Notes on Identity

Extract

The Riddles Of Oedipus.

The central intuition of Greek tragedy, as of psychoanalysis, is that there is one, unique fact which each individual anxiously struggles to conceal from himself, and this is the very fact that is the root of his identity. Kierkegaard describes a type of despair in which the self “wills desperately to be itself—with the exception, however, of one particular, with respect to which it wills despairingly not to be itself.” Action is heroic when, in addition to displaying courage, fidelity, etc., it involves an overcoming of this automatic will to ignorance, when it reverses the process that repels the one particular and forces the actor to embrace it.

Tragedy is the willful movement toward the hidden fact by which the hero is identified. The hero does not know what his action will disclose but he is impelled to the disclosure.