『안티고네』: 떠도는 지혜와 이르지 못한 합(合) -안티고네의 하마르티아(hamartia)에 대한 변명-

Abstract

It was widely held by European poets, philosophers and scholars that the history of thought and of feeling throughout the 19th century draws essential force from a reflection on Hellenism. For the 19th century German philosopher Hegel, Antigone is “one of the most sublime, and in every respect most consummate, work of art human effort ever produced.” For Hegel, Antigone played a major role in the evolution of European consciousness, one of whose early stages exemplified by Antigone’s conflict between State and individual, or more accurately between “the public law of the State and the instinctive family-love and duty towards a brother.” To Shelling, the high morality, the absolute purity of the works of Sophocles had been the object of wonder throughout the ages. Why is this predilection? The answer is: Antigone has been idealized for her heroism and love of family. The hypothesis of this study is that Antigone is itself the battle ground of conflicting thesis and antithesis which do not reach synthesis. Two main figures who represent thesis and antithesis are Creon and Antigone. Conflict is the heart of this work, which is so structured that each protagonist can act only by attacking and destroying the central values of the other. The play offers conflicting definitions, explicit or implicit, of the basic terms of the human condition: friend and enemy, citizen and ruler, father and son, male and female, reverence and irreverence, purity and pollution. Chorus representing the wisdom of the play tries to mediate between these two figures but in vain. Wisdom coming from all the figures including Chorus of the play is only floating among protagonist and antagonist but has no effect on both of them, because Antigone offers an alternative mode of ethical reasoning to that adopted by Creon. For example, against Creon’s laws(nomoi), Antigone sets the “unwritten laws” that pertain to the burial of the dead, which are also the “custom laws”. Creon finally accepts wisdom but only too late, so catastrophe destroys both families. In my discussion here, I confine myself to defending hamartia of Antigone such as her passionate devotion to her dead brother, her inflammatory words and disruptive behavior, which alienate the sympathy both of the other characters in the play and of the audience, and to keeping her as heroine. I do not have any intention to revaluate the heroic action of Antigone and devaluate her because of her hamartia, since hamartia was/is an essential element in Greek tragedy and in human condition. The hamartia that leads the heroes of this play to catastrophe was analysed in terms of socio-cultural, socio-linguistic background. Parts of the conclusion of this study are: the text shows beyond reasonable doubt that both Creon and Antigone are at least partly (if not equally) responsible for the tragedy, and notwithstanding all the hamartia of Antigone, she could have been remained as heroine because of the backgrounds analysed in this study.