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6 - Heidegger and Sophocles

Antigone’s Êthos of Intimating and Waiting

from II - Heidegger and Greek Literature

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 November 2023

By
Sean D. Kirkland
Edited by
Andrew Benjamin
Andrew Benjamin
Affiliation:
Monash University, Victoria
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Summary

Heidegger, in the 1946 essay Letter on Humanism, famously remarks that the tragic dramas of Sophocles are in some sense superior to the philosophical ethics of Aristotle in their ability to “preserve” the site of human dwelling in language. This chapter first offers a reading of Aristotle’s Ethics, suggesting in what sense they might be deficient, from Heidegger’s perspective. Next, Heidegger’s reading of Sophocles’ Antigone in the 1942 lecture course Hölderlin’s Hymn “The Ister” provides our focus, and we find there a poetization of the site of human dwelling, as opened up by a play between homeliness and unhomeliness, familiar order and uncanniness, presencing and absencing. Thirdly and finally, we ask precisely how Sophocles’ poetizing manages to preserve this dynamic play and, moving beyond Heidegger, we suggest that Antigone herself, as she moves through the plot of Sophocles’ play, eventually and dramatically models how humans properly inhabit this site as such, in her questioning way of thinking and in her hesitating way of taking action.

Keywords

HeideggerSophoclesAristotleAntigonepoetrytragedyethicspoeticsmetaphysics of presence
Type
Chapter
Information
Heidegger and Literary Studies , pp. 121 - 149
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

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