TragedySyllabus06

Tragedy and Political Thought

This document was inspired by Simon Goldhill's Chapter 'Greek Drama and Political Theory' in The Cambridge History of Greek and Roman Political Thought, CUP 2005. It is largely summary, partially reaction to, that chapter.

Tragedy as a genre stands clearly in contrast with prose genres which attempt to explore their themes in a more purely rationalist way. And yet, thought about the same themes is present in tragedy. And tragedy, and drama and fiction more generally, "thinks" about things in a valuable, indeed unique and irreplaceable way.

Many thinkers, including Plato and Aristotle, as well as Nietzsche and Hegel, devoted considerable energy to the relations between tragedy and political thought (or drama/fiction and philosophy more generally) and came up with significantly different ideas. Simplistically put, Nietzsche thought that the rationalist philosophical spirit killed the spirit of tragedy. Hegel, on the other hand, held that tragedy explores philosophical issues about how a citizen should be a citizen in ways that undermine philosophical rationalist approaches. In our times, thinkers continue to explore the same territory and find it fertile ground for thought and argument. Irigaray has applied gender-centered analysis to the tragedies. Bernard Williams has addressed the role of literature in philosophy....

So what does role does tragedy have to play in political thought?

"The institution of theatre is analogous to the two other great Athenian democratic institutions for the staging of speeches, the law-court and the assembly. Each congregates a body of citizens, constituted in a privileged way as the collective of the polis, and requires the hearing and judging of arguments in a competitive context." (Goldhill P62)

The audience was the polis:

Being part of an audience was a significant component of what it meant to be a citizen, whether that be in a law court, an assembly, or the theatre.
The cost was 2 obols, and tickets were issued, but a theoric fund was started to subsidize theater attendance.
The theater audience included special seating for the archons, the boule (the executive assembly), foreign ambassadors, priests,...
Special seating areas for ephebes (about-to-become citizens), for metics (resident foreigners).
Thus the audience was a physical map of the political hierarchy of the city.

The Greater Dionysia was a major civic festival from the beginning of the Classical Greek era, held yearly, at which three tragedians each staged three tragedies plus a satyr play. There was a corresponding festival for Comedy, the Lenaia.
The ceremonial of the Greater Dionysia reinforced the political structures and ideals:

The board of ten generals poured a libation
Benefactors of the polis were announced by herald
The tribute paid by Athens' empire was displayed in a procession (foreign dignitaries were required to attend)
Orphan ephebes whose fathers were killed in action and who were raised at state expense, were paraded before the audience in uniform (provided by the state) and took an oath to die protecting Athens
The city was on display.
The eponymous archon chose the playwrights
The state funded the productions/arranged for production via liturgy
Ten judges from the ten tribes were chosen by lot
The theoric fund is analogous to paying a jury
An assembly was held after the festival to review it

Thus the festival was not just an opportunity to hear oblique commentary on political themes. Rather, its whole structure reflected the polis. It was permeated by civic issues: it played a frequently acknowledged role in the formation, performance, and maintenance of citizenship. Furthermore, as an international attraction, it put the city on display for the world.

Goldhill does not mention it, but think of the expense, not just of the festival, but of the buildings, as well as the site on prime real estate. All of that points to the importance and polis commitment to theatre.

From: http://www.vroma.org/images/raia_images/delphi_theater1.jpg
Theater at Delphi

It is impossible to escape the fact that many modern thinkers have used tragedy as part of their thought. Hegel, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Irigaray, and others have thought with tragedy: "tragedy...has been a significant element in modern political theorizing, particularly in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, a way of exploring the political thinking of the present by a turn to the formative past." (P67 Goldhill) It is difficult to be sure that one is not projecting into or interpreting tragedy through the lense of one's own modern thought or through that of one of these important modern thinkers.

But scholars nonetheless try to come up with reasonable ideas of what tragedy meant to Greeks. Goldhill identifies three ways to analyse tragedy's political import:

Detecting specific political messages in specific plays: Goldhill rightly says that this is the least fruitful and most suspect approach, although it occasionally bears good results.

Tragedy avoids references to "current events"
In a broad-brush way, Euripides' plays that explore the horror of war must be commentaries on Athens' wars

e.g. the Trojan Women, set in the aftermath of the Trojan war and revolving around the fates of captive women, was produced in 415, the year after Athens voted to kill all the male citizens of Melos and to enslave the women and children, as well as the year in which Athens was setting out on the Sicilian Expedition (destined to be a wretched failure).

"But the play's very generalizing ... makes it hard to limit its message." (68 Goldhill)

In other words, the plays can be read as problematizing certain issues, but not as giving a clearly identifiable position on those issues.

Identifying significant aspects of politics addressed by tragedy

Myths are reformulated for Athens specifically
The Oresteia, for instance, directly addressed the origins of the rule of law and societal control versus the traditional lex talionis ('the law of retribution')
Questions of responsibility are frequently addressed: who is responsible and who should be punished for actions: the gods? individual human agents? families?

The traditional answer in Homer places a good deal of responsibility in the hands of the gods
But the rationalistic spirit of Classical Greece puts it in the hands of humans, individual humans

Tragedy explores those issues without offering clear answers: it 'problematizes' them.

Questions of ritual, its origins and role, are frequently addressed in tragedy. Transgression of boundaries occurs frequently.
Individual and Collective

In the Oresteia, for instance, Orestes' crime (killing his mother and her lover) is addressed by the creation of a political institution, the Areopagus court

Contrast Odysseus' reintegration into Ithaca: violence

In Sophocles' Philoctetes, Philoctetes, abandoned on a desert island, must be reintegrated into the army: the problem is how he, as an individual, can be reintegrated.
In general, commitments to self, family, polis, army, etc. are frequently portrayed as conflicting obligations. "tragedy again and again depicts the tensions within the normative construction of the citizen's political role in society."

Individual as autonomous judge and agent

Tragedy frequently present individual's whose judgement is compromised by things beyond their control (think of Oedipus, Heracles).
Individuals have no control over the situations they are in, and yet must act.
Individuals have limited information, and yet must judge.
Individuals are ignorant of the true nature of their actions, and so do things that stymie themselves.

Problems of language

Language is fundamental to democracy: oratory in law courts, assemblies, performances.
But language itself is made to be unstable in tragedy
Like all poetry, tragedy's language is highly compacted, carefully constructed, and itself the subject of the poetry.
Think of Antigone and Creon's use of nomos and philia: law and the bonds of love/friendship
'with the tongue, there is nothing to be trusted' (Phaedra at Hippolytus 395)

Aspects of citizenship are frequently made into issues

Euripides' Suppliants contains extensive commentary on the merits and faults of monarchy, as does Aeschylus' Prometheus Bound
Aeschylus' Persians "offers political and theological reasons for the Greek victory over the Persians" (74 Goldhill)
Eurpides' Phoenician Women "has its characters discuss exile and the causes for attacking one's own country" (74 Goldhill)

Examining the mythic tradition for commentary on the action of the plays

This is a complicated approach which involves reading references, allusions and recounting of myths as commentary on the myth being re-created in a given tragedy. Irigaray is the most prominent representative Goldhill identifies.
Goldhill has least to say about this category, and it is the least clear to me. It's not my cup of tea, although I freely and admiringly acknowledge the power of their intellects and encourage you to explore them if they interest you.

Exploration of citizenship via tragedies: Antigone

Perhaps the most important theme explored by the Antigone is competing claims of state and family. Goldhill explores one scene in particular: when Haemon (Antigone's betrothed) tries to persuade his father (Creon) not to put Antigone to death.

The public knows that a man is just
Only if he is straight with his relatives

So, if someone goes too far and breaks the law,
Or tries to tell his masters what to do,
He will have nothing by contempt from me.
But when the city takes a leader, you must obey,
Whether his commands are trivial, or right, or wrong.
And I have no doubt that such a man will rule well,
And, later, he will cheerfully be ruled by someone else.
In hard times he will stand firm with his spear
Waiting for orders, a good, law-abiding solder.

But reject one man ruling another, and that's the worst.
Anarchy tears up a city, divides a home,

Creon in Sophocles Antigone, lines 661-673, translated by Paul Woodruff

He who does his duty in his own household, will be found righteous in the city also. But if anyone transgresses and does violence to the laws, or thinks to dictate to his rulers, such a one can win no praise from me. No, whosoever the city may appoint, that man must be obeyed, in little things and in great, in just things and unjust; and I feel sure that one who thus obeys would be a good ruler no less than a good subject, and in the storm of spears would stand his ground where he was set, loyal and dauntless at his comrade's side. But disobedience is the worst of evils. This it is that ruins cities; this makes houses desolate.

Creon in Sophocles Antigone, lines 661-673, translated by Simon Goldhill (presumably)

Clearly, civil disobedience has no place in this society. Also, military and political spheres are not differentiated. A person who can obey can also rule. The household is strictly analogous to the polis: obey the master in both.

What follows contains Woodruff's translations:

Haemon:
Father, the gods give good sense to every human being, 683
And that is absolutely the best thing we have.

...
My natural duty's to look out for you, to spot any risk 688
That someone may find fualt with what you say or do.

The common man, you see, lives in terror of your frown;
He'll never dare to speak in broad daylight
And say anything you would hate to learn.
...
And now, don't always cling to the same anger, 705
Don't keep saying that this, and nothing else, is right.
If a man believes that he alone has a sound mind,
And no one else can speak or think as well as he does,
Then, when people study him, they'll find an empty book.
But a wise man can learn a lot and never be ashamed;
He knows he does not have to be rigid and close-hauled.
You've seen trees tossed by a torrent in a flash flood:
If they bend, they're saved, and every twig survives,
But if they stiffen up, they're washed out from the roots.
It's the same in a boat...
I know I'm younger, but I may still have good ideas;
And I say that the oldest idea, and the best,
Is for one man to be born complete, knowing everything.
Otherwise--and it usually does turn out otherwise--
It's good to learn from anyone who speaks well.

Goldhill notes that every discussion of theoretical political issues in Tragedy is always persuasive. The speech is performative: it is trying to accomplish something. The language is action. The result is that political theory becomes agonistic: a debate.
BUT, the debate is part of a narrative: there is a relationship between the arguments of the characters and the narrative, but it is not a simple one. Creon moves from "a normative democratic position on authority to a self-serving claim of personal authority to tragic destruction" (Goldhill 84). It is not clear what message an audience is supposed to go away with from that.
The theoretical positions are framed by narrative, and often there is ironic tension between the positions and the narrative.
Tragedy depicts theory put into practice by imperfect characters in imperfect situations. The armchair position of political philosophy is not that of tragedy.
At the same time that tragedy, by the very act of putting such things on stage for an audience, universalizes and generalizes the import of what is said, it is about individuals in a particular situation. Or is it? myth itself creates a tension between the idea of individuals and types: mythical figures are frequently interpreted as types.

What sort of message is relayed by Sophocles' Antigone?

Flexibility versus fixity
Continuum between despotism and benevolent rule
Relation between theory and practice
Negotiation of conflicting obligations