hegel's antigone

8/12/2019 Hegel's Antigone

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From Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit:

Page 261

437. The difference between self-consciousness and essence, is therefore,

perfectly transparent. Because of this, the distinctions in essence itself are notaccidental determinatenesses; on the contrary, in virtue of the unity of essence and

self-consciousness (this latter being the only possible source of disparity), they are

'masses' articulated into groups by the life of the unity which permeates them,

unalienated spirits transparent to themselves, stainless celestial figures that preserve in

all their differences the undefiled innocence and harmony of their essential nature.

The relationshipof self-consciousness to them is equally simple and clear. They are,

and nothing more; this is what constitutes the awareness of its relationship to them.

Thus, Sophocles' Antigone 1acknowledges them as the unwritten and

infallible law of the gods.

They are not of yesterday or today, but everlasting,

Though where they came from, none of us can tell.

They are. If I inquire after their origin and confine them to the point whence they

arose, then I have transcended them; for now it is I who am the universal, and theyare

the conditioned and limited. If they are supposed to be validated by myinsight, then I

have already denied their unshakeable, intrinsic being,

Page Break 262and regard them as something which, for me, is perhaps true, but also is perhaps not

true. Ethical disposition consists just in sticking steadfastly to what is right, and

abstaining from all attempts to move or shake it, or derive it. Suppose something has

been entrusted to me; it isthe property of someone else and I acknowledge

this becauseit is so, and I keep myself unfalteringly in this relationship. If I should

keep for myself what is entrusted to me, then according to the principle I follow in

testing laws, which is a tautology, I am not in the least guilty of contradiction; for

then I no longer look upon it as the property of someone else: to hold on to something

which I do not regard as belonging to someone else is perfectly consistent. Alteration

of thepoint of viewis not contradiction; for what we are concerned with is not the

point of view, but the object and content, which ought not to be self-contradictory.Just as I canas I do when I give something awayalter the view that it is my

property into the view that it belongs to someone else, without becoming guilty of a

contradiction, so I can equally pursue the reverse course. It is not, therefore, because I

find something is not self-contradictory that it is right; on the contrary, it is right

because it is what is right. That something isthe property of another, this is

fundamental; I have not to argue about it, or hunt around for or entertain thoughts,

connections, aspects, of various kinds; I have to think neither of making laws nor of

testing them. All such thinking on my part would upset that relation, since, if I liked, I

could in fact just as well make the opposite conform to my indeterminate tautological

knowledge and make thatthe law. But whether this or the opposite determination is

the right, that is determined inandfor itself. I could make whichever of them I likedthe law, and just as well neither of them, and as soon as I start to test them I have
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already begun to tread an unethical path. By acknowledging the absolutenessof the

right, I am within the ethical substance; and this substance is thus the essenceof self-

consciousness. But this self-consciousness is the actualityand existenceof the

substance, itsselfand its will.

Page 284

470. It can be that the right which lay in wait is not present in its own propershape to the consciousnessof the doer, but is present only implicitlyin the inner guilt

of the resolve and the action. But the ethical consciousness is more complete, its guilt

more inexcusable, if it knows beforehandthe law and the power which it opposes, if it

takes them to be violence and wrong, to be ethical merely by accident, and, like

Antigone , knowingly commits the crime. The accomplished deed completelyalters its point of view; the very performance of it declares that what is ethicalmust

be actual; for the realizationof the purpose is the purpose of the action. Doingdirectly expresses the unity of actuality and substance; it declares that actuality is not

an accident of essence, but that, in union with essence, it is not granted to any right

that is not a true right. The ethical consciousness must, on account of this actuality

and on account of its deed, acknowledge its opposite as its own actuality, must

acknowledge its guilt.

Page 550

437. True ethical law is the unwritten, inerrant, unalterable divine law spoken of

in the Antigone . It is not anything that an individual can hope either tocriticize or to justify, and certainly not in terms of mere self-consistency.

From Hegel's Philosophy of Right:

Page 114

For this reason, family piety is expounded in Sophocles' Antigone

one of the most sublime presentations of this virtueas principally

the

Page Break 115law of woman, and as the law of a substantiality at once subjective and on

the plane of feeling, the law of the inward life, a life which has not yetattained its full actualization; as the law of the ancient gods, 'the gods of the

underworld'; as 'an everlasting law, and no man knows at what time it was

first put forth'.24This law is there displayed as a law opposed to publiclaw, to the law of the land. This is the supreme opposition in ethics and

therefore in tragedy; and it is individualized in the same play in the

opposing natures of man and woman.*[A.]Page 115
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From Hegel's Lectures on Aesthetics:

Vol. 2, Page 1217

This sort of development is most complete when the individuals who are at

variance appear each of them in their concrete existence as a totality,1so that inthemselves they are in the power of what they are fighting, and therefore they violate

what, if they were true to their own nature, they should be honouring. For

example, Antigone lives under the political authority of Creon [the present

King]; she is herself the daughter of a King [Oedipus] and the fiance of Haemon

[Creon's son], so that she ought to pay obedience to the royal command. But Creon

too, as father and husband, should have respected the sacred tie of blood and not

ordered anything against its pious observance. So there is immanent in both

Antigone and Creon something that in their own way they attack, so that they aregripped and shattered by something intrinsic to

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their own actual being. Antigone suffers death before enjoying the bridal

dance, but Creon too is punished by the voluntary deaths of his son and his wife,

incurred, the one on account of Antigone's fate, the other because of Haemon's death.

Of all the masterpieces of the classical and the modern worldand I know nearly all

of them and you should and can1the Antigone seems to me to be the

most magnificent and satisfying work of art of this kind.
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hegel's antigone

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