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Notes
Jacques Lacan, Le Séminaire VII: L’éthique de la psychanalyse (Paris: Seuil, 1986), p. 285; English translation by Dennis Porter, The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, VII: The Ethics of Psychoanalysis (New York: W. W. Norton, 1992), p. 243: “I am not one who has decreed that Antigone is to be a turning point in the field that interests us, namely ethics. People have been aware of that for a long time. And even those who haven’t realized this are not unaware of the fact that there are scholarly debates on the topic.”
Giorgio Agamben, Homo Sacer: Il potere sovrano e la nuda vita (Torino: Einaudi, 1995), p. 11; English translation by Daniel Heller-Roazen, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998), p. 8: “The fundamental categorial pair of Western politics is not that of friend / enemy but that of naked life / political existence, zoē / bios, exclusion / inclusion” (translation modified).
Given their wide range of connotations, we will leave the terms philos and ekhthros untranslated whenever possible; when we do refer, for instance, to friendship, kinship, or love, the fact that a single Greek word (φιλία) lies behind these English terms should be borne in mind. For an extensive discussion of the semantic range of the terms philos and ekhthros, and of their fundamental importance to Greek ethics both in general and in the context of Sophocles’ plays, see especially Mary Whitlock Blundell, Helping Friends and Harming Enemies: A Study in Sophocles and Greek Ethics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989).
Plato, Republic 332a-e; Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics books 8 and 9; see the discussion of Simon Goldhill in Reading Greek Tragedy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), pp. 82–83 et passim.
Hegel’s model continues to be essential for classical scholarship; Goldhill, for instance, writes: “[s]ince Hegel’s reading of the play, it has been difficult not to consider the text of the Antigone in terms of dialectic and opposition” (Reading Greek Tragedy, p. 88); Charles Segal similarly notes that Hegel’s reading is “the most influential interpretation of the Antigone — and one of the most influential interpretations of any Greek tragedy” — Interpreting Greek Tragedy: Myth, Poetry, Text (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1986), p. 137; Segal is nevertheless critical of Hegel when he writes that what happens in Antigone is “something both infinitely simpler and infinitely more complex, something that is antecedent to and more basic than” the Hegelian model (p. 139).
Sophocles, Antigone (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), line 523; English translation by David Grene, in David Grene and Richmond Lattimore, eds., Greek Tragedies, Vol. 1 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991), p. 201.
Aristotle, Poetics, 9, 1451 b 5–6.
Ibid., 14, 1454 a 1.
The chapter “The Ethical Life” in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit is devoted mainly to the analysis of Sophocles’ tragedy and to the figure of Antigone; “Ethical disposition consists just in sticking steadfastly to what is right,” comments Hegel on Antigone’s stance.
See note 27 below.
Lacan, Le Séminaire, p. 311. “Only the martyrs know neither pity nor fear. Believe me, the day when the martyrs are victorious will be the day of universal conflagration” — The Seminar VII, p. 267.
Giorgio Agamben, La comunità che viene (Turin: Einaudi, 1990); English translation by Michael Hardt, The Coming Community (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993).
Jacques Lacan, Le Séminaire VII, p. 305; The Seminar VII, p. 261.
Jaques Derrida, Glas (Paris: Galilée, 1974), p. 187; English translation by John P. Leavey Jr. and Richard Rand, Glas (Lincoln: University of Nebraska, 1986), p. 166: “Like Hegel, we have been fascinated by Antigone, by this incredible relationship, this powerful liaison without desire, this immense impossible desire that was unable to live, able only to reverse, to paralyze or exceed a system and the history, to interrupt the life of the concept, to take its breath away or, which is the same thing, to support it from the outside or from the underside of a crypt” (translation modified).
For the argument in favor of the transgressive significance of the girls’ position at the beginning of the play, see Christiane Sourvinou-Inwood, “Assumptions and the Creation of Meaning: Reading Sophocles’ Antigone” — Journal of Hellenic Studies cix (1989): 134–148; for the argument against such a reading, see Mary Lefkowitz, “Influential Women,” in Cameron Averil and Kuhrt A. London, eds., Images of Women in Antiquity (Canberra: Croom Helm, 1983).
Hugh Lloyd-Jones’ translation of Sophocles, Antigone, 61–62: άλλ’ έννοɛίν χϱή τοΰτο μέν γυναίχ őτι / έυμɛν, ώς πϱòς άνδϱας ού μαχουμένα.
Ibid., 63–64: έπɛιτα δ’ οΰνɛκ’ άϱχόμɛσϑ’ έκ κϱɛισσόνων / καίτ’ άκούɛιν κάτι τένδ’ άλγίονα.
David Grene’s translation of Antigone, 78–79: έγώ μέν oύκ άτιμα άτμα ποιοΰμαι, τò δέ / βία πολιτών δϱάν έϕυν ϊμήχανος.
Antigone, 90.
David Grene’s translation of Antigone, 92: άϱχήν δέ ϑηϱάν ού πϱήπɛι τάμήχανα.
Ibid., 188–191: τούτο γιγνώσκων őτι / ήδ’ έστίν ή σώξουσα καί ταύτης έπι / πλοντɛς έϱϑς τος ϕίλους ποιομɛϑα; on the other hand, Goldhill, while echoing Creon’s view of the interconnection between the state and ϕιλα, argues that the polis is not just the basis for ϕιλία, but is itself founded on the extension of the bonds of family and friendship: “the constitution of the city itself depends on the extension of ties of ϕιλία beyond the family or clan groupings, as well as on the laws” (Reading Greek Tragedy, p. 97).
Antigone, 192 (Grene’s translation).
Ibid., 484–85 and 525 (Grene’s translation).
Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, ed. J. Bywater (1894; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984); English translation by Terence Irwin (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1985).
Ibid., 1155a25.
Ibid., 1162a30.
G. W. F. Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion, Part II, 3.αβ. Edited by Peter C. Hodgson, translated by R. F. Brown, P. C. Hodgson and J. M. Steward with the assistance of J. P. Fitzer and H. S. Harris (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), p. 1087.
Judith Butler notes that even the act of burial is always mediated by speech acts, and argues that Antigone’s public announcement of her deed and use of political rhetoric contaminate any “pure” claim she might have to the sphere of the private, kinship, or the feminine; see Judith Butler, Antigone’s Claim: Kinship Between Life and Death (New York: Columbia University Press, 200), p. 4ff.; Hegel himself notes the difficulty of separating Antigone’s and Creon’s positions: “we find immanent in the life of both that which each respectively combats, and they are seized and broken by that very bond which is rooted in the compass of their own social existence” — G.W. F. Hegel, Philosophy of Fine Art; English translation by F. P. B. Osmaston (London: G. Bell and Sons, 1920).
See for example D. A. Hester, “Sophocles the Unphilosophical,” in Mnemosyne 24 (1971), p. 46; cf. J. C. Hogan, “The Protagonists of the Antigone,” in Arethusa 5 (1972); Karl Reinhardt, Sophokles (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1947); Herbert Musurillo, The Light and the Darkness: Studies in the Dramatic Poetry of Sophocles (Leiden: Brill, 1967); Simon Goldhill, Reading Greek Tragedy; Charles Segal, Tragedy and Civilisation: An Interpretation of Sophocles (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1981) and Interpreting Greek Tragedy: Myth, Poetry, Text (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1986).
The difficulties of strictly following a Hegelian model are noted by both Segal (Interpreting Greek Tragedy, p. 137) and Goldhill: “the tragic text resists the stability of such oppositions” (Reading Greek Tragedy, p. 105).
Martin Heidegger, Hölderlins Hymne “Der Ister” (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1984), p. 151; English translation by William McNeil and Julia Davis, Hölderlin’s Hymn “The Ister” (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1996), p. 121: “Antigone herself is the poem of becoming homely in being unhomely. Antigone is the poem of being unhomely in the proper and supreme sense.”
Segal, Interpreting Greek Tragedy, p. 140.
Jacques Derrida and Anne Dufourmantelle, De l’hospitalité (Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 1997); English translation by Rachel Bowlby, Of Hospitality (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000).
Ibid., p. 149.
Ibid., p. 55.
Ibid., p. 25.
Ibid., p. 27.
Ibid., p. 77.
Ibid., p. 25.
Ibid., p. 77.
Ibid., p. 79.
Scholarly discussion of this line has been divided first of all between those who see a broad significance in the line, taking it for example as the expression of an ideal of love for humanity, and those who insist on its limitation to the specific context of the scene; for the latter position and a review of some of the debate around this line see, e.g., Robert R. Chodkowski, “Zur Interpretation von Sophokles’ ‘Antigone’ 523” (Eos LXXVI, 1988: pp. 21–37).
Chodkowski argues that the “subjective” reference of sumphilein would not make any sense in this context, and that Antigone means to join the two objects of her feeling, namely, to love her brothers, both of them, together, a position supported by Blundell (Helping Friends and Harming Enemies, p. 113); cf. Jebb’s interpretation of the line: “Even if my brothers hate each other still, my nature prompts me, not to join Eteocles in hating Polyneices, but to love each brother as he loves me.’ Sir Richard Jebb, Sophocles: The Plays and Fragments, with critical notes, commentary, and translation in English prose. Part III: The Antigone (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1900).
Blundell, Helping Friends and Harming Enemies, p. 113.
Nicomachean Ethics, 1120a25.
Heidegger, Hölderlin’s Hymn “The Ister,” p. 118; “Von hier aus wird deutlich, daß das Gegenspiel dieser Tragödie nicht spielt in dem Gegensatz zwischen’ staat’ auf der einen und ‘Religion’ auf der anderen Seite” — Hölderlins Hymne “Der Ister,” p. 147.
Ibid., p. 49.
Standard translations of deinos (the adjective of which to deinon and ta deina are the singular and plural noun forms, respectively) include “terrible, fearful, in a milder sense awful; mighty, powerful; wondrous, marvellous, strange; able, clever, skilful” (Liddell & Scott); Heidegger argues that the translation of deinos should incorporate, in a single word, all of these senses, “the originary unity of the fearful, the powerful, and the inhabitual” (Hölderlin’s Hymn “The Ister,” p. 64).
Hölderlin’s Hymn “The Ister,” p. 68.
Sigmund Freud, “The Uncanny,” in The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, vol. 17, ed. James Strachey (London: Hogarth Press, 1952–1974).
Claude Lévi-Strauss, Les Structures élémentaires de la parenté (Paris: Mouton, 1967), p. 28ff.; The Elementary Structures of Kinship, trans. James Harle Bell and John Richard Von Sturmer (Boston: Beacon Press, 1969), pp. 24ff.
The strangeness of this passage is such that there has been much scholarly debate about its appropriateness and even its authenticity; see, e.g., a survey of the debate in Hester, “Sophocles the Unphilosophical”; for the argument that this passage is entirely in keeping with Antigone’s rejection of cultural institutions and excessive privileging of kinship, see Sheila Murnaghan, “Antigone 904–920 and the Institution of Marriage” — AJP 107 (1986): 192–207; Murnaghan does not, however, consider the possibility of an incestuous love between Antigone and her brother.
Goldhill, Reading Greek Tragedy, p. 102.
Derrida, Glas; cf. note 14 above.
Lacan, Le Séminaire VI; Butler, Antigone’s Claim; Steiner discusses the historical background of such readings, noting in particular that the Romantic tendency to exalt the uniqueness and intensity of the bond between brother and sister often but not always led, during the 18th century, to readings of the relationship between Antigone and Polyneices as, implicitly or explicitly, incestuous; see George Steiner, Antigones (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984), pp. 12–14.
Giorgio Agamben, Mezzi senza fine: Note sulla politica (Torino: Bollati Boringhieri, 1996) p. 71; English translation by Vincenzo Binetti and Cesare Casarino, Means Without End: Notes on Politics (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000) p. 87: “In the final analysis, the state can recognize any claim for identity [...] But what the state cannot tolerate in any way is that singularities form a community without claiming an identity, that human beings co-belong without a representable condition of belonging.”
Antigone 1017–18.
Jean Anouilh develops this idea in his version of the play when Creon tells Antigone that her brothers’ bodies are indistinguishable: “Ils étaient en bouillie, Antigone, méconnaissables. J’ai fait ramasser un des corps, le moins abîmé des deux, pour mes funérailles nationales, et j’ai donné l’ordre de laisser pourrir l’autre où il était. Je ne sais même pas lequel. Et je t’assure que cela m’est égal” — Jean Anouilh, Antigone (Paris, La Table Ronde, 1946), p. 89; English translation by Lewis Galantière, Antigone (New York: Random House, 1946), p. 40: “They were mashed to a pulp, Antigone, unrecognizable. I had one of the bodies, the less mangled of the two, brought in and gave it a State funeral; and I left the other to rot. I don’t know which was which. And I assure you, I don”t care” (translation modified).
Agamben, The Coming Community, p. 1.
Ibid., p. 2.
Murnaghan notes the fundamental economy of interchangeability that governs the marital relations Antigone rejects: the hypothetical husband she rejects is defined “not as the unchanging identity of a specific individual but as an abstract role that could be played by several different men”; social institutions, including marriage, “characteristically establish principles of substitution and replacement whereby entities that are not identical can be treated as interchangeable” (“Antigone 904–920,” pp. 198–99); we return here to the theory of Levi-Strauss, who argues that it is this essentially economic structure that allows society to exist, built upon the foundations of the inter-familial exchange of women required by — again — the incest taboo.
Judith Butler argues that the attempt to single out Polyneices is in fact impossible: “... there is nothing in the nomenclature of kinship that can successfully restrict its scope of referentiality to the single person, Polyneices... but [Antigone] continues to insist on the singularity and non-reproducibility of this term of kinship,” yet she “is unable to capture the radical singularity of her brother through a term that, by definition, must be transposable and reproducible in order to signify at all” (Antigone’s Claim, p. 77).
Ulrike Oudée Dünkelsbühler, Kritik der Rahmen-Vernunft: Parergon-Versionen nach Kant und Derrida (München: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 1991), p. 141; English translation by Max Statkiewicz, Reframing the Frame of Reason: “Trans-Lation” In and Beyond Kant and Derrida (Amherst: Humanity Books, 2002), p. 185.
Agamben, The Coming Community, p. 2.
Ibid.
Ibid., p. 10.
Ibid., pp. 19–20.
Ibid., p. 13.
Goldhill supports the first part of this argument, although he does not suggest an alternative to the ethics of standards that is undone in the play: “the Antigone works through the logic of the conventional moralities of the terms to the point of destruction. The secure conclusion of a Hegelian synthesis or Aufhebung at the end of this ‘labour of the negative’ seems notably absent. The questioning of the morality and obligations surrounding the terms of relations and relationships remains unresolved” (Reading Greek Tragedy, p. 106).
Antigone, 866.
Antigone, 523; cf. Seth Benardete, Sacred Transgressions: A Reading of Sophocles’ Antigone (South Bend, Indiana: St. Augustine’s Press, 1999), p. 112.
See Martin Heidegger, Einführung in die Metaphysik (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1987) IV, p. 3; English translation by Gregory Fried and Richard Polt, Introduction to Metaphysics (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000) IV, p. 3.
The Coming Community, p. 29.
Ibid., pp. 86–87.
Ibid., p. 24; cf. Derrida’s notion of absolute hospitality discussed above.
Ibid., p. 65.
Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, for example, analyzes the relationship between tragedy and philosophy in terms of the suspension or caesura of philosophy (what he calls the speculative), that necessarily takes place within the tragic; Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, Typography (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998), pp. 208–235.
And which, as Lacoue-Labarthe says, “provokes its’ spasm’” (Typography, p. 227).
This is why she constitutes, in Lacoue-Labarthe’s words, “a kind of pivot, we might say, which is impossible to center — around which gravitate, though with difficulty, constantly impeded or thwarted in their movement... repeated attempts at theorization” — Typography, pp. 219–20.
“So sehen wir die himmlische Antigone, die herrlichste Gestalt, die je auf Erden erschienen.” G. W. F. Hegel, Vorlesungen über die Geschichte der Philosophie, vol. 2 (Stuttgart: Frommanns Verlag, 1959), p. 114.
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Statkiewicz, M., Reed, V. (2005). Antigone’s (Re)Turn: The Ēthos of the “Coming Community”. In: Tymieniecka, AT. (eds) The Enigma of Good and Evil; The Moral Sentiment in Literature. Analecta Husserliana, vol 85. Springer, Dordrecht . https://doi.org/10.1007/1-4020-3576-4_43
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