Introduction to Philosophy, Lecture 2: Introducing "Antigone"

What is philosophy? What can an ancient Greek drama teach us about philosophy?

You know philosophy as "love of wisdom." You have a sense that it is controversial. For example, not all societies want people to pursue knowledge the same way. A while ago, some places you would wonder if the sun is a ball of fire, and "how dare you blaspheme our god" would be the last thing you hear.

You could say philosophy is a little more than lukewarm love of wisdom. It's a drive for knowledge--one professor I knew said it was a lust for knowledge--that launches other approaches, other inquiries, other drives for knowledge.

The existence of philosophy entails an infinite number of complications. One complication for the ancient Greeks in particular stands out. How do we distinguish philosophy–how do we distinguish genuine questioning–from myth? This is not as simple a task as one might think. Aristotle speaks in the Metaphysics about Thales, famously known for one proposition: "everything is water." Claiming everything is water seems to be an empirical claim, a testable idea that can be proven true or false. It brings us closer to modern science, no? Aristotle implies otherwise, because it wasn't clear Thales was working from anything more than creation myths from older poets. Plenty of stories about the origin of all things start with an ocean of sorts.

You might want to interject and say working with the distinction between philosophy and myth is easy. For example, think again of the sciences. When you put forth a testable hypothesis, one that can be proven true or false, you are holding your words up to the world. To evidence. You're not just making any old story up. But this isn't actually how we operate. Think about how many times we'll reject evidence for the most obvious things. We'll literally cough because of pollution and then say that the pollution is necessary, a reality we need to deal with to survive. In one statement, we've taken a myth, called it reality, and used it to create one set of questions ("how can I make more money while coughing a lot?") and disown another set ("what if I wanted to stop pollution?"). The crazy thing is that we can manipulate the entirety of our scientific questioning this way. For centuries, people searched for a "philosopher's stone," hoping to turn lead into gold.

"Antigone," Sophocles' play, can be seen as embodying the tension between myth and philosophy. Michael Davis, in his lectures on Antigone, says the play initially seems simple enough. If I had to summarize it in a sentence, sure, it is simple: a sister wants her brother, a brother who betrayed the city, to be buried in violation of a law that says he should not receive funeral rites. That much is simple. Should the corpse of a traitor be buried? Be given sacred offices? It almost seems to be a question for religion and philosophy. Do the bounds of religion exceed those of the state? It could also be a question of nature. Don't we have a natural duty to bury our family?

Again, all this is coming from considering the drama as simple. It is not actually simple. Two brothers (Polyneices & Eteocles) fought over the throne of Thebes and killed each other. The one who invaded the city with seven armies, Polyneices, whom Antigone wants to bury, was the rightful heir to the throne. Antigone, her sister Ismene, Eteocles, and Polyneices are all children of Oedipus, a former ruler of Thebes famous for 1) defeating the Sphinx 2) killing his father and 3) marrying his own mother. This is the mythological background and it does look ludicrous. Why do we need to know or consider all these things? Surely truth has nothing to do with this degree of complexity. Isn't truth simple?

You can already see the mythology is providing us a service. We've all dealt with armchair philosophers who will use amateur definitions or terrible examples to advance the worst arguments. Tobacco companies used to say smoking couldn't possibly cause cancer because "well, here's Aunt Sally, and she's 90 and fine and been smoking her whole life." Or you'll run into someone who says the First Amendment means they can say anything, anywhere, at any time. They want a radical simplicity that runs over other people's thoughts and experiences; they don't really want to hear anyone else. The mythological backdrop of "Antigone"--all these weird stories about Oedipus and his family--refuses to be reduced to a simple question or principle, even as the details within encourage questions and ideas. The story of Oedipus, really Oedipus the Tyrant, is a story about humans being in a position beyond the law. If someone is truly self-sufficient, if someone is truly a law unto themselves, what's to stop them from killing their parent or worse? This sounds like it applies to nothing until you realize what having political power entails. To what degree is having power always this frightful and inhumane? Does saying humans can rule themselves always trample what is sacred?

Again, the story of Oedipus raises these questions but is not reducible to them. When we read "Antigone," it isn't clear it attempts to raise any of those questions even though it asks things which sound almost the same. So let's start looking a bit closer at the play itself.

At the opening, Antigone is in a panic. Look at those first ten lines. She's got question after question for her sister, and they're not philosophic. Doesn't her sister realize Zeus wants to torture both of them? Doesn't she feel all the "misery" inherited from their father? And there's this general now, and he's said something which directly affects them. "Dishonours which better fit our enemies / are now being piled up on the ones we love."

Antigone is in a panic and she wants her sister to feel the same. If this sounds extremely familiar to you, this is a good place to start writing down your own thoughts. Antigone wants a loyalty from Ismene that a lot of our relatives want from us. A loyalty that's certainly too much even though it's the only way some people can imagine their families.

To go further with this, the classicist Seth Benardete points out that the translation of the first line of the play has always been a mess. It isn't really "Now, dear Ismene, my own blood sister" – it's more like "oh dear head of Ismene," as if Antigone is focusing on the shape of Ismene's head exclusively. It brings to mind how we've got relatives who only see us in terms of other relatives. "You look just like your Uncle Johnny!" It's harmless, right? Everyone loves us, they see us, no? Well, no, it's not harmless. It doesn't just lend itself to pointless grudges and fighting within the family. It also means, as Antigone herself aptly demonstrates, that our individual selves are minimized. Does Antigone see Ismene as a human being in her own right, or someone entirely subordinate to the family name and legacy?

It took me a long time to realize that "What is family?" is the question "Antigone" begins with and refuses to minimize. As you read the play, keep in mind that Creon, the general who takes over Thebes, is Antigone's uncle. What is this play implying about family and the sacred? What might it be saying about power and order?