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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
XII.
Might and Right
Instigated by Brian Johnston’s thesis in The Ibsen Cycle
I have compared the dialectical structures in Hegel’s analysis
of the downfall of the autonomous Greek city state in the sixth chapter
of the Phenomenology and the dialectical actions described
in A Doll’s House and in Ghosts. I cannot but
confirm that the parallels are striking, that is: 1. between
the conflicting laws of family and society, of woman and man, described
by Hegel, and the corresponding conflict described by Ibsen in A
Doll’s House – and likewise: 2. between Hegel’s
analysis of human action, knowledge and non-knowledge, guilt and destiny,
the strife between the living and the dead, and the tragic plot described
by Ibsen in Ghosts.
We have considered the two first subsections of the chapter. Now we
will present the third: c. Legal status. The question
is if a similar connection between this subsection and Ibsen’s
following play, The Enemy of the People (1882) can be found:
a.The ethical world. Human and Divine Law. Man and Woman.
[Antigone, A Doll’s
House]
b.The
ethical action. Human and Divine knowledge. Guilt and Destiny.
[Antigone, King Oedipus, The Libation-Bearers, Ghosts
c. Legal
status.
It is the legal status of Imperial Rome Hegel describes in this third
subsection, the relation between the abstract universalism of Roman
Law on one hand, recognising the individual as a legal entity, as a
legal person, granted legal protection under the law, and on the other
hand the above the law residing power of the Emperor, which
by virtue of its overriding sovereignty confirms or suspends the law
at its own discretion, or at its own capricious will.
The recognition of the citizen as a legal person through the
Law reveals itself as abstract formalism, without actual significance.
The concept of a legal person in this context is not founded
in the recognition of the unique worth of each individual; it only states
that each and every entity has an equal legal validity, which
in practice means that they are perceived as indifferent, faceless atoms
(Hegel’s expression) in a solid mass. “To describe an individual
as a ‘person’ is an expression of contempt”, says
Hegel. The formally recognized legal atoms, entities or persons:
belongs therefore
to an autonomous power [The Emperor], which is something different
from the formal universal [The Roman Law], to a power which is arbitrary
and capricious. The consciousness of right, therefore, in the very
fact of being recognized as having validity, experiences rather the
loss of its reality and its complete inessentiality; and to describe
an individual as a ‘person’ is an expression of contempt.
(Hegel 1977: 292)
This subsection discusses, beyond its historical Roman frame, a still
persistent, still intrusive question, the relationship between might
and right, power and justice. This question is, as
I see it, the very main theme in An Enemy of the People.
Dr. Stockmann:
Call me an enemy of the society.
So help me God, I’m not going to swallow that!
Mrs.
Stockmann: But Thomas dear, your brother does have the power
–
Dr.
Stockmann: Yes, but I’m in the right!
Mrs.
Stockmann: The right? Ah, what does it help to be in the right
if you don’t have any power.
The legal protection which
in principle is guaranteed to every citizen through Roman Law
by virtue of it’s recognition of the individuals as legal persons,
as possessors of rights, is challenged by the sovereign power of the
Emperor, abandoned as they are, to his will, whims and impulses. The
juridical subject is at the mercy of the arbitrariness of power, formally
recognized, but in practice without validation:
The lord
of the world becomes conscious of what he is, viz. the universal power
of the actual world, in the destructive power he exercises against
the self of his subjects, the self which he stands over and against.
For his power is not the union and harmony of Spirit in which the
persons would recognize their own self-consciousness. (Hegel 1977:
293)
In his Lectures on the Philosophy of History Hegel elaborates on the
dichotomy between abstract rights and arbitrary power in Imperial Rome:
In this way
the individuals [as legal persons] are seen as atoms. At the same
time they are submitted to the One’s [the Emperor’s] absolute
authority, as monas monandum, as a power that stands above
the legal persons. One can therefore likewise say that this state
of justice implies the very absence of the legal person, the very
absence of recognition, as a status of complete rightlessness. This
contradiction expresses the misery of the Roman world. (Hegel 1970:
387)
The scenario described
in An Enemy of the People is very different from the historical
context constituting the foundation for Hegel’s presentation of
the relationship between power and justice in Imperial Rome. The small
town magistrate, Dr. Stockmann’s brother Peter Stockmann, is no
Emperor; the structures of power, the political institutions, the legal
principles, the legal status, the character of human self-image, the
manner in which we identify ourselves as human individuals, has been
through some radical transformations from imperial Rome to the 1880s
in Norway. But in the very basic premise of Roman Law lies the very
foundation for European legal thinking. And the contradiction between
power and justice still has concrete relevance.
To knowingly expose unsuspecting spa bathers
to typhus and cholera was considered a breach of law also in Ibsen’s
day. When Dr. Stockmann tries to expose and rectify the errors, he has
both from a legal and moral standpoint the right on his side
– but not the power. To stand up for one’s right,
while opposing the power, probably had far more drastic consequences in
Imperial Rome than in Ibsen’s small town. But it was bad enough
for Dr. Stockmann: his wife being deprived of her inheritance, his daughter
being dismissed as a teacher, his sons sent home from school, his friend
Captain Horster refused to berth, his home being attacked by the mob,
the tenancy agreement for the house being cancelled, he himself being
dismissed as the Doctor at the baths.
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