Of central importance to Hegel’s theory of tragedy is the tragic hero, whose aims drive the drama’s action and its conflict (LFA 1194).Footnote 1 Under Hegel’s description, ancient tragic heroes completely identify themselves with an objective right or an aspect of the ethical substance (ethical life in its immediate, ancient Greek form) (LFA 1195–96). In this way, the hero remains firmly on the side of a right or a just cause to the very end. At the same time, Hegel also describes the one-sided way that these heroes unrelentingly pursue their aims as their tragic fixity, because it causes them to transgress, violate, or come into conflict with something else substantial or right (LFA 1203). Thus, in Hegel’s definition, ancient tragic heroes are a particular combination of being both in the right and in the wrong (LFA 1196–97). This article argues that Hegel’s historical account of agency is essential to an accurate understanding of this aspect of his account of the tragic hero. Focusing on ancient Greek tragedy in general and on Sophocles’ Oedipus the King in particular, I argue that Hegel’s theory of tragedy is only properly understood in light of his theory of subjectivity and agency as historically coined.
In Hegel’s description of Sophocles’ Oedipus the King, it is not immediately clear which right or ethical sphere Oedipus is aligned with. This ambiguity leads to further questions concerning Hegel’s view of Oedipus’ moral accountability. An article by Constantine Sandis also explores this issue, using Hegel’s discussions of agency and tragedy in his Philosophy of Right (PR) and his lectures on art (Sandis Reference Sandis2010: 35–60).Footnote 2 Sandis argues that what Oedipus thought were unintentional deeds were actually actions for which he is morally accountable. In contrast, Hegel’s view is that Oedipus is causally responsible but not morally accountable for his deeds. The first step in shedding light on these issues of Hegel’s view of Oedipus’ responsibility and Sandis’s divergence from Hegel is to lay out Hegel’s account of rights and responsibility in PR, which is done in Section I. While Sandis’s view of Oedipus is interesting and plausible independently of Hegel’s historical account of agency and morality, Section II argues that it does not hold within this account without its historical aspect, and that if one places Oedipus within Hegel’s picture of modern subjectivity and morality, as Sandis does, then the very aesthetic qualities that allow Oedipus to be a tragic hero are left unexplained.
Hegel’s theory of ancient tragedy is often described as a conflict between two ethical spheres embodied in two individuals, epitomized in Sophocles’ Antigone. But there is a second type of conflict in Hegel’s theory, seen in Sophocles’ Oedipus the King and Oedipus at Colonus, which presents a person in conflict with something substantial or just which is not embodied in another individual, and which is harder to unravel. Because ancient heroes are tied to the substantive or objective aspects of action and the conflict must be driven by the hero’s one-sided adherence to her aim, at least one side of the conflict in ancient tragedy must be ethical or involve a right. However, in Hegel’s description of the conflict in Sophocles’ Oedipus the King, it is not clear which right or ethical sphere Oedipus is aligned with.
Section III teases out this issue, utilizing Stephen Houlgate’s work (1986, 2007) on Hegel’s reading of Oedipus to locate which rights are involved in the tragic conflict. While largely sympathetic to Houlgate’s view, nonetheless I diverge from it: the right that Houlgate posits that Oedipus claims is instead, I argue, the right he tragically does not but should have claimed. Further, pace Houlgate, I posit that the conflict involves not two clear-cut rights, but only one, which is violated or not recognized by Oedipus. I argue that Oedipus comes into conflict with his own earlier deeds as a result of his limited agency, which is limited due to his historical standpoint as a pre-modern individual. This paves the way for the conclusion, which posits that, while Hegel sees Oedipus as wrong to take full moral accountability for his actions, this mistake is at the same time the very thing that renders Oedipus timelessly and tragically heroic, rather than mere victim of his fate–––an image that resonates with us today because of the universal qualities of tragic heroes.
I. Oedipus’ rights and responsibility
In both PR and his lectures on art, Hegel holds Sophocles’ Oedipus as an example of one who is causally responsible but not morally accountable for all consequences of his deeds. Yet, considering all that we know about what Oedipus has done, which he ultimately also finds out, exactly how he is not accountable is not immediately clear. Laying out Hegel’s account of rights and responsibility in PR is the first step in shedding light on this issue. The following Sections lay out which right Oedipus is aligned with and where he goes tragically wrong.
In Hegel’s view, moral judgement is not a black-and-white matter of applying universal principles. Instead, we must take into account the individual agent’s intention, the context of the act, and the agent’s knowledge of that context. An agent must be causally responsible in order to be held morally accountable, but it ‘does not follow that, because I am responsible, the thing done may be imputed to me’ (PR §115A). That is, causal responsibility is necessary but not sufficient for moral imputability. Additionally, an agent can aim for a specific outcome but be unaware of some of the consequences of her actions in the bigger scheme of things, so that she is not necessarily held morally accountable for these consequences, even though she is causally responsible for the deed itself. Or, as Hegel puts it, even though the act was ‘mine’, I can be held accountable only for the consequences I aimed for (PR §§115–16). However, for Hegel, an agent is held morally accountable for not only the results she aims to achieve, but also for the other consequences she should know could happen (PR §§118–19). Hegel’s example is an arsonist who sets a piece of wood on fire, who should take into account the possibility that neighbouring houses could also catch fire and thus would be held accountable if this happened (PR §119R).
Hegel also lays out various rights we look to when taking stock of an action’s moral status. For Hegel, these rights correspond with the subjective and objective sides of an action. On the subjective side, there is the right of the will to accept responsibility only for the aspects of the action that the agent was consciously aware of, which I shall refer to as the ‘right of will and knowledge’ (PR §117). This is the right of the agent to be held accountable only for the consequences of her action that were not due to ‘external forces’ or those so ‘alien and distant’ that the agent had no idea they were possible (PR §118). Thus, just as we are accountable for the consequences we should have considered, we are not accountable for the consequences we could not possibly have foreseen. Another right is the ‘right of intention’, which holds that an action can be morally judged only if the universal it is subsumed under was fully known or could have been known by the agent; this also takes into account the agent’s mental capacities and capabilities, so that young children, for example, are not morally judged (PR §§120, 120R). This aspect of an action is in addition to merely willing that an event occur; it also includes the agent’s own description of the action and explanation of why she did it, and the agent must take into account the context in which the act is judged by others (PR §§119–21). Thus, the right of intention is also for the action to be judged as inseparable from what the agent knew and willed, including how she expected it to be taken by others.
The other side of action includes its objective aspects. When determining moral accountability, one’s will and intention go in concert with the right of objectivity. This is the right for the action to be taken to include what the agent should have known would occur, and how it would be taken by others in light of the moral standards of her context—the flipside of the right of intention (PR §120). This includes all consequences that belong to the objective nature of the action, regardless of the subject’s take; this entails that even the consequences that one did not hope for but could have foreseen can be morally imputed. To build off of Hegel’s example, the fire could have spread to other houses, so it is right that the action be judged in light of the fact that the arsonist should have known this.
Thus, Hegel holds that the moral recognition the agent deserves for her action is not based merely on good will but also on the objective nature of the deed, which may entail a multitude of aspects including, but not limited to, its various contexts and consequences (PR §§110A, 124). Although the agent is causally responsible for the consequences of her action, moral accountability is not imputed for the consequences if the agent did not intend them or if she is missing knowledge of the full situation, and thus had no way of knowing they could occur. Yet, as rational agents, we are held morally accountable for what we should have foreseen, and thus can be held accountable for consequences we did not strictly intend but should have known, had we given the situation proper consideration (PR §132). What the agent knows about what she is doing, including both the subjective and objective aspects of the deed, can change the nature of the deed itself—from, for example, accident to crime (PR §§103–4, 104A).
Further, in Hegel’s view, to be fully a moral agent one must be aware of one’s freedom and of contingency. This layered awareness is key to the changes in the status of the act and in the status of the agent, from person to subject, opening the way to becoming a truly moral agent. To be a moral agent, the subject must be able to distinguish between her self, the objective deed, and the duty or right under which, or for which, she is freely acting (PR §§104, 104R, 105). That is, the subject is not simply immediate, in the way that the being of a person is (in-itself), but she is also aware of herself as a self-relation and as having a self-determining will (for-itself) (PR §§105–8). When acting as a person, agents are not fully self-reflective and thus not truly acting as subjects—or, as some might put it today, while persons act, they are not full-blooded agents. This low-level type of agency is crucial for understanding Hegel’s take on Oedipus’ responsibility.
In Oedipus’ case, moral accountability for parricide would entail his knowledge that the man at the crossroads was his father, as well as his intention to kill his father, neither of which Oedipus had (LFA 187–88). Some might argue that Oedipus could have realized that it was possible that the old man was his father—he did hear the rumour that he was adopted, and knew he was destined to kill his father (which, after all, is why he left Corinth). But Hegel believes that there is no way Oedipus could have known who his real parents were, so he is not morally culpable for his father’s murder (PR §117A). Hegel holds that although Oedipus was causally responsible for the death of the old man at the crossroads, he cannot be held morally accountable for parricide; he is innocent of this, as well as of related crimes.
II. The historical conditions of moral accountability
At this point, one might object that this is an oversimplification of Hegel, and it would be, if the matter ended here. So far we have seen just one aspect of Hegel’s take on Oedipus’ moral accountability, not his final judgement. Although Oedipus is not morally accountable for the crimes discussed above, according to Hegel’s theory of tragedy, as a tragic figure, he must also be gravely wrong in some way. But where exactly does Hegel think Oedipus goes wrong?
Sandis’s article also explores this issue, with a focus on Hegel’s philosophy of action. Sandis bases a key part of his argument, and the title of his article, on Hegel’s view that a single event undergoes a qualitative shift when the agent’s will relates to that event differently. He follows Hegel’s use of two different terms to indicate this shift: 1) A deed or act (Tat) is merely a change in the external world, while the same event can be considered 2) an action (Handlung) when the agent relates her freely acting will to it. Ultimately, for the purposes of this article, the importance of the distinction between deed and action involves a related distinction between causal responsibility and moral accountability. In addition to being causally responsible for a deed, the agent can be held morally imputable for an action, that is, one that has presupposed ends via the subject’s will (PR §117). (However, as shown in Section I, just because an agent wills an action does not mean that she is necessarily morally accountable for it.)
Sandis’s take on Oedipus in this respect is in contrast to what he sees as Hegel’s view, namely, that Oedipus mistakes his deed for action (Sandis Reference Sandis2010: 49). As the title of his article indicates, Sandis argues that Oedipus mistakes his Handlung for Tat, that is, that Oedipus mistakes his actions for deeds (49). Further, with reference to the same passages of PR discussed in Section I of this article, Sandis argues that for much of his life Oedipus is so overly arrogant that he is convinced he is in the right (44). In a discussion of Sophocles’ Trilogy, he argues that Oedipus and the other ‘Theban heroes … remain centres of that single subjective conviction which Hegel describes as a “monstrous self-conceit”, an absolute self-complacency which “fails to rest in a solitary worship of itself but builds up a sort of community”’ (42), quoting Hegel’s PR §140R.
Sandis is indeed correct that Hegel’s view is that Oedipus does not see the difference between his Tat and Handlung, although for reasons that Sandis does not explore. In Hegel’s philosophy, ancient Greeks have not yet broken from a natural, unreflective standpoint.Footnote 3 They transform or interpret the given world, but do not take the materials of self-production and expression from within themselves, and they are not fully self-determining (LPH 239). While they can wilfully act in the sense that they act of their own volition, they still take direction from what is given to them by their social roles, disposition, or oracular divination—even the gods are at the mercy of the fates (LPH 249–50). Ancient Greeks are immediately connected to their roles and lack the ability to see themselves as separate from them (LFA 436–37). That is, while they act as individuals within society, they do not possess the reflection that allows them to discern that they are particular individuals acting under a universal, and they are not subjects in the full sense of the word for Hegel (LFA 437; PR §§124R, 185R).
In this way, Oedipus is therefore aligned only with the objective aspect of his deeds, and does not see the subjective aspect of action that modern agents are aware of:
The self-consciousness of heroes (like that of Oedipus and others in Greek tragedy) had not advanced out of its primitive simplicity either to reflection on the distinction between act and action, between the external event and the purpose and knowledge of the circumstances, or to the subdivision of consequences. (PR §118R)
From where he stands, Oedipus cannot see the difference between the objective aspects of his deeds and what he did intentionally and knowingly, or between intended consequences and those that result from chance or accident. Oedipus’ inherent partial blindness, as an ancient individual, allows him to see only one side of action, the objective side (LFA 1214). As Sandis argues, in Hegel’s view Oedipus cannot distinguish between these aspects of his action, but this is due to his historical standpoint, not his self-centredness.
However, when taking stock of Oedipus’ unshakable belief that he is right (or his denial that he is wrong) and his conviction to reveal Laius’ killer, it certainly seems reasonable to connect Oedipus with Hegel’s picture of agents with a ‘monstrous self-conceit’. In this light, Oedipus might exemplify the type of self-consciousness that sets itself up as absolute, as some modern tragic heroes do: as one who is not aligned with an ethical sphere or right but instead aligned with purely subjective aims. But by linking Oedipus to this description of subjectivity by Hegel, Sandis aligns Oedipus with Hegel’s picture of the modern standpoint of morality. This is problematic because it skews both Hegel’s theory of agency and his theory of tragedy. In Hegel’s philosophy, both human agency and the truth of tragic drama are historically coined, so that in order properly to understand an instance of either, it must be kept historically contextualized. Part of an action’s context is the agent’s historical standpoint, just as part of a drama’s context is the historical horizon within which it emerged. While Sandis’s reading of Oedipus is interesting and plausible independently of Hegel’s historical account of agency and morality, it does not hold within this account without its historical aspect.
In the part of PR that Sandis is referring to, Hegel is arguing for the necessity of conscience in order to be a truly moral subject, for the limits of conscience as a moral arm, and for the deficiency of morality in isolation from universal checks and balances (PR §§136–40, esp. §§137R, 138A, 139R). The points in the Remark to PR §140 that Sandis quotes are criticisms of specific types of modern subjectivism and morality in which some agents fail to fully account for the objective nature of their action by aligning themselves with the subjective side only. These defective moments or aspects of self-consciousness are found in Hegel’s pictures of Jacobi’s merely formal and subjective (i.e., not substantive or universalized) conscience, Fichte’s absolute ego, and early German Romantic irony (especially Friedrich Schlegel’s).Footnote 4 In each case, subjectivity is so deeply turned inward that it is not aligned with objective moral standards or substantial aims, and may even hold itself up as god-like in its self-reliance. These forms of subjectivity are defective because in late modernity, in general and simply put, we should know better. But if one fails to see that this part of PR is in fact describing evil, modern morality, and various defective types of modern subjectivity, then Oedipus can be misrepresented as such. Sandis’s reading aligns Oedipus with the subjective and modern aspects of agency, which, I argue, are unavailable to Oedipus within Hegel’s historical account.
Hegel believes that ancient individuals do not truly possess self-consciousness or conscience, so Hegel cannot be used to place Oedipus in a standpoint of a type of subjectivity that possesses these qualities. Oedipus does not search within himself for the truth about his actions, nor claim his moral innocence based on his conscience as the modern subject of morality does. To be clear, in Hegel’s view, ancient Greeks are amoral, not immoral, much like young children. Their state of innocence is not a state of goodness, but one closer to nature (EL §24A3). In Hegel’s view, it is impossible for Oedipus, as a pre-modern hero, to fit the mould of post-Christian conscience-based morality. Their lack of knowledge of the subjective nature of action is the ancient Greeks’ naivety.
In this light, Sandis’s use of Hegel is anachronistic. Not taking into account that for Hegel subjectivity and morality are historically coined leads to the problem of explaining the fundamental aesthetic qualities of ancient tragic heroes, which are found in Oedipus. Throughout his lectures on art, Hegel argues that the essential characteristic of heroes of ancient tragedy is their one-sided adherence to a right or something substantive. In their unreflectiveness, ancient tragic heroes are the epitome of the aesthetic manifestation of what Hegel sees as problems with one-sided thinking. This is not to say that Hegel himself is one-sided, or is emphasizing one side of action or thought as essential or sufficient on its own. Rather, as should be clear from what has been discussed so far, for Hegel there are not only (at least) two sides to action but also multiple aspects to moral accountability. The main problem with tragic heroes is that they do not see this. Ancient heroes’ objective one-sidedness is thus precisely their tragic aspect, and this aesthetic quality is, I argue, grounded in their historical moment.
The real issue at stake for Hegel’s aesthetics is not whether Oedipus mistakes his Tat for Handlung, or the other way around, but how the fact that he cannot distinguish between them leads him to be tragically wrong. In Hegel’s view, Oedipus takes full ownership of the unintended consequences of his deeds as if they were the results of fully intentional actions. In contrast to Sandis’s account, Hegel holds that he is taking unwarranted accountability—and this is exactly where Oedipus is in the wrong. Oedipus’ deeds were ‘unconsciously committed crimes’, but because he could not see the differences between Tat and Handlung, or between the objective and subjective subdivisions of consequences, he mistakenly takes accountability for them all (LFA 1219). As Hegel puts it, he takes accountability for ‘the whole compass of the deed’ (PR §118R).Footnote 5 Due to his historical standpoint, Oedipus is unable to separate his knowledge and intention from the objective facts and consequences of his acts, so he tragically takes the blame.
III. Conflict and reconciliation in ancient tragedy
The important connections between Hegel’s theory of tragedy and his historical picture of subjectivity and agency are further highlighted when looking at the conflict and reconciliation in Sophocles’ Oedipus the King. Indeed, some of the more confusing or ambiguous aspects of Hegel’s remarks about the conflict and reconciliation in Oedipus are, I argue, cleared up when examined in light of his theory of agency and morality. Although tragic conflict is driven by the hero’s one-sided adherence to her aim, in Hegel’s description of Sophocles’ drama, it is not clear which right or ethical sphere Oedipus is aligned with. While throughout the drama he is bent on revealing the truth, which therefore seems to be his aim, the nature of the conflict is problematic, first, because truth is not so clearly a right according to Hegel and, second, because just what Oedipus’ aim comes into conflict with is equally unclear.Footnote 6
Hegel classifies conflicts in ancient Greek tragedy into two main kinds. One is the clash between state and family, with Sophocles’ Antigone being the best known of his examples (LFA 1213).Footnote 7 The other type of conflict, found in Sophocles’ Oedipus the King and Oedipus at Colonus, Hegel describes thus:
What is at issue here is the right of the wide awake consciousness, the justification of what the man has self-consciously willed and knowingly done, as contrasted with what he was fated by the gods to do and actually did unconsciously and without having willed it. (LFA 1214)Footnote 8
But what exactly is at issue here?Footnote 9 Hegel himself concedes that these conflicts are ‘less concrete’ than the first kind (LFA 1213). Further, how this conflict is driven by Oedipus’ aim is also not clear, if Oedipus’ overarching aim is to find the truth. Looking at the conflict in light of the earlier discussion of rights and responsibility helps clear things up.
The first side of the conflict, ‘the right of the wide-awake consciousness’, is the same right described as the justification of what Oedipus has ‘willed and knowingly done’ (PR §117). This is what was earlier referred to as the ‘right of will and knowledge’: the right of the will to accept responsibility only for the aspects of its action that it was consciously aware of. This allows the conflict to fit into Hegel’s categorization of ancient tragic conflicts as necessarily including an ethical sphere, a justified aim, or a right (LFA 1210). The other side of the conflict is comprised of Oedipus’ deeds, which he caused although did not fully will all they entail (the gods or fates did). In other words, the conflict is between, on the one hand, the right for Oedipus to be held accountable for the aspects of his actions he willed and knew of and, on the other, aspects of Oedipus’ deeds unknown to him.
Yet, if the conflict is between Oedipus’ deeds and the right of his will and knowledge, one wonders which side of the conflict he is aligned with—it seems, from our point of view, that he could rightly claim both sides. Stephen Houlgate is helpful in teasing out this issue. According to him, Oedipus aligns himself with and justifiably claims the ‘right of the wide-awake consciousness’ (Houlgate Reference Houlgate2007: 157). Here, Houlgate directly refers to the passage quoted above (LFA 1214). And, he goes on, what Oedipus ‘violates is the equal right of the unknown and unconscious to be accorded recognition’ (2007: 157, emphasis in original).Footnote 10 He bases this on a point in Hegel’s Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion, where Hegel says: Oedipus ‘falls unconsciously into this horrible deed … so that he falls as deeply into guilt as the height on which he stood. Here, then, is the antithesis of the two powers, that of consciousness and that of unconsciousness’ (LPR 666). (This is all Hegel gives us on the matter of Oedipus in this remark in his lectures on religion, and I have not found other parts of these lectures to clarify this.)
Houlgate’s reading of Hegel’s take on Oedipus is helpful in pointing us toward the unknown and the unconscious as key to understanding the nature of the conflict. By ‘the right of the unconsciousness to be accorded recognition’, Houlgate could reasonably mean the agent’s right to be held accountable only for the consequences of her action that were not due to ‘external forces’ or were so ‘alien and distant’ that she had no idea they were possible, so that Oedipus is not accountable for the unknown aspects of his deeds (PR §118). Nonetheless, here I diverge from Houlgate: The very right that Houlgate posits Oedipus claims, the right of the wide-awake consciousness, is the right he tragically does not but should have claimed. Further, pace Houlgate, I posit that the conflict involves not two clear-cut rights, but only one, which is violated or not recognized by Oedipus. These points will take some unravelling to support.
The ‘right of the unconsciousness’ is simply the flipside of the right of the wide-awake consciousness or the ‘right of will and knowledge’ described earlier: the right of the agent to accept responsibility only for the aspects she was consciously aware of, and also to not be held accountable for things that she had no chance of knowing. In my view, in contrast to Houlgate, when Oedipus claims full responsibility for the aspects of his deeds that he was unaware of, he does not claim the right of the wide-awake consciousness. From our modern standpoint, we know he should claim the right of the wide-awake consciousness, but due to his unreflective nature as an ancient individual, he tragically cannot (PR §§117, 118A). Because for Hegel Oedipus is not fully subjective, he immediately identifies himself with the objective side of action. Thus, also in contrast to Houlgate, I hold that Oedipus aligns himself with the power of the unconscious. By being what he was fated to be, and by causing all that he did (albeit unknowingly and unintentionally), Oedipus comes into conflict with the right of will and knowledge, which he does not recognize.
According to Hegel, what we do and what we do not know can be antithetical, and both can hold sway over us—and this, I argue, is part of the larger truth that the tragedy Oedipus the King presents. The following passage is key to my point, thus I quote it at length:
unknowingly and unintentionally he has done something which later proves in his own eyes to have been a transgression of ethical powers essentially to be respected. The consciousness of his deed, which he acquires later, then drives him on, through this previously unconscious transgression, into dissension and contradiction with himself, once he imputes the transgression to himself as caused by him. The antagonism between his consciousness and intention in his act and the later consciousness of what the act really was constitutes here the basis of the conflict. (LFA 213)Footnote 11
The conflict as stated above is between, on the one hand, Oedipus’ consciousness and intention externalized in his actions and, on the other, the objective truth revealed to him later.
As Sandis notes, this may sound like an inner conflict, which is found only in modern tragedy (2010: 44). However, the conflict is not within Oedipus because he is (and has to be) unaware of the subjective side of action; inner conflict is available only to the deeper subjectivity that emerges later in history. The conflict does involve consciousness and knowledge, so is subjective in this wider sense of the word, but only from our standpoint as a modern audience can we know it is the subjective side of action in conflict with the objective side.Footnote 12 In this light, Hegel’s description of the conflict quoted at the beginning of this Section (LFA 1214) can be elaborated and clarified: What is at issue here is the right of what Oedipus originally intended and knew about what he was doing—a right, in my view, that he does not claim—clashing with the truth of his deeds done unconsciously and fated by the gods, which he acquires later. Ultimately, the conflict is between Oedipus’ earlier (objective) deeds and Oedipus’ later (subjective) knowledge, and thus not within him.
Here, the complex role that truth plays in the drama’s conflict comes to the fore. Houlgate’s insight is once again helpful in understanding the nuance of Hegel’s thought on this issue. A point in Houlgate’s earlier text is close to what I argue is Hegel’s view: namely, as Houlgate puts it, that in Oedipus’ ‘legitimate desire to bring truth into the light’, he ‘brings himself into tragic conflict with the “sins” of which he has remained ignorant but which are nevertheless his own’ (1986: 201–2). His one-sided search for truth reveals the true nature of his original deeds and thus brings him into conflict with them. This aligns with my previous point that Oedipus eventually comes into conflict with his earlier deeds, when he finds out their truth.
Yet, somewhat in the same vein as Sandis, Houlgate’s more recent text describes Oedipus’ relentless pursuit of Laius’ killer as blinding him to the possibility that he in fact could be the killer (2007: 157). Houlgate states that ‘Oedipus tragically neglects the possibility that he may “stand in the power of the unconscious” and that there may be something about himself of which he is—and perhaps should take care to remain—unaware’ (158).Footnote 13 Relatedly, in his earlier text, Houlgate offers an interpretation that, in short, implies that Hegel believes that ignorance is bliss: ‘As Hegel points out, the Oedipus story parallels the story of Adam’s Fall. Man who sets his right to know above all else, thereby gains knowledge of his sinfulness and tragically destroys his happiness’ (1986: 202, emphasis in original).Footnote 14 But the comparison Hegel draws between Oedipus and Adam is in a discussion of the reconciliation in Oedipus at Colonus, not Oedipus the King. According to Hegel, although he does see the parts of a trilogy as related, the resolution of the conflict of a drama must fall within that one dramatic work, and he implies that it is problematic to locate the reconciliation of Oedipus the King within Oedipus at Colonus (LFA 204, 1167).Footnote 15
Although in this article I focus on Oedipus the King, it is worth noting that Sandis argues that in Oedipus at Colonus Oedipus ultimately claims his innocence. That is, Oedipus comes to see at the end of his life that he is not morally accountable for all the consequences of his deeds (Sandis Reference Sandis2010: 49–50). Indeed, Sandis makes the interesting claim that Oedipus gains self-consciousness at Colonus. It certainly seems that he could be on the cusp of gaining self-consciousness, pointing the way toward this next moment in the historical progress of subjectivity. As Sandis notes, Hegel describes the reconciliation of Oedipus at Colonus as ‘an inner reconciliation, which, because of its subjective character, already borders on our modern treatment’ (LFA 1219). However, on the one hand, as we have just seen, the reconciliation must take place within the same drama as the conflict—so, even conceding the subjective nature of the later play’s reconciliation, it is not Oedipus the King who undergoes this inner reconciliation, but older Oedipus. More importantly, on the other hand, despite his admission of the subjective nature of older Oedipus, Hegel holds fast to his picture of the historical progress of subjectivity, and maintains that Oedipus at Colonus remains firmly within the framework of pre-Christian ancient Greek tragedy (LFA 1219–20).
I do agree with Houlgate that Hegel’s pictures of Adam and Oedipus align nicely as far as characterization goes. Clearly, to avoid the horror of the truth, Oedipus should not have gone hunting for it—but, of course, this is only something one can say in retrospect. Despite my agreement with Houlgate that Oedipus’ ignorance plays a key role in Sophocles’ drama, Houlgate’s view is in direct contrast to Hegel’s overall view that the aim of humanity is to know itself. Further, Oedipus does not have a choice to remain unaware. Not only was Oedipus fated, but also, as I have shown, in Hegel’s picture of historically coined agency, his naivety is not a choice, but an inherent blindness. Hegel does say Oedipus ‘lost his happiness as Adam did when he came to the knowledge of good and evil’, but his point here is that Oedipus is exiled from Thebes, just as Adam and Eve were from Eden (LFA 1219). For Hegel, the story of Adam and Eve is partly about how we freed ourselves from nature and created the human world. It is part of the story of how we became truly subjective, through our own deeds and acquisition of knowledge. Further, for Hegel, in both the Bible and in Oedipus the King, it was not banishment by God or the gods, but a self-imposed exile (Hegel Reference Hegel1971: §405A).
In Hegel’s view, one cannot gain retrospective knowledge of one’s own sinfulness, because one can sin only knowingly. The ancient Greeks were naïve similar to the way Adam was before the Fall. The knowledge gained by Adam allows us to choose either good or evil; without this knowledge, one is simply innocent, as Hegel paints the ancient Greeks. The knowledge of Adam opens the way for the very possibility of being moral at all, so it is not simply a loss of happiness or innocence, but also an important gain for humanity (EL §24A3). This knowledge is necessary for living a fully free life, in harmony with others—but a fully aware harmony, not the naïve harmony of the ancient Greeks. The successful search for knowledge opens the way to sinfulness, but, in keeping with humanity’s purpose to know itself, it is a necessary evil.
Our new understanding of the conflict proves that Oedipus’ quest for knowledge also plays a complex role in the reconciliation of the drama. On this matter, Hegel says only that the conclusion of the drama ‘discloses Oedipus as the murderer of Laius’, so that Hegel’s readers are left with the work of figuring out how this disclosure is the reconciliation of the conflict (LFA 1167). That is, if the conflict is between, on the one hand, the right of Oedipus’ intentions and earlier knowledge and, on the other, the fact that his deeds were fated by the gods and done innocently, how can knowledge of the truth reconcile this?
As Hegel describes reconciliation of tragic drama, the ‘solution of the conflict, like the action itself, must be both objective and subjective’ (LFA 1166). As shown earlier, action has both an objective and a subjective side, so the reconciliation of the action of a drama must show each side of the conflict to truly be part of a unified whole that includes both sides. The conflict in Oedipus is between—and thus includes—the subjective and objective sides of Oedipus’ deeds, although he does not know this. The reconciliation, then, must dissolve the contradiction between his original subjective take and the objective facts of his deeds—that is, between what he thought he knew he was doing, and what actually happened.
We can now see that Oedipus’ aim is fulfilled and the conflict is reconciled by his knowledge of the truth of his actions. When taking into account the fact that Oedipus one-sidedly pursues the truth, his aim is fulfilled when the truth is disclosed. His search for the truth and for Laius’ killer turns out to be a fulfilment of the edict on the temple of Apollo at Delphi. Oedipus reveals, to us and to himself, to be what he has been all along: the murderer and son of a king, the rightful heir to a throne, an exile from his homeland. It is not simply his knowledge of the truth that is the reconciliation, but also what he does with this knowledge, because drama, as absolute spirit, presents both (objective) action and (subjective) words and ideas. His self-punishment is a fitting resolution to the drama because the truth has revealed him to be what is poisoning Thebes, and he can restore harmony by exiling himself.
Yet, while a tragedy’s conflict is brought about by the hero, in Hegel’s theory of ancient Greek tragedy the reconciliation does not lie in the hands of individual characters, due to their limited agency. Instead, it is driven by ‘the eternal powers, i.e. what is essentially moral, the gods of our actual life, in short what is divine and true’ (LFA 1162). As individuated, all characters (and all humans) are limited and thus come into conflict with each other and with the greater whole that they are part of. If a character opposes the ethical sphere to which she belongs, then harmony must be restored because what is essentially a unified whole should ideally not be in conflict with itself. The reconciliation is the necessary and rational working itself out through humanity as a whole, absorbing and dissolving the one-sidedness of individuals, the divine as lived within the human community (LFA 1163).
In response to Aristotle’s theory of tragic fear and pity, Hegel posits that the ‘only important thing for a work of art is to present what corresponds with reason and spiritual truth’ (LFA 1197). In Hegel’s view, tragic pity and fear are not directed at outside forces, but at the ‘power of the Absolute’ that we are a part of, for example, through our participation in the ethical community (LFA 1198). Thus, reconciliation is found in the restoration of ethical harmony through Oedipus’ one-sidedness being ‘stripped away’ by the power of the absolute (LFA 1215). As Hegel puts it: ‘Above mere fear and tragic sympathy there therefore stands that sense of reconciliation which tragedy affords by the glimpse of eternal justice’—and this sense of tragic justice, I posit, is the truth that ancient tragedy presents (LFA 1198). The conflict between Oedipus’ fated deeds and the right of intention is reconciled in the larger truth that Oedipus, like all of us, can be simultaneously right and wrong and that innocent acts can also sometimes be the gravest of crimes that cannot be absolved.
IV. Conclusion: Heroically wrong and tragically right
As I have shown, according to Hegel, judged by our modern standard Oedipus is wrong to punish himself for the aspects of his deeds that were done unintentionally or unknowingly. From our standpoint, we know that the right of the wide-awake consciousness absolves him of guilt, and that Oedipus should have aligned himself with the right of will and knowledge and not have taken full moral accountability (LFA 187–88). Thus, one may object that the drama’s reconciliation is not rational because he is innocent. However, it is rational, because Oedipus is irrational in his one-sidedness, and this one-sidedness is stripped away (LFA 1216). Yet, the objector may further argue, such reconciliation is not rational because Oedipus is, after all, also guilty, and thus there is a paradox that is irrational and calls for further reconciliation, perhaps in a further stage of spirit.
It is true that the tragic hero is paradoxical. While Oedipus’ acts are on the side of the gods and thus ‘legitimate’, they are nonetheless horrible crimes that he committed, so he is also ‘blameworthy’ (LFA 1198). Oedipus’ unyielding stance, which for a time was admirable—solving the riddle did get rid of the Sphinx and gave him a ‘new’ throne—also poisoned Thebes. Indeed, it was his own righteousness in killing the old man at the crossroads that brought the Sphinx to Thebes in the first place. It may also be true that further reconciliation can be found in the progress of spirit. However, Hegel is firm in his view that the reconciliation, which takes place within the drama itself, is rational due to the necessity of the outcome, and that viewing it as such is key to a proper understanding of Greek tragedy (LFA 1215–16). Tragic reconciliation is rational because of the paradoxical nature of the ancient hero: although our hearts are wrenched at the misfortune of the hero, his suffering is not innocent but just, and we are thus also simultaneously at peace with the necessity of the outcome and are able to rationally accept and understand this.
I propose that because Oedipus is the person who transgressed the ethical bounds of natural right and disrupted social harmony through his deeds, he is right in Hegel’s view to take responsibility for them—and that doing so is just the kingly and righteous action such a character would and must, and therefore did, do. This combination of right and wrong is exactly what makes Oedipus a quintessential tragic hero according to Hegel’s theory of tragedy (LFA 1214; PR §§117A, 120). The one-sidedness of ancient heroes is what leads them to be both tragically right and heroically wrong. Due to their historical standpoint, ancient heroes are ‘just as much innocent as guilty’, and this is their trademark quality (LFA 1214).
Hegel’s historical account of subjectivity thus uniquely adds to our understanding of just what is particularly heroic about ancient tragic heroes. More than just being on the side of a right and beyond being unwavering in their stance, it is taking on full responsibility for all entailed by their one-sided stance that is for Hegel a necessary component for ancient tragic heroes to be heroic, rather than victims or criminals.Footnote 16 As Hegel puts it, tragic heroes
do not claim to be innocent of these at all. On the contrary, what they did, and actually had to do, is their glory. No worse insult could be given to such a hero than to say that he had acted innocently. It is the honour of these great characters to be culpable. (LFA 1215)
The very fact that Oedipus takes full accountability for his deeds is what makes him not a pitiable victim of fate but instead a true hero of ancient tragedy. In Hegel’s view: ‘It is just the strength of the great characters that they do not choose but throughout, from start to finish, are what they will and accomplish. They are what they are, and never anything else, and this is their greatness’ (LFA 1214). When his unrelenting pursuit of the truth is fulfilled and he takes full ownership of his unwitting deeds, he rightly takes his place once again as knower—as he has been all along—and as exile, as he has been since birth.
In this light, we can see how Hegel’s reading of agency in Sophocles’ Oedipus the King not only highlights something particular to ancient tragedy, but also points to a universal aspect of humanity stressed throughout Hegel’s philosophy. While ancient tragedy can only be produced by antiquity and its truth is historically contextualized, it is not the case that it is now simply an archaeological curiosity. In his role of seeking the truth at all costs, Oedipus solves a riddle of humanity. For Hegel, Oedipus is at the stage of humanity’s childhood, and in this state of immaturity, human freedom cannot be fully exercized because it is not fully known to the agent. The way to maturity is a painful process driven by humanity itself, and Oedipus points the way by revealing this truth of humanity to itself.
Hegel’s philosophy brings to the fore one of the reasons why ancient tragedy resonates with audiences throughout the ages: it presents something fundamental and potentially heroic about us. People can and do sometimes wrongly yet purposefully take full moral accountability for the unintended consequences of their deeds. Although doing so is in a sense wrong, at the same time, it can be heroic. We admire those who go down with their ship, even if—or especially because—it is not necessary that they do so. It is with a mixed sense of admiration and despair that we watch people take responsibility for the gravest yet innocent wrongs they have committed, but we are reconciled with their decision because it is right. Heroes like Oedipus are both a warning and an exemplar of who we were and of what we can be.Footnote 17
