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Sophocles, Hegel and Ibsen

A Perspective on A Doll’s House, Ghosts and An Enemy of the People
by Helge Salemonsen

VIII. The Divine and the Human Knowledge

      The series of fatalities that follow the generations, the conflicts between the living and the dead, the never-ending chain where revenge follows revenge from generation to generation as a consequence of an original blood guilt and offence, is interpreted by the characters as destiny, as a curse from the gods that rests upon the family. A curse like this, a fate like this is what continues to pursue the Labdacus family of which Antigone is a part. Laïus, the son of Labdacus has committed a crime for which the gods are punishing him and his descendants through generations to come.

     Apollo’s oracle in Delphi predicted that Laïus’ son Oedipus will kill his father and marry his mother. Even though all involved do everything in their power to escape their destiny, their actions directly contribute to making Apollo’s prediction come true.

      In the conflict between Antigone and Creon we saw a distinctive dialectic between knowledge and non-knowledge. It is rooted in their one-sided foundation in one of the two laws (the law of woman and the law of man, the divine and the human law). Both know they are right, but both are blind to the other’s right and therefore ignorant of their own guilt.

    Sophocles’ drama King Oedipus also concerns the relationship between guilt and destiny, and between knowledge and non-knowledge, but from a slightly different perspective. The guilt that man brings upon himself, in his ignorance, has its root in an original crime (Laïus’ crime) that has consequences through future generations.

      Oedipus’ destiny appears so tragic since it was already sealed before his birth. Compelled through the inherited guilt of his father, he was condemned to perform the two most horrific acts a Greek could imagine – killing his father and fornicating with his mother. Not only was he condemned and destined to fulfil these horrors; he was also completely unaware that the man he happened to kill was his father, that the woman he married was his mother. There is a dark aspect of non-knowledge attached to human knowledge, Hegel comments:

Actuality therefore holds concealed within it the other aspect which is alien to this knowledge, and does not reveal the whole truth about itself to consciousness: The son does not recognize his father in the man who has wronged him and whom he slays, nor his mother in the queen who he makes his wife. In this way, a power which shuns the light of day ensnares the ethical self-consciousness, a power which breaks forth only after the deed is done, and seizes the doer in the act. (Hegel 1977: 283)

      Within a modern justice system the perpetrator can claim the lack of consciousness at the moment of the crime. If this claim is recognised, he will – not only legally but also morally – be considered innocent. Two close relatives (for example brother and sister) that get married not knowing of the close relationship, because they have been raised in two different families (adoption), will not be persecuted for their illegal relationship, even though it is revealed.

      Within the context that Sophocles describes, not to know or to have an undeserved lack of knowledge makes no difference to the guilt that a crime inflicts on the perpetrator, neither in the eyes of men nor in the eyes of gods. One may feel pity for the unfortunate, feel empathy towards his misery, but the guilt that follows the deed cannot be erased; it must be punished and atoned for. If not, it will have deadly consequences for the whole community. The wrath of the gods awaits them. This is why Thebes is struck by the plague (cf. Sophocles: King Oedipus). This is why Oedipus is exiled from Thebes (cf. Sophocles: Oedipus in Colonus). “The doer cannot deny the crime or his guilt: the significance of the deed is that what was unmoved has been set in motion, and that what was locked up in mere possibility has been brought out into the open(7).” (Hegel 1977: 283)

      This is why Oedipus punishes himself; why he blinds himself. His blindness corresponds to his non-knowledge – the lack of knowledge which now is transformed into horrible knowledge – or “brought out into the open”.

      Sophocles’ King Oedipus concerns guilt and destiny, knowledge and non-knowledge, or non-knowledge as the dark-side of knowledge, or non-knowledge concealed in human knowledge, or the gap between divine and human knowledge. Apollo’s divine knowledge sees and knows everything. When mediated into the world of men (through the oracle) this universal knowledge falls into the realm of fragments, perceptions, perspectives and limitations. Totality gets lost. Human knowledge produces a hidden side of non-knowledge: “Actuality therefore holds concealed within it the other aspect which is alien to this knowledge, and does not reveal the whole truth about itself to consciousness.” (cf. Hegel)

      Apollo’s prediction is an expression of divine knowledge. Transferred to the world of Laïus, Jocasta and Oedipus it becomes human. It develops a hidden side: Like a piece of rock on the ground. When the parties involved try to escape their destiny – Laïus and Jocasta by putting their newborn son into the wilderness, Oedipus by escaping from his foster parents in Corinth, whom he believes to be his biological father and mother – they unconsciously fulfil the destiny they consciously tried to escape. Only later the hidden circumstances are revealed to them in all their horror. The rock is turned; the hidden side revealed. It is human fate that reality only shows one side of its surface at a time, the other side – the one which will shake us – lies in the dark. For now. This is what Mrs Alving experiences.

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7 - “The significance of the deed is: that what was unmoved has been set in motion”: Since before Oedipus’ birth his predicted destiny has been in rest, unmoved, delayed, still unfulfilled. Through his actions it was set in motion and completed.