cannot learn of any man the soul,
the mind, and the intent until he shows
his practice of the government and law.
For I believe that who controls the state
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POLITICS AND MAN'S FATE IN SOPHOCLES' Antigone 45
and does not hold to the best plans of all
... that he is worst of all who are or were. (175-179; 181)
and:
With such good rules shall I enlarge our state. (191)
This too is justice, this too is Dike. Thus here are two separate per-
ceptions of Dike to which each protagonist is absolutely, grandly, pas-
sionately dedicated. Most critics' assert this clash of perceptions to be a
simple conflict between a higher, divine, natural, eternal law of the
physis and the temporal state and the written laws-the nomoi--that
constitute it. But to assume so is curious. No higher articulation of
natural or divine order exists than that of the polis. In it Dike sits in the
highest place. But if Dike is to preside over the polis, there must first
be a polis for her to reside in, and shortly before Antigone's "unlawful"
act in burying Polyneices the virtual existence of the polis was threatened
at its seven gates by Polyneices' armed horde. Whether Creon served
the cause of Dike less by ordering the traitor unburied as an example
to would-be and future traitors threatening the porportionate, harmoni-
ous order of the established polis, or whether he would have served Dike
at all by permitting the rendering of all rites and honors for the dead,
decreed by the gods to be necessary and just, puzzles the mind and con-
founds the will.
In Antigone we witness the clash of two immutable, irreconcilable
perceptions of Dike-two mutually exclusive perceptions of the good.
Just as the chorus vacillates between approbation of Antigone's action
and agreement with Creon's raison d'etat (672 ff.), siding with first one
then the other, so do we the spectaotrs withhold our assignment of
blame and guilt if we look on the action of the play judiciously, with
Dike.
Creon grows more absolute as his intended "good rules" and "best
plans of all" are overshadowed by his ego's dilation, thus inviting de-
struction according to a basic tenant of Greek belief. But Antigone's
disobedience stimulates, nourishes Creon's fatal hubris in his defense of
the primacy of the state. Nor can we forget the chorus's admonition at
the beginning of the play, "Let us forget the wars just done/and visit
the shrine of the gods" (150-151), directing the inner vision of the
Athenian spectators to the Acropolis, where even that day workmen
might have been laboring to complete the shrine housing the colossal
statue of Athena, golden protectress of the Athenian polis. In challeng-
ing the primacy of the state Antigone in effect challenges the aegis of
one of the most powerful gods.
Assigning simplistic black and white motives, causes, and effects to
4As e.g. Ehrenberg (above, note 1) 33: "There is no chance of reconciling the
world of men with that of the gods, the world of Creon with that of Antigone."
Cf. Webster (above, and note 2).
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46 ALFRED R. FERGUSON
the passions, perceptions, and actions in A
knowledge of good and evil, of how and
readily at hand, Sophocles' "lesson" in An
is not to be. The moral and ethical amb
powerful conflict between Creon and Ant
more complex, less felicitous destiny.
Creon's son, Haemon-defending Antigon
--flings at him the caveat, "Whoever t
eloquence, his mind, above the rest,/com
emptiness." (707-709) But the irony here
as much as Creon. Antigone's observance
repose of her brother's spirit out of lo
"the gods' unwritten and unfailing laws"
pathy, pity, and compassion in the specta
does in us. But her piety is immoderate a
matter at hand she alone "is wise, her elo
rest." Ismene cautions her not "to act ag
alone sees the direction in which "honor" lies. While obeisance to the
unwritten laws of the gods is honorable and natural, the polis too and
the written laws that bind it are in the natural scheme of things an
organic expression of the unwritten laws of the gods, in Sophocles' view,
not a mere concatenation of arbitrary custom and convention practiced
out of tribal habit. The gods decreed the polis should be, so that men
not only might live decently, with Dike, but so that men might live at all.
Creon's justification of his actions asserts the primacy of the polis and
its laws:
There is no greater wrong than disobedience.
This ruins cities, this tears down our homes ...
If men live decently it is because
discipline saves their very lives for them. (672-676)
The chorus thinks what Creon has just said is "sensible and right," and
Haemon finds no words "to claim there was error" in Creon's remarks.
But while there is no error in the letter of Creon's words, there is error
in their adamantine spirit. Earlier in this same speech Creon has said,
"The man the state has put in place must have/obedient hearing to his
least command/when it is right, and even when it's not" (in terms of
conventional wisdom, not in terms of ultimate justice). The menacing
absolutist ambience of "even when it's not" elevates the primacy of the
state to a supernal dais beyond the unwritten laws of the gods and the
justly conceived written laws of the polis-beyond the temporizing effect
of the traditions and customs of the polis; beyond wisdom, the good,
and justice . . . beyond Dike. Creon bestrides that dais as the embodi-
ment of the state, I'etat c'est lui, absolute in his conviction that he alone
"is wise, his eloquence, his mind, above the rest."
Haemon cautions that unless men are born perfect in wisdom, which
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POLITICS AND MAN'S FATE IN SOPHOCLES' Antigone 47
they are not, it is "no dishonor/to learn from others." But caution,
moderation, self-awareness, an awareness of the effect of the self on
others-in the Sophoclean dialectic the signs of a protagonist's awareness
of human frailty and the limits of human judgement-now have no
part in Creon's perception. A passionate commitment to the state's
welfare has engendered passionate self-righteousness-the ego's very
focus. Blotted out of his peripheral vision are the variant, conflicting,
often irreconcilable claims to justice within the polis. Now there is only
one claim to justice, one pursuit of justice-and that is his alone; just
as for Antigone there has been one claim to justice, one perception, one
pursuit of justice-and that has been hers alone.
The agon, then, is not between "good" and "evil" or between the in-
dividual conscience and the state, per se. Rather, it is between two
irreconcilable ideals, two antithetical, polarized perceptions of justice-
of Dike-that in the fullness of earthly time and man's imperfections
cannot merge. And it is not given to limited human wisdom to know
which path will, in the greater scheme of things, lead to the greatest
justice. If as Socrates asserted daily the beginning of wisdom for a man
is to know that he does not know, then the implicit wisdom in Antigone
is the emergent knowledge that ethical and moral decisions are, in the
words of William James, best made "in fear and trembling" (q.v., The
Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life), and this includes the spectators'
decisions as to the ethical and moral responsibilities of various partici-
pants in the drama's agon.
How is it that so many critics envision the play as a tragedy of char-
acter primarily, resulting from overwhelming hubris which, in turn, pre-
cipitates suffering in order that the protagonist will learn the lesson of
moderation and humility? Surely this interpretation makes of Creon's
and Antigone's suffering and the corpses at the end of the play a bar-
barity. Surely the clash of a strong-willed, prideful girl and a stubborn,
prideful man alone cannot precipitate such an avalanche of torment and
death. Surely no mere malformation or disproportion of character can
justify the enormity of suffering wrought by Creon. Nor can Creon's
impiety in violating the law to which Antigone is absolute in dedication,
and in his calumnious treatment of Teiresias, justify the magnitude of
retribution heaped upon him. The oriental despotism of the Old Testa-
ment Yahweh was alien to the Attic perception of justice as the natural
analogue of these principles. The tragedy of Antigone is higher, broad-
er, deeper than the casting down of one man whose "fatal Flaw" places
him in the path of the gods' just retribution.
Moreover, the enormity of suffering in the play cries out for its own
justification, its own Dike, lest life seem altogether grotesque. The only
acceptable justification for the play's agony is man's predestined failure
to achieve his vision of Dike in spite of his dedication to the "best plans
of all"-in spite of his intellect, his courage, his resolute will, and his
piety. In the clash of their two absolute, antithetical, irreconcilable
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48 ALFRED R. FERGUSON
world-views the respective virtues of Creon
and coalesce into a deadly nemesis destro
touch.
In Sophocles' world there are no premeditat
tive human relationships but accidental on
tagonist sets out to do the best, not the wor
of himself--or, rather, not "in spite of"
paradoxically, in Sophocles' world man is
without moorings or definitive patterns o
Individual acts are to be in accord with a
public scheme-and not with an adamantin
order, truth, and justice. A Sophoclean p
for reshaping the world to the dimension
good, which is the burden of post-Renaiss
ists in Western literature from Shakespeare
This raises the large question of "conscie
what part the private conscience is to pl
matters involving human relationships, even
and Oedipus Rex most particularly), are p
that the private conscience reflects that pri
most in harmony with the common weal
polis-then to that extent is its possessor
scheme of things; to that extent is his beha
unperverted.
But this raises another, even larger q
know whether or not his conscience is in
order? (That the natural public order cou
not an issue in Sophocles' scheme because
nature self-destructive; the viability of t
dential of its natural harmony with the
logical conclusion to these hypotheses is,
the spirit, if not the letter, of the seven tr
suggesting an ambivalence on Sophocles' p
pothesis.)
Again the question . . .By what epistemology does one determine
whether or not his conscience is in harmony with the common weal?
Perhaps the Apollonian voice of Teiresias can help; perhaps, in the
trite parlance of modern-day religious tracts, "God is the answer." But
in Antigone Teiresias appears mainly to point an accusing finger, to tell
Creon what he should not do when the terrible consequences of his acts
even then are taking place. Perhaps ancient religious custom can guide
the individual conscience, as it does Antigone's. But if the ancient cus-
tom contradicts the lawful judgement of what is best for the state...
what then? Did the gods who decreed the law from which the custom
5Especially in Hamlet and The Tempest.
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POLITICS AND MAN'S FATE IN SOPHOCLES' Antigone 49
arose foresee all possible contingencies in its practice? If it be so, then
they foresaw too the conflict between Creon and Antigone, and the un-
bearable pain issuing from that conflict. And if it be so, then the gods
are fiends.
And still the relentless question faced by Sophocles' characters re-
mains: "How can individual conscience and individual action coalesce
with 'the best plans of all,' the universal scheme of things?" The tragic
"lesson" Sophocles wanted to "teach" his Athenian "pupils" at the Great
Dionysia of 441 B.C. is, they cannot. Dike in its real as opposed to its
simulacral forms is, in the fullness of man's imperfections, unobtainable.
And yet the universal scheme of things, the divine plan of the gods, de-
mands that man must struggle to achieve Dike in his manifold relation-
ships. That is his terrible destiny; that is his tragic fate. And non-
participation in the divine agon, the struggle for Dike, is inconceivable
in the moral context of the Sophoclean cosmos. Not to participate in
the destiny of all men is to be less than human, to abrogate one's role
in the universal human drama, and to deny one's humanity.
To conceive of the best plans of all, but to fail in translating the con-
ception into reality because of the essential qualities that gave rise to it-
dedication, idealism, piety, a longing for justice, for Dike--that is the
knife in the flowers of man's being. It is the tragedy of his being; yet,
strangely, it is also the grandeur.
ALFRED R. FERGUSON
University of Wisconsin, Oshkosh
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