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Ancient Ethics, the Heroic Code, and the Morality of Sophocles’ AJAX

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 April 2006

Stuart Lawrence
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Extract

While modern ethical philosophy has tended to proceed in an impersonal manner by addressing moral problems from a deontological or consequentialist (or broadly utilitarian) standpoint, ancient ethics was based on character and the development of a virtuous disposition. For Plato at Republic 441d-444e, for example, the ideal was a psuche that balanced the three functions of reason, thumos, and appetite and from which virtuous actions would flow automatically, while for Aristotle in the Nicomachean Ethics (e.g. 2.1, 6.2, 6.5, 6.13) the object was to develop, in part through the exercise of practical intelligence (phronesis), an increasingly refined disposition (hexis) to perform virtuous acts. The focus was on the virtuous intention rather than on the moral quality of the result - a point brought out with striking clarity in the Stoic idea that virtue consisted as it were in the correct aim, whereas the actual hitting of the target was morally irrelevant.

Type
Research Article
Information
Greece & Rome , Volume 52 , Issue 1 , April 2005 , pp. 18 - 33
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 2005

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References

1 Cicero, De Fin. 3. 22.

2 N.E. 1117a 16: to be brave is kalon; not to be so is aischron (i.e. shameful).

3 Attributed to Zeno and Chrysippus as a hard-line Stoic attitude at Cic, De Fin. 3.57.

4 On Ajax's inherent valour and its descent from Telamon see Lawall, S. N., ‘Sophocles’ Ajax: aristos after Achilles’, CJ 54 (1959), 290-4, at 292Google Scholar.

5 See Williams, B., Moral Luck (Cambridge, 1981), Ch.2Google Scholar.

6 Williams, B., Shame and Necessity (Berkeley, 1993), 83fGoogle Scholar. For an excellent critique of the absurdities to be found in the more extreme exponents of the idea of a shame culture see D. L. Cairns, Aidos (Oxford, 1993), 39-44.

7 ‘Ajax looks on Telamon as an equal’: March, J. R., ‘Sophocles’ Ajax: the death and burial of a hero’, BICS 38 (1991-3), 1–36, at 13Google Scholar.

8 He sees himself as hated by the army (458), apart from his own followers (565-71), and he duly curses it (843f.). In deliberating on possible courses of action his intention is to avoid gratifying the Atreidae (466-70), and his shield is bequeathed to his son while his armour is to be buried with him (572-7).

9 When Ajax considers what to do he imagines his father's reaction to his return (462ff.) See Williams (n. 6), 85: ‘Not only is his language full of the most basic images of shame, of sight and nudity, but it expresses directly a reciprocal relation between what he and his father could not bear. But … it is not the mere idea of his father's pain that governs the decision, nor the fact that it is, uniquely, his father. Ajax is identified with the standards of excellence represented by his father's honours… . He has no way of living that anyone he respects would respect - which means that he cannot live with any self-respect.’

10 N.E. 6.13; Annas, J., The Morality of Happiness (Oxford, 1993), 73 Google Scholar.

11 Ibid., 67 (author's emphasis).

12 Ibid., 76.

13 Ibid., 82.

14 Ibid., 89.

15 Tecmessa is ‘defining the noble man as one who is responsive to kindness and affection’: Zanker, G., ‘Sophocles’ Ajax and the heroic values of the Iliaa ”, CQ 42 (1992), 20-5, at 23Google Scholar.

16 Ajax is moved by Tecmessa's appeal. He feels his new compassion for her undermining his resolve to kill himself, but the compassion is ‘rejected by his deepest instincts': Knox, B. M. W., ‘The Ajax of Sophocles’, in Word and Action. Essays on the Ancient Theater (Baltimore and London, 1979), 138 Google Scholar. He expresses some pity for Tecmessa and his son in the Trugrede but this does not determine his action. Ajax ‘has no sense of responsibility to anyone or anything except his own heroic conception of himself and the need to live up to the great reputation of his father before him’: ibid., 145. ‘Ajax recognizes the principle of mutability in the world and will have none of it’: Winnington-Ingram, R. P., Sophocles: An Interpretation (Cambridge, 1980), 54 Google Scholar. ‘Despite the outwardly stern inflexibility which he displayed in the last scene, Ajax has been moved to pity; and he remarks on the fact that his feelings are not exempt from the universal pattern of change with surprise and some indignation: he refers to his earlier inflexibility with a mocking irony, and to his weakening with contemptuous sarcasm (650-2). But the implications of that contempt show that he rejects the weakening he describes; his feelings have been stirred, but his will is unmoved’: Heath, M., The Poetics of Greek Tragedy (London, 1987), 186 Google Scholar. Ajax is affected by Tecmessa, but ‘his confession that he has been moved is unwilling and contemptuous’: Kirkwood, G. M., A Study of Sophoclean Drama (Ithaca, 1958), 103 Google Scholar. M.|Simpson, ‘Sophocles’ Ajax: his madness and transformation’, Arethusa 2 (1969), 88–103 Google Scholar, and March (n. 7), 19-21, however, believe that Ajax is deeply affected by Tecmessa's arguments and integrates them into his intended suicide, the ground for which has now changed. ‘Tecmessa has compelled him to abandon his earlier reason for suicide and to seek a higher justification for it which he articulates in the speech at 646ff.’: Simpson, 94. As Ajax ‘understands the pattern of change in the universe, it dictates not that he change his nature, but rather that he remove himself: ibid., 98.

17 Goldhill, S., Reading Greek Tragedy (Cambridge, 1986), 87 Google Scholar.

18 Scodel, R., Sophocles (Boston, 1984)Google Scholar, 20. Meier, C., The Political Art of Greek Tragedy (trans. Webber, A.) (Cambridge, 1993), 178 Google Scholar, goes too far in declaring that Ajax ‘sacrifices himself. Only by doing this can he demonstrate the newly learnt prudence that is so pleasing to the gods. He thus heals the great rift that he caused in the order of the world.’ Kirkwood (n. 16), 47, rightly observes that ‘Ajax dies bitter, unforgiving, unrepentant’. Garvie, A. F., Sophocles Ajax (Warminster, 1998)Google Scholar, states ad 646-92 that Ajax, ‘while acknowledging the claims of sophrosyne, cannot bring himself emotionally to accept it in his own case…. But we should not underestimate the attractiveness of sophrosyne which Ajax clearly sees. The whole speech shows us Ajax resisting and overcoming what is now his strongest temptation'. But is it a temptation? There seems to be no struggle. The world is thus and some can conform, but he is unable and unwilling to conform. His moral act must be to be true to himself and to his inflexible standards.

19 Annas (n. 10), 118.

20 One thinks of the Sartrean Orestes in Les Mouches whose ethic is required to be authentically his own. His philosophy forbids him to do something because some external authority says he should, though the problem then is to avoid simply reacting against authority which is equally derivative and inauthentic. Ajax looks like an existentialist in his moral alienation from his society and peers and yet the standard he lives by is theirs and not his own and seems strange when he is no longer supposedly interested in gaining their approval or belonging to their group.

21 Gill, C., Personality in Greek Epic, Tragedy, and Philosophy (Oxford, 1996), 21 Google Scholar. He observes at 59. in a statement that could be applied to Ajax's deliberations, that ‘the deliberative monologues [in Homer] represent an (exceptional) internalization of the interpersonal discourse which is central to the modes of living presented in the poem and which constitutes the standard context of deliberation’.

22 Sophocles does not raise the issue of the morality of the attempted killings until near the end, and even then it is downplayed when Teucer claims that it is irrelevant since the killings did not after all take place (1127); and Athena's punishment of Ajax is for arrogance towards herself. It is sometimes maintained that because the culture advocated harming enemies, Ajax was in his rights, but it is absurd to maintain that there were no holds barred in this. Heath (n. 16), 173, cites Athena's failure to condemn morally Achilles’ impulse to kill Agamemnon at Iliad 1.188-218, but here again the poet does not wish strongly to make a moral point. His audience can decide.

23 Ajax ‘has no sense of responsibility to anyone or anything except his own heroic conception of himself and the need to live up to the great reputation of his father before him’: Knox (n. 16), 145.

24 Garvie (n. 18), ad 545-82.

25 On the tension between empathy and moral judgment in tragedy see Gill, C., ‘The Character- Personality Distinction’, in Pelling, C. B. R. (ed.), Characterization and Individuality in Greek Literature (Oxford, 1990), passim.Google Scholar

26 Heath (n. 16), 183.

27 Knox (n. 16), 126.

28 Achilles and Ajax are both extreme exponents of the code with no mitigation. Compare the former's very personal hatred of Hector: Winnington-Ingram (n. 16), 19.

29 Heath (n. 16), 204.

30 Blundell, M. W., Helping Friends and Harming Enemies (Cambridge, 1989), 86 Google Scholar.

31 Cairns (n. 6), 240f.

32 C. E. Sorum, ‘Sophocles’ Ajax in context', CW 79 (1986), 361-77, at 362.

33 Ibid.

34 Ibid. For the relevance of the play's heroic ethos to the fifth-century audience see Zanker (n. 15), passim.

35 The chorus need protection and have nothing to gain from the Trojan expedition. ‘The job of the hero is created by these very people, the weak and defenceless, who followed their leader to Troy. Ajax, however, came in search of fame and wealth. When Ajax commits suicide, the sailors lose their protection and become victims of heroic morality’: Sorum (n. 32), 366.

36 Diogenes Laertius 7.130. On suicide in Stoicism see, e.g., J. M. Rist, Stoic Philosophy (Cambridge, 1969), 233-55.

37 On the divine call to suicide in Stoicism see Rist (n. 36), 242-5.

38 For this approach see Seidensticker, B., ‘Die Wahl des Todes bei Sophokles’, in Entretierif Fondation Hardt 29 (Vandoeuvres-Geneva, 1982), 105-44; 127-41Google Scholar. While Ajax evinces some of the ‘irrational’ symptoms of modern suicides, there is, as we have seen, a clear enough logic in his arguments once we accept his premises.

39 1.2.25ff: cited by Rist (n. 36), 252.

40 Meier (n. 18), 173f. ‘While it is true that Ajax’ arete must depend on what he has done, in the last resort it depends also on what he is, and on its recognition by other people. Even if ‘Teucer should succeed in burying him against the order of the generals, his status will remain unrecognised’: Garvie (n. 18), 235f.

41 Meier (n. 18), 174. ‘It is ironical that that Ajax will secure his burial only because Agamemnon will accept the obligation which Ajax had rejected for himself: Garvie (n. 18), ad 1353. ‘Odysseus is prepared to do for Ajax what Ajax declined to do (522) even for Tecmessa, and what Agamemnon's failure to do was lamented by Teucer (1266-7)’: ibid., ad 1354-6. ‘… Odysseus’ generosity represents the crowning form of eugeneia in the Ajax … it is Odysseus’ combination of the sense of justice and the conditioning factor of emotional responses like pity which finally succeeds in resolving the quarrel over Achilles’ armour in the last stages’: Zanker (n. 15), 25.