Katherine Withy, "Authenticity and Heidegger's Antigone"

Hi all --

So we published a second issue of the literary journal. Here's OC Oraciones, Vol. 1 Issue 2. Please do look through it and don't be shy about compliments. I will relay positive feedback to the various creators and editorial staff.

I'm trying to read a lot more this summer. I also want to get some papers published and a book proposal in order. Please do be patient with me as I put my notes here. I want to show that I am engaging other scholars, making sure that their work is visible and acknowledged by more of us as relevant. And I do believe the question of authenticity is one we should be thinking about. A lot of people with authority and power are getting old and it is so clear they have not thought once about living authentically. A few are buried in panic, only in the business of transferring that to everyone else. I can't say what exactly authentic living is, but I can't imagine it is subordination to extremes like panic or the anger or paralysis flowing from it.

If you get anything out of these notes on Katherine Withy's take on Antigone, do let me know about that too. I like doing these bibliographic entries, but I can't vouch for their value to all of you yet.

One last thing: per usual, if you give to Marfa Public Radio or there are other causes you want to create a group to further, let me know.

Annotated Bibliographic Entry for Heidegger's Interpretation of Antigone: Katherine Withy, "Authenticity and Heidegger's Antigone"

Note: The previous entry in this series was on Onur Karamercan's "Heidegger's Antigone: The Ethos of Poetic Existence." Again, I'm interested in how Antigone engages the question of authenticity. Do we have to have a fatal confrontation regarding the sacred in order to truly be who we are? It sounds ridiculous, but think about how we praise those who have contributed so much and achieved their being. We say they were true to themselves. They reshaped all of us by not compromising.

A further note about the reworked abstracts for entries in this series. If you're doing work on the topic, I would rather you use and cite the original abstracts as the authors wrote them. What I'm trying to do is emphasize what I understood from the reading. The text, then, is essentially the author's, with a few details added by me. I am purposely leaving much of the structure and phrasing intact so I can better understand how the author understands their own work. These are notes, not quite a finished product.

Withy, K. (2014). Authenticity and Heidegger’s Antigone. Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology, 45(3), 239–253. https://doi.org/10.1080/00071773.2014.968993

About the Author: Kate Withy is at the Philosophy Department at Georgetown University. Her research "centres on Heidegger’s conception of the human being as open to meaning and subject to breakdowns of meaning." We "are constantly at risk of coming into a crisis of meaning, such as an existential crisis." Heidegger provides tools for thinking about our "situatedness and vulnerability;" the tradition before him has "blind spots" which we need to identify and engage.

I really appreciate Dr. Withy's different ways of conceiving authenticity in Heidegger. She provides a framework which goes beyond offering a reading of a text. To what degree are we authentic because we confront death? Or originate something significant in history? Or truly accept the responsibility norms entail? Or demonstrate a prudence/reasoning which shows deep engagement with our situation? Or open ourselves to the "call of being?"

Reworked abstract (original here): Heidegger calls only Sophocles' Antigone authentic. Typically, it is argued that Heidegger's "authenticity" may consist in one of the following: "being-towards-death, taking responsibility for norms, world-historical creation, and a neo-Aristotelian phronēsis." However, either Antigone herself cannot be characterized by these, or Heidegger's reading suggests something else altogether. How, then, is Antigone authentic? Antigone fully engages her finitude; her "uncanniness" entails the mystery of why we must bury the dead. She shows "responsiveness to the call of being and... reticence at the end of explanation." The paper ends with a discussion of Sophocles' own authenticity. Does Sophocles, as author, demonstrate authenticity differently from the character he created?

Relevant takeaways:

• Withy's abstract itself is a rich text. The four notions of authenticity she rejects as immediately relevant are worth extended comment beyond her paper. "Being-toward-death," "taking responsibility for norms," "world-historical creation," and "neo-Aristotlean phronēsis" each show how rich Heidegger's approach to authenticity can be.
• More from the abstract: "uncanniness names being's presencing through self-withdrawal." An incredible, powerful claim. "Uncanniness" encompasses terror and cleverness. No amount of rationality can properly grasp when being is felt, as being is felt most keenly through "self-withdrawal," an overwhelming experience.
• Heidegger's Antigone is a "passive heroine," not "autonomous" and "radical." It is not clear if this vision of Antigone is "grounded in the play."
• Heidegger discusses a "law of being," envisioning the polis as an axis around which there is a "swirl." (You can say "pole," but that might conjure up another less savory image.) This indicates a finite "order [to] intelligible things." Antigone, for Withy, is responding to this law of being.
• In contrast to the above: Creon wishes to "legislate intelligibility."
• What does the "law of being," properly speaking, mean for Antigone? It entails the mystery of why we bury the dead. In more metaphysical terms, if we imagine Antigone as residing within a realm between life and death, in the play of being, then, as Withy says "being is granted in a self-withholding." This references Heidegger saying being "presenc[es] in the manner of absencing."
• Authenticity, it follows, involves standing "in this play of presencing and absencing." "Fac[ing] our finitude" in a genuine way.
• How does Antigone relate to other figures who also seem heroic but passive? Who may receive the call of being their own way? Compare/contrast Antigone with Kierkegaard's "Knight of Faith" (Abraham), the "Kantian moral agent," and Dreyfus' "social virtuoso."
• Antigone reaches the "end of explanation" in her reticence. It cannot be explained why Polyneices must be buried.
• How does the "call of being" relate to the "call of tradition?"
• Antigone is not revolutionary because she is "creative," but because she is "receptive." She is revolutionary in a conservative sense, performing a "retrieval" of being. Does this make her like MLK?

Questions for future research:

• I do political philosophy, so I had better take a closer look at Heidegger's discussion of polis and the "swirl."
• I would like to hear more about "being-toward-death." How do we engage death inauthentically? How do we discuss that without being judgmental?
• How does the law of being relate to the sacred? The phrase "ontological piety" arises several times in this paper with regard to Antigone's disposition.
• Also interested in authenticity, originality, and legacy. Authentic living should result in a unique product, no?

Key quote:

Withy: "In the face of being’s backgrounding and ungrounding, reasons run out. At the end of explanation, reticence is the appropriate response. With her reticence, Antigone faces up to the finitude of being and her own finitude as exposed to it. Yet she continues to respect the law of being qua world, making sense of things as the things that they are in the face of the fact that intelligibility runs out."