Antigone And The Limits Of Tragedy

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Antigone and the Limits of Tragedy
Patrick J. Deneen
Princeton University
While the irreconcilable divide between Creon and Antigone invites our attempt
to achieve resolution, tempts us like Oedipus to solve a mysterious conundrum and
ascertain which character is right and which is wrong, at least since Hegel it has been
widely recognized that each character shares some blame – and deserves some credit – in
the affair. Hegel writes in Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion,
Each of these two sides actualizes only one of the two [ethical powers],
has only one side as its content. That is one-sidedness, and the meaning of
eternal justice is that both are in the wrong because they are one-sided, but
both are in the right…. One [is] counterbalanced by the other’s validity.
In this way, the conclusion of the tragedy is reconciliation….1
While Creon stands for the higher principle of the Ethical State, he attempts to take more
than is his ultimate due, and Antigone’s claim deserves a partial Anerkennung –
recognition – for the Ethical State to achieve justice.
Nevertheless, if Hegel is able to find fault with each character, by contrast the
evidence suggests that such a negative judgment comes today with more relative ease
regarding Creon than Antigone. Few now quote his opening speech in praise of the city
with admiration, as did Demosthenes against Aeschines.2
Partly it is the well-known
betrayal of his early sentiments expressing hope that the Theban people will counsel him
that undermines the legitimacy of the lines. Moreover, there is widespread contemporary
sentiment that, in the final estimation, Antigone’s act in defiance of Creon’s law is right.

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This accords with the spirit of the age – we are now more prepared to sympathize with
one who resists the State, rather than one who wields the power of the State – but more to
the point, if the course of the play is any proof, this view is of course correct: Antigone’s
position is in the right, as is first revealed by the seer Teiresias and ultimately so proven
by the gods. Antigone leaves the scene with the departing words, “if these men are
wrong, let them suffer nothing worse than what they mete out to me – these masters of
injustice” (1019-1021). The gods do precisely what she asks of them, depriving Creon of
son and wife and, finally it appears, his removal from public life given his wish to be
taken away “out of sight” (1445). The principles placed in opposition set the play into
unending motion – the prerogatives of the State against the duties of a sister; the
necessities of politics against the will of the Gods; the Collectivity against the individual
conscience. Recognizing the zeitgeist, today we look more to Antigone with admiration
for her unwavering courage than with sympathy on Creon’s attempt to steer the ship of
state.3
Antigone’s grounds for disobedience are declared to Creon early in the play:
It wasn’t Zeus, not in the least,
who made this proclamation – not to me.
Nor did that Justice, dwelling with the gods
beneath the earth, ordain such laws for men.
Nor did I think your edict had such force
that you, a mere mortal, could override the gods,
the great unwritten, unshakable traditions. (499-505)
Antigone’s defiance seems unflinching, unassailable. Her actions derive legitimacy from
nothing less than the law of the gods, as opposed to merely man-made “proclamations”
and “edicts.”4
As a divine standard, the imperative to bury her brother stands in
undoubted superiority to raison d’etat, as no state, no creation of mere mortals, can hope

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to achieve the universality of a divine decree. A classic summary of Antigone’s
highmindedness remains that of C. M. Bowra, who wrote that Sophocles suggests that
“not all laws are necessarily right, that Creon’s edict is perhaps not law at all. Although
Antigone appears to be lawless and is condemned for so being, it is gradually made clear
that she and not Creon stands for a true notion of legality.”5
And yet, at the threshold of death, Antigone is an apostate. She recants her
principled stance and reveals her position to be as dubious as, if not more dubious than
Creon’s. In her controversial last speech, containing the following lines that have even
been deemed by some to be interpolated, 6
Antigone declares,
Never, I tell you,
If I had been the mother of children
or if my husband died, exposed and rotting –
I’d never have taken this ordeal upon myself,
never defied our people’s will. What law
you ask, do I satisfy with what I say?
A husband dead, there might have been another.
A child by another too, if I had lost the first.
But mother and father both lost in the halls of Death,
no brother could ever spring to light again. (995-1004)
The lines serve as a direct repudiation of Antigone’s two most fervent beliefs: first,
making exceptions to the general duty of familial burial rites contradicts her earlier
quoted declaration that she acts solely at the prompting of the universal laws of the gods.
Second, suggesting that she would not have done the same for her own children what she
did for Polyneices contradicts her claim to Ismene that she acts out of devotion to familial
blood relationship. The apostasy, in short, is an incredible betrayal of what previously
appeared to be deeply-held public and private beliefs.
To what can one attribute this strange, apparently uncharacteristic declaration?
Given the extent of contemporary admiration for Antigone, can one explain away, or

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simply ignore this apparently contradictory, callous betrayal of her previously principled
stance? Should one attribute this to an ancient, misguided devotion to brothers over even
husbands and children?7
Or is there contained within the action of the tragedy itself
already indications that Antigone could make such a declaration? The latter conclusion –
one that I will explore at greater length below – would suggest there are finally limits to
the “tragic vision” which is otherwise so admirable in Antigone, and which may in part
be a warning on the part of Sophocles against embracing too fervently the position of
tragic resignation adopted by Antigone.
The Case for Antigone
Before exploring the implications of Antigone’s late declaration against her action
for all but her brother, it is worth considering the grounds for contemporary admiration of
Antigone, and the accompanying neglect of this key passage among political theorists
who view Antigone’s actions as evidence of political integrity and personal autonomy.
While there are many permutations of this admiration, ranging from acclaim for
Antigone’s connectedness to others, to Judith Butler’s recent observations of her
willingness to expand on definitions of what constitute “normal” kinship relations, all of
these views seem to hinge on an understanding that Antigone is the unquestioned heroine
of the play and stands largely in the stead of Sophocles’ vision of an appropriately tragic
standpoint, and which (perhaps not uncoincidentally) minimize or ignore the implications
of her late rejection of the grounds of her action. I will look at two contemporary
assessments of the play that look with sympathy on Antigone’s action, albeit to different
ends, one by Jean Bethke Elshtain, the other by J. Peter Euben.

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In an essay entitled “Antigone’s Daughters” published in 1982, Jean Bethke
Elshtain admonished feminists to avoid too great an admiration for the auspices of the
State. Responding to early-1980’s liberal feminist calls for State to act as a
counterbalancing and corrective force against the unaccountable injustices committed in
the private sphere, especially the family, Elshtain found in Sophocles’ play a useful
cautionary tale about the potentially tragic relationship of private persons, especially
women, to the State. The essay, she writes, seeks to sound “a note of caution. It argues
that feminists should approach the modern bureaucratic state from a standpoint of
skepticism that keeps alive a critical distance between feminism and statism, between
female self-identity and a social identity tied to the public-political world revolving
around the structures, institutions, values, and ends of the state.”8
Elshtain’s reading resembles that of Hegel, except for Elshtain now the State is
not be deemed as “ethical,” but rather as a distant, potentially brutal, certainly impersonal
entity to which we should accord suspicion and distrust. At the same time, hers is not a
standard “liberal” reading of the play, since she seeks to accord protection to the sanctity
of the sphere of family without emphasizing its potential abuses and inequities.
Ironically, Elshtain – who is well known for certain “communitarian” sympathies – here
defends the private sphere (manifested in the family) above the public sphere (embodied
by the State) due largely to the fact that she is responding to liberal feminism’s increasing
appeal to State power as an impartial source of justice. Yet, ultimately in defending the
prerogatives of the family against the bureaucratic State, she is by extension defending
the realm of “civil society,” the sphere of the “values of family and particular loyalties,
ties, and traditions,” as opposed to the “impersonal, abstract, and rational…” (51). She

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encourages feminists instead to defer to the example of Antigone, to become in effect
“the daughters of Antigone” (47).
As J. Peter Euben rightly points out, Elshtain’s trope is unfortunate: after all,
Antigone’s name – derived from “anti-gene” – means “contra generation,” or “against
birth.”9
Euben finds Elshtain’s reading of Antigone to be too overly romantic a view of
family and particularity over the impersonal claims of the State; rather, Euben finds in
both Creon and Antigone a kind of deafness to the claims of others, an insufficiency that
democracy must overcome if it is to succeed in encouraging our appreciation of the views
and perspectives of others.
Euben finds both Creon and Antigone at times deficient, but it is clear, based on
the fairly superficial but telling evidence of pages devoted respectively to each character
that Creon is by far the more egregious character, he receives twice the critical attention
of that allotted to Antigone. Especially on the basis of democratic values, Creon is
finally unacceptable for all of his renowned tyrannical qualities, especially his
unwillingness to listen to another party, his claim to rule Thebes exclusively, his rejection
of Haemon’s appeal to rule in consultation with others. After asserting in his opening
speech that he is willing to listen to the advice of the people, Creon’s paranoia and
megalomania assert themselves in ever-greater force over the course of the play. By the
time of his exchange with his son Haemon, his tyrannical tendencies have been fully
revealed:
C: Is Thebes to tell me how to rule?
H: Now you see? Who’s talking like a child?
C: Am I to rule this land for others – or for myself?
H: It’s no city at all, owned by one man alone.
C: What? The city is the king’s – that’s the law!
H: What a splendid king you’d make of a desert island –

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you and you alone. (821-827).
As Euben glosses this passage, “political knowledge is political not only because of its
subject matter, but because of the way it is constituted and expressed. To strive for
political and intellectual mastery, as Creon does, is to act antipolitically in the sense that
it will destroy the city as well as the household upon which the city depends. While
knowledge does bring power, political knowledge comes from yielding to other voices
and positions, sharing public space with others rather than consigning them to shadows
and whispers (the people of Thebes) or caves and houses (Antigone and Ismene).”10
Euben takes issue with the Hegelian/Elshtainian assumption that Creon can be
said in any way to represent the “ethical” or “objective” or “impersonal” State, since in so
many vital regards his actions are motivated for personal reasons. Creon cannot be seen
as representative of the “political,” since, for Euben, he evinces none of the democratic
virtues of “yielding,” “sharing,” and “listening” deemed essential to political life. At the
same time, Antigone does not represent the “private” or familial sphere as suggested by
Elshtain; for Euben, at least initially the similarities between Antigone and Creon are
more decisive than their differences. He calls special attention to Antigone’s treatment of
her sister Ismene at the play’s opening, and finds in Antigone’s unyielding and
intransigent stance a similar tendency toward apolitical obstinacy as found in Creon.
“Yet this loving sister [Antigone] turns on the sisterly object of her love [Ismene] with an
implacable fury that shatters the just posited identity into shards. In its ferocity and its
radical transformation of a too loving unity into a too fierce hatred, the turning is an
unsettling echo of incest and patricide, reminding us, if we needed reminding, of exactly
the noble line from which Antigone comes.”11

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Yet, having begun by implicitly pointing to the similarities between Creon and
Antigone, Euben’s sympathy for both resistance and a multiplicity of voices as central
features of a democratic ethic bring him eventually to sympathize more explicitly with
Antigone’s cause, words and actions. He begins by noting that, although on the surface
Creon and Antigone share a similar form of intransigence, that aspect takes on a different
mien given the disparities of their relative positions of power or powerlessness: “It is one
thing to be intransigent in the face of tyranny, another for the tyrant to be intransigent
toward his subjects….”12
Antigone’s stance – noteworthy since she is weak both by dint
of her lack of status as a citizen and her gender (the two are ultimately connected, of
course) – reveals her to possess a more legitimate claim to the title of “citizen” – and
especially democratic citizen – than does Creon: “yet it is this harsh woman who speaks
against power unafraid, exemplifying two defining principles of Athenian democracy,
isegoria and parrhesia. True there is something incongruous about a woman being the
‘true citizen’….”13
By the time Euben considers Antigone’s final speech, directed to the
city of Thebes, he has largely dismissed the earlier charges of intransigence regarding her
treatment of Ismene, and instead finds for a kind of Hegelian dialectic in the words and
actions of Antigone alone, and not (as did Hegel) by considering the competing claims of
Creon and Antigone. “True to this new complexity, Antigone appeals to her fellow
citizens and expresses the love for her city that had been largely absent and certainly
unspoken until now and which seemed to justify saying that she ‘stands for’ the
household. In her final speech she brings these loves into juxtaposition if not loving
reconciliation, expressing the sense of their mutual dependency that seems part of the
play’s point.”14

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The cases made for Antigone by both Elshtain and Euben – while so different in
their initial claims, and divergent given their ultimate goals – in the end resemble each
other remarkably in a vital respect: Antigone is admirable because of her ability to
embrace others, because of her acknowledgement of limits that accompany the value
placed on family, on locality (according to Elshtain), or alternatively, on the need to
balance or “reconcile” the demands of politics and the demands of the private (for
Euben). According to both Elshtain and Euben, then, Antigone can be seen in a
fundamental respect to “stand for” Sophocles’ tragic vision: by acknowledging her
limits, by embracing the frailty of human vision through her cherishing of family,
locality, and a properly-proportioned view of politics, it is Antigone – in direct contrast to
Creon – whose tragic vision we should finally emulate. If the title character of Oedipus
the King teaches us by negative example how to avoid hubris, the title character of
Antigone teaches us largely by positive example how the humans can avoid the dangers
of overweening recklessness.
The Ode on Man – or Woman?
Antigone’s tragic status seems only confirmed by a consideration of the famous
Ode on Man which contains at first glance high praise for the capacities of mankind, but
after further analysis suggests the dangers inherent in those capacities and subtly appears
to criticize Creon as the embodiment of the same. The Ode reads,
Numberless wonders (deina)
Terrible wonders walk the world but none the match for man –
That great wonder crossing the heaving gray sea,
Driven on by the blasts of winter
On through breakers crashing left and right,
Holds his steady course

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And the oldest of the gods he wears away –
The Earth, the immortal, the inexhaustible –
As his plows go back and forth, year in, year out
With the breed of stallions turning up the furrows.
And the blithe, lighthearted race of birds he snares,
The tribes of savage beasts, the life that swarms the depths –
With one fling of his nets
Woven and coiled tight, he takes them all,
Man the skilled, the brilliant!
He conquers all, taming with his techniques
The prey that roams the cliffs and wild lairs,
Training the stallion, clamping the yoke across
His shaggy neck, and the tireless mountain bull.
And speech and thought, quick as the wind
And the mood and mind for law that rules the city –
All these he has taught himself
And shelter from the arrows of frost
When there’s rough lodging under the cold clear sky
And the shafts of lashing rain –
Ready, resourceful man!
Never without resources
Never an impasse as he marches on the future –
Only Death, from Death alone he will find no rescue
But from desperate plagues he has plotted his escapes.
Man the master, ingenious past all measure
Past all dreams, the skills within his grasp –
He forges on, now to destruction
Now again to greatness. When he weaves in
The laws of the land, and the justice of the gods
That binds his oaths together
He and his city rise high (hypsipolis) –
But the city casts out (apolis)
The man who weds himself to inhumanity
Thanks to reckless (tolma) daring. Never share my hearth
Never think my thoughts, whoever does such things. (376-416)
While the Ode appears to reflect a Protagorean confidence about human abilities
to contend with, and even conquer the challenges of nature, the Ode also contains within
its own text a warning of the potentially negative aspects of these capacities.15
As the
ode’s first word alerts, man is deina – both wonderful and terrible, simultaneously “awe-

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some” and “awe-ful.” Most of his accomplishments are related to some form of
simultaneous destruction: farming mutilates the earth, hunting destroys the prey, even his
singular political achievements lead men to commit acts of “reckless daring” that leave
them “apolis,” outside the city, like Polyneices’ corpse outside the city’s walls.
The ode’s “internal” warning is ultimately borne out by the subsequent action of
the play, in which so many of the apparently positive attributes of humankind re-appear
in a now undermined, ironically tragic form. Critics have long recognized that so many
of the Ode’s praises appear to apply to Creon; the same reasonableness and rational
foresight that is captured in his initial confident speech seems to also be captured by the
Ode’s praises to man’s capacities to plan, manipulate, and seize an advantage over
natural forces in the world.16
Yet, at the same time, the dual quality of man’s deinaton
capacities are also finally embodied in Creon, even to the literal point that nearly every
apparently positive feature described by the ode, first applied to Creon, is eventually
undermined and reappears in an ironically negative capacity.17
As Charles Segal has
suggested, Creon from the outset is associated with an “aggressive, manipulative
rationalism” of the sort described in the ode, whereas Antigone instead is portrayed as
“part of the human-dominated natural world.”18
Creon begins his first statement with a seafaring metaphor: like the intrepid
human described in the Ode as “that great wonder crossing the heaving gray sea” (378),
he has managed to guide “the ship of state” to a safe shore despite the “long merciless
pounding in the storm” (179-182). Yet, by the end of the play, having lost Antigone, his
son Haemon and his wife Eurydice, he again evokes a scene of sailing, this time
comparing these discoveries to the arrival into “a harbor of death” (1413) (Haidou lim n).

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The formerly glorious image of the conquering seafarer, buffeted by but finally
triumphant over the sea’s fury, is typically undercut by this last image of
“seaworthiness,” Creon’s ship arriving in an unenviable port, one in which the apparent
rationality of the captain has led them not to homecoming, but to carnage.
In his response to Antigone’s great declaration of principle defending the burial of
her brother (498-524), Creon further associates himself with many of the other techne
described in the Ode. Whereas the Ode finds the consummately human arts such as
building and animal husbandry praiseworthy, these images in Creon’s speech reflect a
more “terrible” form of mastery, now analogously the mastery of one human over
another. To Antigone’s stubborn resistance Creon responds,
Believe me, the stiffest of stubborn wills
Fall the hardest; the toughest iron,
Tempered strong in the white-hot fire,
You’ll see crack and shatter first of all.
And I’ve known spirited horses you can break
With a light bit – proud rebellious horses.
There’s no room for pride, not in a slave (doulos),
Not with lord and master standing by. (528-535)
Those self-same crafts which appear in the Ode as the human manipulation of nature and
environment now return, in Creon’s own words, in mockingly ironic fashion as a form of
unreserved mastery of human over human, even to the point of turning ones subject – and
kin – into a slave. Metallurgy and the control of fire are now aimed not toward
increasing human bounty, but rather serve as an analogy of how superior strength and
technical ability can bend iron – and the will – to the ends and desires of the master.
Similarly, echoing the first strophe of the Ode in which horses are used to assist the
plowing of earth, and in the second strophe, in which mankind “conquers all, tam[es]
with his techniques…, train[s] the stallion, clamping the yoke across his shaggy neck…”

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(391-394), Creon similarly claims to be the breaker of humans, using the brute force and
cleverness at his disposal as rational agent to break the emotion-driven, irrational
motivations of the animal-like Antigone.19
Antigone’s identification with the natural world, in contrast to Creon’s similarity
to the ingenious, manipulative human – the world described in the Ode which mankind
rules and alters without insurmountable challenge – becomes more explicit as the play’s
actions proceed. One of the abilities praised in the Ode is humankind’s capacity to
capture “the blithe, lighthearted race of birds … with one fling of his nets / woven and
coiled tight, he takes them all, / man the skilled, man the brilliant!” (386-390).
Immediately after the Ode’s conclusion, a sentry enters the scene to report that
Polyneices’ body has been buried and that Antigone has been captured in the act. He
describes her capture as follows:
After the storm had passed – it seemed endless –
There, we saw the girl!
And she cried out a sharp, piercing cry,
Like a bird come back to an empty nest,
Peering into its bed, and all the babies gone… (469-473)
Antigone’s capture is preceded by a severe storm, a tempest ironically reflecting back on
the Ode’s proud declaration of mankind’s ability to build shelter against “the shafts of
lashing rain” (400), and now instead revealing the extent of mankind’s exposure in the
figure of Polyneices whose body lies outside the city, rotting, nothing but food for carrion
birds. So too, the birds now that mankind captures in the Ode are echoed in the capture
of Antigone. Creon is the presumed hunter, again the ironic image of the human who
controls his environment, except this time his prey is a young girl, his object not to ensure
the sustenance of his people but to protect a decree of dubious legality and justness. The

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birds appear again later in the play, now revealing their own kind of wisdom beyond
human control as the sources of prophecy for Teiresias: “suddenly I heard it, / a strange
voice in the wingbeats, unintelligible, / barbaric, a mad scream!” (1105-1107). Birds are
not finally, as the Ode suggests, mere objects of prey for man’s clever capture; instead, as
the image of birds returns again and again, their inherent “meaning” changes, now as the
defiler of bodies, now as the source of irrationality and madness through divine prophecy,
and again – in describing the capture of Antigone – as nothing more than the analogy of
mankind’s own existence as prey. The Ode’s proud praise of human ingenuity meets
with ironic restatements and revisions as the course of the action unfolds.
Of course, the Ode affords a major qualification to man’s achievements,
recognizing that limit which is finally inescapable, that border which Heidegger
described as “an end beyond all consummation (Vollendung), a limit beyond all limit.”20
After a litany of mankind’s accomplishments over and against nature’s antagonisms, the
chorus reminds that “only Death, from Death alone he will find no rescue / but from
desperate plagues he has plotted his escapes.” Up until this point, amid all the
descriptions of the various abilities that enable humans to extend their mastery of nature,
the justified presumption has been that the technai simultaneously describe the chorus’
initial view of Creon (and likely Creon’s view of himself), and yet also provide a
benchmark of accomplishment against which the ironic restatement of those technai in a
negative light will be compared. Even the more doubtful assessment of humankind’s
political achievements (and overreachings) appear at least initially to apply to Creon,
inasmuch as he (and again, the chorus) appears to consider himself as the most capable
surviving representative of a civilized, political order. However, it is difficult to conclude

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that the one great qualification to humanity’s achievements – that “limit beyond all
limit,” death – applies at some level to Creon. While it is clearly the case that Creon will
eventually come to realize death’s finality and its empire over human existence, at least
initially it is Creon’s neglect of death’s claims – represented especially in his denial of
Polyneices’ burial rites – that sets up the tragic culmination of the play. If nearly all of
the Ode’s “praises” of man implicitly reflect Creon’s outlook of optimism, rationality and
control, the one great recognition of human limitation appears to be nothing other than an
anomalous, unreferenced moment in the midst of praise.
This appearance holds only if we attempt to equate all aspects of the Ode to
Creon, as he is the most obvious referent in most instances. Yet, regarding this
significant qualification of the Ode’s celebration – Death – the reference here may not be
absent or mistaken, but rather may apply most fully to the other “center of gravity” of the
play – Antigone. Antigone, after all, is the character most fully associated with death (as
opposed to human rationality and manipulation of nature); indeed, she is the character
most notable for her acceptance of death, literally her acceptance of the Ode’s cautionary
qualification. If the Ode’s more “positive” pronouncements (later proving to be at least
somewhat ironic) apply most fully to the character of Creon, then the one significant
allusion to human limitation and the final futility of accomplishment is captured most
extensively by the pronouncements and actions of Antigone.
At the very outset of the play Antigone tells Ismene that “even if I die in the act,
that death will be a glory” (kalon) (86). To Creon she declares that death is for her a
“profit” or “gain,” even “a rich reward” (kerdos), especially one that occurs “before my
time” (515-518). Against Creon’s claims that the gods of the city defend his decree,

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Antigone claims that she follows a different power, that “Hades demands these laws”
(nomous, 519). Again, when objecting to Ismene’s claim that she is to share in the blame
for the burial, Antigone objects, invoking again “Hades and those below” who “know to
whom the deed belongs” (542). In opposition to Ismene, who “chooses life,” Antigone
consciously and proudly “chooses death” (555); indeed, at this point she claims she has
“long been dead” already (559). It is then with some justification – however cruelly
motivated – that Creon changes the punishment of Antigone from one of public stoning
to enclosure within a cave: “there she can pray to Hades, the only one among the gods
whom she respects, and perhaps be spared from death; or else she will learn, at that late
stage, that it is wasted effort to show regard for things in Hades” (777-780).
Charles Segal finds a key distinction between the characters of Creon and
Antigone centering on their attitudes toward death. Whereas Creon, in a manner typical
to his identification with the rational manipulator in the Ode, is notable for his “use of
death,” by contrast one of Antigone’s key characteristics is her counterpoising
“acceptance of death.”21
Creon’s attempted use of death – as is the case in so many of
the technai associated with him in the Ode – proves to be a misguided endeavor. As
Segal argues, by the play’s end,
Hades is no longer an instrument of Creon’s authority but a power in its
own right which destroys him…. Creon’s world is, literally, turned upside
down…. The ruler who so confidently declared that he will lead Antigone
to her rocky tomb gives himself over limply to his servants to be led after
he has himself experienced the darkness of that tomb. The man who
prided himself on his intelligence and resolution and impatiently charged

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others with folly becomes irresolute before the chorus’ advice and finally
proves the example of the man who needs to be taught ‘intelligence.’ 22
By contrast, Segal – like Elshtain and Euben – find in Antigone’s acceptance of death the
core feature that unambiguously reflects Sophocles’ tragic vision. If Creon is the
unparalleled breacher of limits, he whose attempt to manipulate nature – and humans –
into submission reflects tolma, recklessness, and results in his final harrowing,
Antigone’s tragic acceptance of death, and the limits it represents, instead reveals the
proper human attitude toward life. As Segal writes,
It is only death, that alone which man cannot control or “flee,” as the ode
says (361), which proves the fullest touchstone of man’s greatness and the
truest means to his assertion of his humanity…. Antigone’s view, then,
for all its idealism, is more “realistic” in the full tragic sense than Creon’s.
To live humanly, in Sophocles’ terms, is to know fully the conditions of
man’s existence; and this means to accept the gods.23
Segal’s insistence on this point – mirroring the view of Elshtain, Euben, and
numerous others – concluding from the action of the play that Antigone must be lauded
for her tragic vision, quite inexplicably refuses to apply the same standards of rigorous
and revealing analysis of Antigone’s relationship to the Ode’s great qualification of
death’s dominion as they do in the case of Creon’s ironic relation to the Ode’s praises. In
their idealization of Antigone as the supreme embracer of limits, and the simultaneous
conclusion that Creon’s position is finally indefensible (which it very well may be), they
may finally overlook Sophocles’ warnings about the limits of the tragic vision that they
otherwise laud. In effect, this position may ironically reflect a form of “pride” – albeit

18
distinctly different than that of Creon – now derived from discovering Sophocles’ true
depiction of human limitation. The too-easy conclusion that praises Antigone’s tragic
stance may in fact merely reflect one more aspect of human confidence in its own
abilities and domination run amok, now in the sense that a too-fervent embrace of tragedy
itself contains an ironic presence of pride and tolma - recklessness.
In this regard, it is extraordinarily revealing that neither Elshtain – who praises
Antigone’s devotion to family – nor Euben – who lauds her healthy relations to fellow
citizens – mention even in passing the apparent repudiation of her actions, in which
Antigone declares that she would not have performed the same rites for her husband, nor
children, nor even presumably her “dearest brother” had her parents still been alive
(quoted above: 995-1004). Innumerable critics have regarded this passage with
consternation or disbelief, believing it to be thoroughly out of character given Antigone’s
uncompromising stance throughout the play. Among its opponents notably, was Goethe,
who stated that “I would give a great deal if some talented scholar could prove that these
lines were interpolated, not genuine.”24
Even those who attempt to account for its
presence have recognized that the passage is “an ogre [that] stands in the critic’s path.”25
Yet, taking the tack of observing the transformation of the Ode’s positive
commendations into ironic abuses as the play proceeds, one can reach the similar
conclusion that the one great qualification in the Ode – notably that singular quality that
can be said to apply not to Creon, but to Antigone – might itself be as subject to the same
kind of undermining and reversal as the more positive manifestations of human capacity
associated with Creon. Such a view of the Ode’s qualification may indeed go far in
explaining Antigone’s apparent “deathbed” repudiation, and serve to expose a remarkable

19
consistency in her tragic vision, one finally as flawed as Creon’s “optimistic” or
rationalist vision.
Antigone reveals in her late, jarring admission that it was not in the final instance
Polyneices’ uniqueness as a human being that prompted her rebellious action; it was
rather the fact that he couldn’t be readily replaced, as all human beings are normally
replaceable, including even her own children and husband. Neither she, nor Ismene, nor
her brothers are finally valuable or inherently dignified for a core spark of individual
humanity. Rather, a worldview in which Death is finally embraced too fervently results
in a perspective that views all human life as finally meaningless, equally futile, lacking
any significant uniqueness that bears comparison. According to such a view, human
beings – like animals (those beasts to whom Antigone is so frequently compared) – are
nothing other than biological entities that can be replaced by a successive generation of
similarly-bred creatures. If Creon’s vision is finally subject to criticism because of its
excessive rationality that borders on the tyrannical drive for total control, Antigone’s
excessive embrace of the tragic vision arising from her near-obsession with the “limit
beyond all limits” results in an overly naturalistic view of humanity that completely
obliterates what some have called the divine spark, other human dignity, still others our
authenticity or selves, natural or constructed.
Recalling the Ode’s qualification when we encounter Antigone’s apparent
apostasy reminds us that not only is Creon’s position insufficient; so, finally, is
Antigone’s. Antigone does not alone represent Sophocles’ tragic vision, any more so
than does Oedipus or Ajax or Philoctetes. Consider, for example, Oedipus: he is
obviously a transgressor who breaks the most fundamental laws of humanity and the

20
gods; yet, he is also the only figure capable of solving the Sphinx’s riddle (and not
Teiresias, as he points out), and finally, he is the “physician” who cures the plague in
Thebes – only by discovering that he is its source.26
It is finally not sufficient to identify
Sophocles’ tragic vision solely or exclusively with any one character, including
Antigone. Her own identification with death, with human limits, and with finitude is
finally itself subject to a similar kind of “recklessness” and excess as all those “positive”
qualities celebrated in the Ode are in regard to Creon. To believe that one has
“discovered” the essence of tragedy by locating it in the embrace of limits should finally
awaken us to our own temptations for “control.” Rather, reflecting back on the ironies
born of the great Ode on Man, it would seem that Antigone’s embrace of death - the final
equalizing force that, in her view, creates a fundamental irrelevance of human life –
finally reveals not the nature of tragedy, but instead the utmost limits of tragedy.

21
NOTES
1
Georg W. F. Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion. Edited by P.C.
Hodgson. Translated by R.F. Brown, P.C. Hodgson, and J.M. Stewart. 3 Volumes.
(Berkeley, 1984), Vol. 2, pp. 665-666.
2
As classicists remind us, the original Greek audience would have initially
sympathized with the tyrant Creon, particularly the Creon who enters the scene
proclaiming the dignity of the State and the preeminent role of patriotism.
My countrymen, the ship of state is safe. The gods who rocked her
After a long, merciless pounding in the storm, have righted
her once more….
As I see it, whoever assumes the task,
The awesome task of setting the city’s course,
And refuses to adopt the soundest policies
But fearing someone, keeps his lips locked tight,
he’s utterly worthless. So I rate him now,
I always have. And whoever places a friend
Above the good of his own country, he is nothing:
I have no use for him….
Remember this – our country is our safety.
Only while she voyages true on course
can we establish friendships, truer than blood itself.
Such are my standards. They make our city great. (179-214)
(All quotations from Antigone and Oedipus the King are taken from Robert
Fagles’ translation of the plays in Three Theban Plays. [New York: Penguin Books,
1982]. References to the original Greek text are taken from the Loeb Classical Library
edition [Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1984.])
For Thebans who had recently suffered through kingly incest, fratricide, and civil
war, Creon’s firm navigation of the ship of state must have sounded as confident and
admirable as it would have to the average Athenian sitting in the theater, pondering the
fate of the youthful democracy that, too, constantly seemed rent by disagreement and

22
stasis. Christian Meier, among many others, suggests that “the ‘modern’ figure of the
enlightened Creon contains at least a hint of similarity to Pericles” (Athens: A Portrait of
the City in its Golden Age. Translated by Robert and Rita Kimber. New York, 1998), p.
370. See also Victor Ehrenberg’s Sophocles and Pericles (Oxford, 1954), Chs. 3 and 4.
3
As George Steiner extensively documents in Antigones (Oxford, 1984), the
admiration for Antigone’s actions has long pedigree in modern times. He begins with
Hegel, Goethe and Hölderlin (who sees the action of the play anticipating a
“republikanische Vernunftsform,” [81]) and describes many subsequent admirers,
including George Eliot. Of course, it is precisely the Enlightenment-inspired sentiments
of admiration for Antigone’s defiance that continue to provoke contemporary sympathy.
In contemporary scholarship, feminist and post-modernist interpretations have also been
largely sympathetic toward Antigone. See, for example, Ann Lane and Warren Lane,
“The Politics of Antigone,” in J. Peter Euben, ed., Greek Tragedy and Political Theory
(Berkeley, 1986), pp. 51-62. Judith Butler’s recent Gauss Lectures at Princeton
University (“Antigone’s Claim,” October 13, 15 and 20, 1998) also continues a long
tradition of admiration for Antigone’s defiance, albeit not now for her defense of the
prerogatives of conscience, but rather (according to Butler) her attempt to expand the
definition of “kinship” that is suggested by the possibility of an incestuous relationship –
or at the very least the sexual attraction – between Antigone and Polyneices. Thus can
Antigone not only appeal to liberal sympathizers; her appeal even extends to
postmodernists, who at the same time share the traditional liberal animus against Creon.
4
Antigone appears to distinguish between k ruxas – which is a proclamation
made known by a herald – and nomoi, or laws, which she attributes to the gods. Segal

23
explores this distinction in more detail in “Sophocles’ Praise of Man and the Conflicts of
the Antigone,” in Sophocles (Edited by Thomas Woodard. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.,
1966), p. 64.
5
C.M. Bowra. Sophoclean Tragedy (Oxford, 1944), 97.
6
A good summary of the debate among classicists can be found in R.P.
Winnington-Ingram’s Sophocles: An Interpretation. (Cambridge, 1980), 145, note 80.
He is inclined to view the passage as spurious, albeit “hazardously” and “for the most
subjective of reasons” he admits, as well as indicating that he has changed his view of the
passage’s authenticity “again and again” (145). Bernard Knox holds that the lines are
authentic due to their citation by Aristotle in the Rhetoric. See his “Introduction” to
Antigone, in Three Theban Plays, pp. 45-48).
7
The lines resemble a similar declaration of the wife of Intaphernes in Herodotus’
Histories (3.119).
8
Jean Bethke Elshtain, “Antigone’s Daughters.” Democracy, II (1982), p. 46.
9
Euben’s essay on Antigone is found in Corrupting Youth: Political Education,
Democratic Culture and Political Theory (Princeton, 1997), Ch. 6. His observation on
Elshtain’s curious title occurs on p. 151.
10
Euben, Corrupting Youth, p. 160.
11
12
13

24
14
Euben, Corrupting Youth, p. 169; emphasis mine. He considers this speech
without commenting on the controversial lines in which Antigone repudiates the
universal validity of her actions.
15
As Victor Ehrenberg notes, “there is almost universal agreement that the poet
here makes use of Protagoras’ myth which apparently was well known as one of the truly
characteristic and most impressive utterances of the great Sophist.” (Sophocles and
Pericles, p. 61). The myth is reported by Plato in Protagoras, 320d, ff.
16
Again, Ehrenberg contends, “[the Ode] is at the same time, if we are not
mistaken, of particular significance for his picture of Creon” (Sophocles and Pericles, p.
61). In Charles Segal’s authoritative interpretations of the Ode and its relationship to the
play, he too has largely concluded that the Ode appears to apply most fully, and
ironically, to the character of Creon. See especially Segal’s seminal essay “Sophocles’
Praise of Man and the Conflicts of the Antigone,” and Tragedy and Civilization: An
Interpretation of Sophocles (Cambridge, Mass., 1981), Ch. 6.
17
Segal nicely captures this quality: “the ode … seems to support the position of
Creon, who begins as the embodiment of secular rationalism of the Sophistic
Enlightenment. Nothing could be further from the truth. The subsequent action negates
or qualifies nearly all the achievements which the ode celebrates. Sophocles’ dramatic
irony holds up to this radiant image of human intelligence a mirror that reflects a darker
picture” (Tragedy and Civilization, p. 152).
18
Segal, Tragedy and Civilization, p. 155.
19
To complete the irony, it is Haemon who will use natural imagery of unbending
natural objects to describe his father’s unreasonable position in their exchange at 795ff:

25
(H): You’ve seen trees by a raging winter torrent,
how many sway with the flood and salvage every twig,
but not the stubborn – they’re ripped out, roots and all.
Bend or break. (797-800).
20
In Einführung in die Metaphysik (Tübingen, 1953), p. 121. The German text
reads, “Nur an einem scheitert alle Gewalt-tätigkeit unmittelbar. Das ist der Tod. Er
über-endet alle Vollendung, er über-grenzt alle Grenzen.” An English translation of
Heidegger’s interpretation of the Ode is found in Thomas Woodard’s (ed.) Sophocles.
21
Tragedy and Civilization, p. 186.
22
Tragedy and Civilization, pp. 178-179.
23
“Sophocles’ Praise of Man and the Conflicts of the Antigone,” pp. 84-85.
24
See Eckermann’s Conversations with Goethe, March 21, 1827. Cited and
discussed in Steiner, Antigones, p. 50.
25
The phrase is R.P. Winnington-Ingram’s in Sophocles: An Interpretation, p.
145. See my brief discussion of the controversy over the passages in note six, above.
26
Oedipus, like Creon, appears to stand for rationality and human ingenuity
throughout the play; also like Creon, these qualities also contribute to his fundamentally
tyrannical claims of ruling. Sophocles may have had the Ode on Man in mind in
portraying Oedipus, since he too, like Creon, is ironically compared to many of the
“artisans” whose crafts are praised in the Ode, but which prove to be part of Oedipus’
downfall. For an revealing analysis of Oedipus on this score, see Peter Euben’s The
Tragedy of Political Theory (Princeton, 1990), Ch. 4. At the same time, and in a similar
fashion as has been discussed in his analysis of Antigone, Euben is finally more
persuaded that Oedipean (and “Creonian”) rationality is an unmitigated evil as to ignore

26
the crucial lines (appropriately a taunt) in which Oedipus reveals that only he, not
Teiresias was able to solve the riddle of the Sphinx:
Come here, you pious fraud. Tell me,
When did you ever prove yourself a prophet?
When the Sphinx, that chanting Fury kept her Deathwatch here,
Why silent then, not a word to set our people free?
There was a riddle, not for some passer-by to solve –
It cried out for a prophet. Where were you?
Did you rise to the crisis? Not a word,
You and your birds your gods – nothing.
No, but I came by, Oedipus the ignorant,
I stopped the Sphinx! With no help from the birds,
The flight of my own intelligence (mathon) hit the mark. (443-454).
Oedipus’ angry speech undoubtedly contains much hubris; and yet, at the same time it is
revealing that only he was able to eliminate an uncontested curse from the city, one that
the prophet Teiresias for all his wisdom appears was unwilling or unable to combat.
Oedipus’ lack of recognition of his own hubris may indeed, as Euben suggests, reveal
“the limits of rationality” (The Tragedy of Political Theory, p. 115); at the same time,
should a further recognition accompany Euben’s, one that suggests the limits of the
prophetic, or perhaps the limits of human limits themselves?

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