5. I am Oedipus: Reframing the Question of Identity

The “who am I?” has now been answered. The after in the reconstitution of the hero’s identity culminates in the new horror of Oedipus’ self-blinding. As we embark on defining the “I am Oedipus” several questions arise. [2] Why does Oedipus blind himself? Is the motivation for his action consistent with his character, in keeping with the man we have come to know as “our” Oedipus? Additionally, is this an act of violent impulse, or does it result from a calculated appraisal of what the future holds for him? Does Oedipus clarify his action in a manner consonant with the renowned intelligence and determination that characterized his previous life? It is obvious that, in the light of this barrage of questions, the issue of identity has shifted focus. From line 1180 onward Oedipus emerges in full command of his powers to face a difficult new question: how do I now proceed in the knowledge that I have committed parricide and incest? He enters again the moral public space of all difficult decisions, where we act as social beings. He also repositions himself in the webs of interlocution—where this time he is questioned, and where he responds with a lengthy justification of his actions.

I agree with Alister Cameron’s view that the self-blinding is the central act of the denouement of the play, the transformation through which Oedipus becomes the “actor of his own fate,” and that it “is made to represent and somehow contain all the other acts which have gone before it.” [3] Oedipus declares himself to be the sole agent [4] of the blinding (1331–1332): The decision to shut himself off from the light of the day is confirmed the moment Oedipus understands the whole truth. The connection between the inner knowledge and the external light, as well as the symbolism of the reversal of this analogy, has become a commonplace in almost all analyses of the play. I shall only remark on how this reversal (a topos in the Sophoclean corpus) is exquisitely captured in Ajax’ apostrophe to darkness: that it is his own light (σκότος, ἐμὸν φάος, Ajax 394) that allows us room to see Oedipus’ apostrophe to light (ὦ φῶς, τελευταῖόν σε προσβλέψαιμι νῦν, 1183) as a possible statement of death. Thus we may understand why Oedipus, in a fit of fury, asks for a sword from the palace servants who witnessed Jocasta’s retreat to the nuptial chamber—is the victim to be Jocasta or himself? [5] However, death by the sword is not how Sophocles envisages the climax of his narrative. The lifeless body of Oedipus’ wife and mother is already hanging there when he rushes in; all that remains for him is to release her body from the noose, and lay it upon the ground before putting his eyes out with the golden pins of her garment. [6] Everything is decided and executed within a split second. Then and there, we learn for the first time why Oedipus mutilates himself, as reported by the messenger (1271–1274):

He seems to decide on purely moral grounds. His transgressions are so egregious that Oedipus is impelled to act with the same determination and clarity of thought that he had in the past; he cannot bear to look upon the people he shamed, nor to be seen by them. He needs to exist in total darkness, not just because his human sight failed him by not recognizing his parents, but because the act of seeing brings him only shame. The eyes of others will forever reflect his crimes and, thus, the re-enactment of the shameful acts. Shame becomes materialized in a sense, acquiring a physical quality when seen. [7] When Taylor discusses the multifaceted nature of identity, he points out that one of its essential features is “how [one] moves in public space commanding respect or failing to do so.” [8] Failing to do so, as Oedipus does now, results in his having to face irredeemable shame, instead of the esteem and respect he has striven for all his life. Unable to extirpate the shame brought on others and on himself, he chooses to witness it no more; the only path open to him is to mutilate his sight.

These considerations evoke the notion of sight and the action of seeing in their cultural, social, and ideological context. Oedipus is overwhelmed with the dread of seeing others and witnessing how he is seen by them. The culturally informed way of seeing and being seen fits into an exploration of the constructed notion of the “gaze.” This notion is widely explored by feminist critics, who point to the male gaze directed toward women and their bodies that transforms them into objectified sources of erotic pleasure. Starting from Freud’s scopophilia, introduced in Three Essays on Human Sexuality, which depicts the pleasure derived from looking at erotic objects, [9] and moving to Lacan, who gave theoretical force to the gaze (le regard), [10] contemporary cinema studies [11] explore the male gaze as the active power that looks. [12] Of course, this “male gaze” and “erotic pleasure” have no part here. [13] But the “gaze,” that is, the culturally specific way of looking at things and persons, and the way we understand people looking at us, falls into social categories that interest me in the Oedipus Tyrannus; “a gaze can never be neutral and … every act of seeing involves a ‘way of seeing.’ ” [14] We should also bear in mind that even before the proliferation of cinema studies—from the 1970s onward—and feminist criticism, the notion of “gaze” could be detected in works on classical literature. I take the classic work by Bruno Snell, The Discovery of the Mind, especially the chapter on “Homer’s View of Man,” as a case in point. [15] In this much-cited study, the author makes us “see” the many different ways that Homeric heroes “look”: the “fixing gaze” [16] of a warrior, the uncanny deadly stare simulating that of a dragon, [17] and the gleam in the eyes that somebody else sees in us. [18] So it comes as no surprise that Helen Lovatt’s 2013 book focuses entirely on The Epic Gaze. [19]

The special quality of the gaze positions it in a clearly social context; we “look at” others in an ideologically informed manner and, in return, we “receive” the gaze of others. [20] We can be either recipients or agents. The lack of respect that Oedipus will see reflected in the eyes of the citizens of Thebes will corroborate the ruin of his social status; similarly, the gazes of Jocasta and Laius, when he meets them in Hades, will reflect his hideous transgressions. Of course, seeing and being seen is an interactive process. Oedipus’ gaze toward others will be irrevocably changed. The benign, intelligent, empowered king will be transformed into what he has now become: a social outcast doubly mutilated. Oedipus refuses to be the agent of such a gaze; blindness will protect him from the visible manifestations of shame. As public space is also a moral space, a blind Oedipus will not witness his own ethical ruin or his social degradation. In the reciprocal network of power relations that the polis engenders, things have now been reversed, for “men do not simply look; their gaze carries with it the power of action and of possession.” [21] As Oedipus becomes ethically and socially disempowered, so does his gaze. Self-blinding is a very conscious decision. [22]

We may understand now why Oedipus declares his sole agency for the self-blinding, despite the anxiously repeated question of the chorus: “who was the daimon who inflicted this on you?” There is, in addition, another dimension to this act, which I will consider now by examining the notion of the human agent as a “strong evaluator”—that is to say, “a person who strongly evaluates his desires” and thus “is capable of a reflection which is more articulate.” [23] The result is a moral decision whose motivation goes deeper still; the strong evaluator “has articulacy about depth.” [24] It is obvious that Oedipus meets all these prerequisites. Faced with an extreme situation, he acts as a human agent and can indeed be seen as a strong evaluator, for he makes a difficult decision and articulates his motives in great depth. He does this with the same responsibility, lucidity, and determination he has demonstrated all his life. Such an evaluation is not even a choice; it is an articulation of what one considers “worthy, or higher, or more integrated, or more fulfilling.” [25] In this sense, the self-blinding “is made to represent and somehow contains all the other acts which have gone before it.” [26] It seems credible to assume that Oedipus, at this critical juncture of his life, examines all his possible actions, including suicide—an option he rejects.

The depth of this decision escapes the perception of the chorus (and perhaps also our common human understanding). Since the crimes are so intolerable, the chorus seems to ask, why not kill yourself? Self-mutilation is more extreme than committing suicide (1367–1368):

Oedipus’ following justification of the act is lengthy (1369–1415), leaving no room for doubts about his motivation. The blinding could have been characterized as an act of passion, but this would presuppose an impulsive reaction to extreme emotions. Obviously, Oedipus is filled with pain, sorrow, and shame as he enters the palace and the nuptial chamber; his self-blinding, however, appears well-calculated and is clearly reasoned in his reply to the chorus (1371–1378):

I take these words at face value. Death, a solution entertained by the chorus, could not erase Oedipus’ dread of the moment of looking, sight intact, upon his parents in Hades. Nor is it a lesser surrogate for death, for even death does not expunge his deeds. Oedipus clearly says that he wants to shut himself off from the world; mutilating the senses connecting him to this world is his method. Sight is the paramount sense, but he would also willingly destroy his ears so as to block the hearing as well (1386–1388): Oedipus wishes to reduce himself to a mutilated body, nurturing his wounds in the isolation of a blindness safeguarded by a blockading of his senses. Thus Oedipus’ body becomes doubly mutilated: the original “act” was performed by Laius, the second by Oedipus himself in full consciousness of his action. This last corporeal scarring is equivalent to Oedipus’ giving himself the second feature of his identity, with which he will be known around the world: in a sense, one can discern a “cyclic” formation in Oedipus’ life, which results in a consolidation of the corporeal “dimensions” of his identity. [28] Performing the second mutilation is the only way to make his earthly existence bearable, and also a way to transport himself to a place where sorrow can no longer touch him, as he himself declares (1389–1390): τὸ γὰρ / τὴν φροντίδ’ ἔξω τῶν κακῶν οἰκεῖν γλυκύ (“it is a joy to live with one’s thoughts beyond the reach of sorrow”). Oedipus languishes, disconnected from the world, while awaiting the announcement of his punishment.

The tendency to consider the blinding as self-punishment is tinged with a Christian morality that observes the self-inflicted punishments of the sinner as acts of remorse and repentance involving deprivation of earthly pleasures, infliction of physical pain, and the like. The martyrdom of saints has familiarized us with physical suffering in the name of piety or of a noble moral or metaphysical cause. In classical thought, however, committing a crime and suffering the appropriate punishment needed to be publicly proclaimed. My argument for Electra’s prolonged lamentation as a means of publicly proclaiming the penalty for the unredeemed murder of her father speaks for the case. [29] The penalty to be paid for Oedipus’ crimes remains as yet unclear, as Creon sends messengers once more to Delphi to consult the oracle. We know that Oedipus asks to be exiled (ἀπάγετ’ ἐκτόπιον ὅτι τάχιστά με, / ἀπάγετ’, ὦ φίλοι, 1340–1341); we are also aware of the harsh punishment announced at the outset of the play by the selfsame Oedipus for regicide (236–251). However, in the light of the new events, regicide is but one of many crimes, for the guilty party is king and has also committed parricide and incest. This calls for a modification of the penalty, and so Creon seeks oracular advice.

The play ends without any sentence being pronounced. Tradition records several options with or without punishment: in the Iliad Oedipus dies in battle; in the Odyssey he outlives his wife and continues to reign. In Euripides’ Phoenician Women he is shut in the palace, blinded, while Jocasta witnesses the death of her two sons and then commits suicide over their bodies. [30] As I said earlier, I will not consider Oedipus at Colonus, where Oedipus is a blind exiled wanderer, as a “sequel” to Oedipus Tyrannus. In 430/420 BCE when Oedipus Tyrannus was staged, Oedipus at Colonus had probably not even been conceived as a dramatic piece; but even if it had, it is never alluded to in Oedipus Tyrannus. Sophocles, I argue, wanted us to see Oedipus Tyrannus (as he did with all his plays) as a self-contained entity of autonomous drama, [31] where the punishment has yet to be pronounced. The playwright in the excruciating austerity of his art leaves the end of Oedipus suspended.

Any student of Oedipus Tyrannus is bound to stumble upon the thorny issue of the life of Oedipus as determined by the divine oracle that was already pronounced before he was even born. This determinism leaves little scope for Oedipus to shape his own life; free will thus seems impossible, or so one would think. [32] Since there is such a constricting divine strait jacket, how can one consider Oedipus to be a human agent who deliberates vigorously on his options in life, as I have argued in the previous chapter? Is the life of Oedipus not a continuous struggle against a destiny, in which he becomes ever more enmeshed even as he struggles to evade it? Are we to assume a “shared responsibility” between Apollo (as the source of the oracle and as an agent in the action of the drama) and Oedipus himself? [33] And if we do make this assumption, to which side does the balance tip?

It hardly needs to be said that critics have responded to these issues so diversely that their conclusions cover a disparate spectrum, from one deterministic pole that sees Oedipus as a puppet, a victim trapped in the net of a cruel destiny, to the opposite pole where the protagonist has substantial command over his own life choices; in the latter, divine action remains closeted in the background or is identified with authorial intentions. The scope of the present chapter does not allow for this diversity to be tackled individually or even an attempt at broad summarization. However, I will engage in a dialogue with some of the most influential recent critical approaches, for I think we need to reframe not only the old questions but the new answers as well.

I will begin with the famous analogy used by Kovacs to graphically delineate his thesis that, while all of Oedipus’ actions in the play are free, the superior intelligence of Apollo brings them to completion according to his master plan. The analogy is taken from a chess game where an ordinary chess player contends against a grand master: These sentences introduce the critic’s second thesis, which sees tragedy as a “two-decker affair,” since “the action happens on the human plane, but there is always a divine background”; “Apollo … is still visibly at work in the course of the play,” [35] aiming to destroy the hero as retribution for Laius’ transgressions in the case of Chrysippus. To my mind, this is a moderate stance that attempts to reconcile the freedom of Oedipus, who chooses his own actions, with his simultaneous outwitting by the god with superior knowledge. As for the family guilt, I truly doubt that this is discernible in Sophocles’ treatment of the myth in Oedipus Tyrannus.

In order to approach the vexing problem of the co-existence of Oedipus’ freedom of choice and the active involvement of Apollo in the fulfillment of predefined conclusions in the play, we need to return to Oedipus’ self-blinding (1331–1332), which I discussed in the previous section. My reading there stressed the active involvement of the hero as the sole agent of the act. The full passage, answering the agonized questioning of the chorus regarding the self-blinding, “which of the gods set you on?” (τίς σ’ ἐπῆρε δαιμόνων; , 1328), runs as follows (1329–1335):

This is a celebrated and much cited passage of the play. Critics who deal with the divine and human action and their interrelation in the play cannot avoid considering it, since it gives Oedipus’ genuine response to evaluating who is responsible for the sufferings of his entire life (if indeed the τάδ’ ἐμὰ κακὰ πάθεα refers to his entire life), [37] and for his self-blinding in particular.

Analyzing this reply of Oedipus to the chorus, as well as many other passages in the play, Douglas Cairns argues, from the active involvement of Apollo in Oedipus’ downfall, that “it is Oedipus’ moira to fall at the hands of Apollo, and Apollo is seeing to it that this will in fact happen.” [38] This last remark refers, of course, to the indignant remark of Teiresias to Oedipus in the prologue of the play (376–377):

Cairns’s argument is elaborated at great length. There are two postulates (at least) upon which his further reasoning is based. First, that “in OT the existence of the gods and their influence on human affairs is a given;” [39] and, second, that the divine foreknowledge, enabled by the omniscience of the god and the pronouncements of his prophets, delineates the fact that human affairs are divinely willed or caused. Both “maxims” point in the direction of human subjection to a divine will. In Oedipus Tyrannus the parricide and incest are divinely initiated and, as such, manifest an inherent divine order, [40] for neither action would have happened if the god had not misled Oedipus by means of his oracle. In short, the entire plot of the play is set in motion by the god who “initiated [the] search of which [Oedipus] is the object.”

When dealing with the self-blinding in particular, Cairns approaches the relevant passage by stating that “Oedipus sees divine influence in human actions that are adequately motivated by human reasons; in doing so he sees Apollonian influence in an outcome which Apollo’s priest predicted,” and “this outcome is part of the downfall” of Oedipus. [41] The critic refers to Teiresias’ explicit pronouncement, made in the prologos, that time will turn Oedipus’ life upside down, from rich to poor, from citizen to exile, from seeing to blindness (452–456); and so, if the self-blinding was predicted (454), that makes it part of Apollo’s wider plan that he intentionally imposes upon Oedipus. So far, it has been obvious that the scale tips toward the side of Apollo.

However, when we come to the passage in question (1329–1332), a notion of “shared responsibility” shapes Cairns’s analysis, for the self-mutilation in Sophocles’ text implies the view that the action “is something that Apollo causes; but it is also something that Oedipus himself causes.” [42]

I will interrogate Cairns’s argument by pointing to an interesting feature of Sophocles’ diction here, often ignored by commentators; in typical Sophoclean fashion, in just two lines (1331–1332) we have accumulative terms denoting full agency for the action of self-blinding. Oedipus takes full responsibility of the action per se, with the words αὐτόχειρ (= with my own hand), οὔτις (= no one), and ἀλλ᾽ ἐγὼ (= no one else but me). The obdurate repetition of the idea “no one else but me” seems to consolidate a fully-fledged αὐτοχειρία, thus making Oedipus the conscious agent of the action. Thus we can talk about a “shared responsibility” implied in the phrases Ἀπόλλων τάδ’ ἦν and αὐτόχειρ νιν οὔ /τις, ἀλλ’ ἐγώ. This is undermined, however, by Cairns, who argues that the self-blinding (as well as the parricide that is connected with the blinding via the word αὐτόχειρ) “are of the same order, carried out by a human being acting for intelligible human reasons but simultaneously fulfilling prophecies whose logic entails that these aspects of the future, at least, are necessary and unavoidable. These prophecies, moreover, are presented not merely as objects of divine knowledge but “projects of divine intervention.” [43] So, even if Oedipus (hypothetically) did not want to blind himself (as with the actions of parricide and incest, which he committed unwillingly), Apollo would have ensured “that it should still happen despite human opposition.” [44] In this sense, the self-blinding becomes part of a “grand design” that encompasses all divine interventions.

Moreover, the argument goes, the “degree of freedom” possessed by mortals that nonetheless cannot “frustrate” the consummation of the divine plan points to the direction of the “over-determination” of an action, a prime example of which is the death of Patroclus in Book 16 of the Iliad. Even if Patroclus had wanted to remember the advice of Achilles not to press the Trojans beyond the defensive line of the Achaeans and threaten the very walls of Troy, Zeus “intervenes to ensure that he does not.” [45] So “the human agents may will the means, but not the ends; … and even the means are more truly the gods’ than the humans’.” [46] The critic argues that “human freedom is drastically limited” [47] in the action of Oedipus Tyrannus, and consequently, “ ‘free agency’ is not a notion that adequately encapsulates Oedipus’ career, onstage or off.” [48]

I have outlined, thus far, the major points of Cairns’s argument in this important exposition of the divine and human action in Oedipus Tyrannus. It is obvious that Cairns deprives Oedipus of the agency for which I have advocated in the previous section of this chapter. This ‘minimal’ human action is depicted even more graphically and vividly in Cairns’s modification of Kovacs’s well-known analogy of the chess game: With this formulation, the scale tips entirely towards Apollo.

Cairns’s line of argument seems plausible. After all, a similar remark is routinely addressed by students in university classes. How do we allow room for free human action in Oedipus Tyrannus, when we know that Oedipus’ life was pre-determined even before he was born? I will begin my critique of Cairns’s formulations by referring first to the notion of the “over-determination” detected in the action of the self-blinding, then to the comparison he makes with Patroclus’ death. I have argued extensively elsewhere about the over-determination of Patroclus’ death in Iliad 16. [50] In this Iliadic incident, one may argue, Apollo is so dominant that he physically pushes Patroclus back from the walls of Troy, and progressively disarms him minutes before he is killed.

However, this is one of the final acts in the prolonged course of the dramatic action leading to Patroclus’ death: a number of causes, each sufficient on its own to bring about Patroclus’ death, converge in a complex interrelation throughout Book 16. Homer himself attributes a portion of responsibility to the hero in the conditional sentence: “for, if he had observed the word of the son of Peleus, he would surely have escaped the evil fate of black death” [51] (εἰ δὲ ἔπος Πηληϊάδαο φύλαξεν/ἦ τ’ ἂν ὑπέκφυγε κῆρα κακὴν μέλανος θανάτοιο, 16. 686–687). This conditional comment by the poet explicitly acknowledges the “actorial motivation” [52] of Patroclus (he dies after ignoring the instructions of his friend Achilles), and allows, explicitly again, a certain margin for evading death.

It is obvious that Patroclus pursues his own kleos and acts on the battlefield not as Achilles’ proxy but on his own motivations. When Patroclus has forced the panicking Trojans back from the ditch protecting the Greek camp and towards their walled city (16.293, 366–367), he intercepts them and presses them back towards the ships once more (16.395). This instigates the intervention of Sarpedon, which will trigger a series of causally related deaths—Sarpedon will be killed by Patroclus, Patroclus by Euphorbus and Hector, Hector by Achilles—because the clear objective of Book 16 is to rouse the disengaged Achilles back into the battle. [53] It is obvious that what we read here is the poet’s plan, the narratological plan that overrides the plan of Zeus. I shall remind you here that what we consider “the plan of Zeus,” which was formulated in the promise to Thetis, is a rather general condition indicating that Zeus will temporarily favor the Trojans to force the Achaeans to realize Achilles’ importance and beseech him to return to battle. This condition has been already met in Book 9 when the members of the Embassy (following the orders of Agamemnon) offer him a full recompense and entreat his return. It is then that Achilles, adding a further condition, “modifies” the plan of Zeus: he will relent his anger and return to the fray only when the fire reaches his own ships. By Book 15, the parallel plans of Zeus and Achilles have reached an irresolvable impasse (for Achilles remains inactive, despite the proximity of the fire to his own ships) that will be broken only by Patroclus’ intervention, which triggers an inevitable chain of events leading to his own death, to that of Hector, and finally, to the homilia of Priam and Achilles that forms the closure of our Iliad. [54]

The poet thus sets aside the two plans—of Zeus and of Achilles—and contrives his own narratological plan that defies both. He conjures up a sophisticated nexus of decisions and events in which Patroclus is inextricably enmeshed before dying as a double of Meleager; [55] and, in dying, Patroclus mobilizes the inactive Achilles, who can now return to battle with his honor fully restored, and brings about the micro-perspective of the end of the Iliad and the macro-perspective of the fall of Troy. [56] It has been argued that “the poet’s metaphor [for his determination of the plot] is the will of Zeus,” and that “[the poet] claims his own originality by taking the traditional boulê Dios and altering it to fit his own story and provide not merely the plot of the epic, but a mechanism for the poet to enter into the story.” [57]

The prediction of Patroclus’ death by Zeus in Book 8 (473–477) and, even more so, the lengthy foretelling of the whole sequence leading, from Achilles’ lending the armor to Patroclus, to the deaths of Sarpedon, Patroclus, and Hector, and the fall of Troy (15.64–72), occupy a different category than Zeus’ and Achilles’ plans. They portray the divine foreknowledge that is of the same order as Teiresias’ foretelling of Oedipus’ self-blinding. However, this foreknowledge does not prove a “divinely willed or caused” human action, as Cairns claims; both, I argue, belong to the foreknowledge of the poet/narrator. [58] Thus Patroclus bears the responsibility for unraveling a complicated narratological plan that starts as the will of Achilles, moves to the petition of Thetis, is consolidated by the promise of Zeus, and transformed again by Achilles, only to be manipulated in its entirety by the poet; [59] in short, this is the narratological plan of the Iliad.

Along the same lines, in the vein of narratology and semiotics, John Peradotto in his “Disauthorizing Prophecy” approaches the oracle of Apollo in Oedipus Tyrannus: Given that the oracle represents the narrative, then “the actions of Apollo are identical to the constitutive actions of the author, while those of Oedipus, Jocasta, and the rest are but products of those constitutive actions.” [61] Furthermore, “what Apollo ‘does’ in the OT,” the author argues, “is something that the poet does directly; what Oedipus ‘does’ is something the poet does indirectly.” The divine activity in Oedipus Tyrannus is reflected in the “direct operation of the poet on the plot,” for which no motivation resembling the way humans act is required. [62] It can also help us to explain, in my view, the trouble we experience in attributing an act of hybris to Oedipus that would conveniently and theologically justify his fall. The many and controversial analyses of the second stasimon, which introduces the notion of the tyrant and his hybris, as well as the many attempts to find Oedipus at fault either in his aggressive attitude to Teiresias and Creon, or in his intellectual pride, point to the futility of any attempt to construct a clear and unobstructed course leading from an “angry,” “offended,” or simply “revengeful” deity to the fallen mortal. [63]

My argument thus far has depicted Oedipus as a conscious human agent and a strong evaluator who takes full responsibility for his actions. The self-blinding is the conscious attempt to mutilate his sight, rendering the socially constructed way of seeing and being seen impossible; he cannot endure the gaze of the others, be it his family or his fellow citizens. At the same time, he cannot endure the complete change of his own gaze. The superiority of a socially accepted benign king is forever destroyed, for he can no longer command respect in the public space. Oedipus has been transfigured from a respected king into a social outcast. In the actions of seeing and being seen, his transgressions and the ensuing public shame will be constantly re-enacted. The decision to blind himself is truly his own.

Thus, in the famous lines Ἀπόλλων τάδ’ ἦν and αὐτόχειρ νιν οὔ/τις, ἀλλ’ ἐγὼ, I attribute to Oedipus his own clear share of responsibility. It remains to be seen how a person, such as the Sophoclean Oedipus, can act freely as a human agent and exert his own will in the context of the entire tragedy from within the circumscribed confines of his story given by the tradition. This will be addressed in the next section by revisiting the influential article of J.-P. Vernant, “Intimations of Will in Greek Tragedy” and moving on to re-evaluate the notions of will, agent, and the self, which—to my mind—are highly applicable to Oedipus. Sophocles has produced a play where he confronts the ultimate challenge of depicting a person with strength of will and remarkable determination despite the inflexible confines of the tradition that engendered his story.

Up until now, critics have been at great pains to prove the degree of divine intervention in human affairs in Oedipus Tyrannus. I suggest taking the reverse course in our critical thinking; what if, instead of trying to determine how much the divine influences the course of events in the play, we examine the opposite perspective and try to establish the degree of human agency manifested in the play? In doing so, we should take the existence of the gods, together with the theological system they comprise, as an indispensable and constitutive part of the tradition within which Sophocles and his contemporary Athenians lived, breathed, and wrote. Sophocles composes a play that acknowledges this tradition; how could he do otherwise? Nevertheless, within this tradition, he creates a play that studies the boundless limits of human action. Sophocles constructs his Oedipus as an intelligent human being making decisions after intense deliberation, despite the circumscribed boundaries of his life; here, the playwright faces a challenge greater than in any other traditional narrative.

In what follows, I suggest a different perspective for interpreting the divine and human actions in Oedipus Tyrannus. In doing this, I shall revisit and re-evaluate the influential approach of Vernant regarding “Intimations of the Will in Greek Tragedy,” where he examines the manifestation of the will in Greek tragedy as a culturally determined notion also linked to the categories of action and agent. [64] Here the emphasis is put on the judicial reforms and institutions of fifth-century Athens that explain, according to the critic, the emergence of the human subject as a discrete entity, and their decision-making and consequent actions, as we move from the “objective crime” (of the Homeric poems) to the “subjective responsibility” for transgressions as formulated by Aristotle a century later. [65] So the individual in fifth-century Athens emerges as “subject to the law,” [66] a political subject. Seductive as this idea might be, it is the first point to attract my criticism. The second is related to the way that Vernant sees the tragic agent as “still limited, indecisive, and vaguely defined,” [67] presenting “internal inconsistencies” due to the incomplete transition between older and newer concepts of justice, between Homer and the tragic genre. I will argue, on the contrary, that Oedipus can be seen as “an embodied individual,” whose particular ethical role is realized within his social and political context, and is neither “fragmented” nor “incomplete,” but a unitary entity, a bound self. [68] This is largely connected with the notion of identity, and “what it is to be a human agent,” [69] which has been the line of my argument throughout this book.

As I proceed to discuss the notion of the self as a non-fragmented individual, well established by the fifth century BCE (which, to my mind, should be considered as the foundation upon which Greek tragedy is formed), many collateral, but significant, issues will emerge and be tackled. First, the notion of the “will,” which is a highly problematic term when applied to ancient texts before the Stoics—let alone the notion of the “free will.” Equally problematic is to impose later assumptions about the will on the ancient notion (or better, on the notions that fall within the spectrum of our contemporary concept of the will), thus creating confusion and misunderstandings, to the extent of seriously undermining the concomitant notions of human agency and decision making in classical Greek thought, especially when a contemporary reader seeks to identify a sequence of events purely human in attribution. Second, I will discuss the interconnection between, and transition from, the “objective crime” of the Homeric poems to the “subjective responsibility” of the tragic genre, thought by Vernant to be an “incomplete transition.” I will raise the issue that, in cultural history, the coexistence of “old” and “new” structures of thought can be explained not as a deficiently resolved process needing consummation, but as a moment of creation (as Castoriadis defines it), when the old and new coexist in variable proportions and relations, positing a new eidos, a new “form” in the strongest and fullest sense. [70] Finally, this strand of the argument will conclude that Oedipus’ actions in Oedipus Tyrannus are better explained by exploring the notion of the self and the concomitant dimensions of human agency that present a remarkable consistency, determination, and independence despite the constraints imposed by the divine oracle.

Before criticism, however, one should do justice to Vernant’s influential approach by stating that one of the major benefits inherent in it is the realization that a modern reader of Greek tragedy considers the notion of the will as universal and pervasive throughout human history, [71] and consequently seeks to detect in the plays a fully-fledged modern category of the will. However, as the scholar remarks: We have to realize, therefore, that the “conceptual system involved in our representation of what is willed” [73] differs significantly from that of the ancient Greeks.

I shall leave aside for the moment the problematic use of the notion of will in classical texts (but will return to it shortly), in order to examine one crucial deviation from modern concepts, notably that we seek “sequences of actions purely human,” [74] devoid of divine involvement in any process of decision making; the lack of the “purely human” in the ancient tradition leads us to seeing decisions as emanating from a “bound will,” or (as in Homer) of a “double motivation.” When the decision proves catastrophic, as with Patroclus, [75] the poet inserts into the process the factor of a mental blindness (atê) that produces confusion. [76] This confusion of mind, quite often considered of divine provenance, entails an error or “crime” that destroys the mortal, who, under the influence of atê, cannot see clearly and so is unable to predict the consequences of action. In the workings of atê, the ignorance (the agnoia) is embedded in the crime; ignorance becomes intrinsic to the crime. In this sense the mortal is not the author in the full sense of the term, [77] and the crime becomes objective. [78]

This is the Homeric concept of crime, in contrast to the later Aristotelian formulation where “men are responsible for this ignorance,” and therefore emerge as subjects bearing full responsibility for the crime. [79] In this sense, between Homer and Aristotle, noting the significant intermediate stage of the fifth century BCE with the inception of law courts and dramatic performances, we move from an objective crime to the emergence of subjectivity and responsibility of humans as moral agents. [80] Vernant sees the individual in fifth-century Athens as a political subject, notably as “subject to the law,” [81] as stated earlier, instantiating (as it were) a stage of this process of transition.

Of course, counter-arguments exist regarding the workings of atê, which downplay the involvement of a god as an agent in the Homeric or dramatic action: the divine involvement does not detract from a hero’s responsibility for his own action. Atê manifests itself only when the mortal works toward it. Even in cases of forceful studies of atê, such as the death of Patroclus in the Iliad or Aeschylus’ The Persians, the “mortal works towards it”: Patroclus pursues his own kleos oblivious to the warnings of Achilles, and Xerxes relentlessly incites his own arrogance and irreverence. This tangible intervention of the divine needs a well-established mortal foundation in order to materialize. [82] Yet atê lays the grounds for considering the double motivation in Homer, as well as the “bound will” of the tragic hero, with variable attribution of responsibility between the divine and the human.

However, one major aspect of human dependence or independence, in relation to the divine, needs clarification before constructing a persuasive argument regarding the notion of the will. Vernant rightly argues that between “the idea of ignorance that causes the misdeed” (agnoia due to religious forces) and “the ignorance that excuses it” (the akousion of the action in the judicial terminology of the fifth century BCE), the category of the will is nowhere implied, [83] and, additionally, that in Aristotle “the idea of a free power of decision remains alien to his thought.” [84]

Along with Vernant, who raises questions arising from the notions of will (and the related notions of agency, intention, volition, and the like), we should note that the notion of the will is highly problematic (let alone the notion of a free will) when used before the Stoics, and consequently its use should be redefined in the context of Greek tragedy. When we, like Vernant, turn to Aristotle for enlightenment, [85] we realize, with the guidance of Michael Frede, [86] that the philosopher did not have a notion of the will, for he lacked the appropriate notion of choice in the way that a modern person would understand it. Not all of our actions are due to a mental event (a choice or decision to act); there is the case of “the choice without will” [87] when acting against reason (or on a non-rational desire). This is attributed to a failure of “training, practice, exercise, discipline, and reflection”—in short, to a lack of education or upbringing that “accounts for akratic action (ἀκρασία).” [88] Closer to what we understand as will are the Aristotelian notions of “willing or wanting something” (βούλεσθαι / βούλησις) and the notion of “choice” (προαιρεῖσθαι / προαίρεσις). [89] This latter is a “special form of willing” for two reasons. First, because “choosing” depends strictly on whether it is up to us (ἐφ᾽ ἡμῖν) to do something or make something happen; [90] but the “capacity to do things” does not necessarily coincide with “willing to do things.” [91] Second, because choices can be explained “in terms of the attachment of reason to the good” [92] and not (again necessarily) in terms of the will. Failure in the development of an individual human nature (due to immature development of character) results in failure to attain the good, something related, not to the will, but rather to the conditions of one’s life (often beyond the control of the individual). Moreover, “just as there is no notion of a will in Aristotle, there is also no notion of freedom”; [93] this makes the reference to a free will in classical texts even more problematic. In the Aristotelian view, there are regularities in this world that dictate a course of action. The celestial cosmos is “governed by a strict regularity,” [94] while human affairs, although presenting a certain latitude for free action, are again somehow circumscribed “because of imperfect realizations of human nature”; [95] only the virtuous person can make the appropriate choices.

We need to advance several centuries, to Stoicism (notably, to Epictetus, in the first and second centuries CE), before we have, for the first time, a notion of will “as an ability of the mind or of reason to make choices and decisions,” [96] which comes about as a “natural development” of the unitary idea of the Stoics that the soul is a reason, and therefore what we are is essentially rational. [97] The Aristotelian proairesis is taken up by Epictetus, this time to denote “the ability to make choices, of which willings are just products”; [98] and this is “indeed,” according to Frede, “the first time that we have any notion of a will.” [99]

Not only in Greek tragedy, but in our own times as well, the notion of free will is precarious. John Hyman, a contemporary philosopher, questions the notion of the will altogether (in antiquity, as well as in modernity and postmodernity), following a long line of nineteenth- and twentieth-century philosophers who have also criticized this idea. He advocates that in place of the “will” we should explore instead the “four dimensions of human agency” (physical, ethical, psychological, and intellectual). [100] The differentiation of action into these four dimensions is preferable to using such notions as volition or intention, which are thought to be the cause of the human act. [101] Of course, Hyman writes, it is “widely regarded as axiomatic” that the “will [is] the source of all voluntary or intentional action.” [102] However, under closer scrutiny the notion of will collapses into the four aforementioned dimensions of human agency, which, although partially overlapping, represent distinctive areas of that agency: [103] action emanates from the physical dimension; choice, from the ethical; desire and intention from the psychological; and reason and knowledge from the intellectual.

I append this formulation of the “fragmentation of the will” without any intention of entering into the contemporary debate about the existence of the notion (which is beyond the scope of this book), but to highlight the precariousness of the use of the term and its ensuing misunderstandings. It is also helpful because we realize that it is rather the notions of the self and of human agency that we should touch on if we want to understand the individual in tragedy. Despite the brilliance of Vernant’s analysis in “Intimations of the Will in Greek Tragedy,” [104] the use of the notion of the will complicates rather than facilitates our understanding of human action in tragedy. In the following pages, I shall be concerned with the notion of the self and the subjective responsibility connected with the action of the autonomous individual, thus extending my analysis in chapter 3. Exploring the boundaries of the action of a human agent will help us understand where, I argue, the focus of the Sophoclean treatment of the Oedipus story is placed.

When considering subjective responsibility as the result of judicial reforms, [105] and the related notions of the self and the subject, we touch on another aspect of Vernant’s approach that is open to criticism. Vernant refers to the “difficult, multiple, and incomplete self,” and the “weakness of action” in Greek tragedy; in this formulation, the self again emerges as somehow fragmented, despite the “subjectivity” for which he advocated earlier in his essay. Of course, this emphasis on fragmentation resonates very well with the “antihumanistic ring” Miriam Leonard detects, which is in alignment with the structuralist movement and its questioning of the “primacy of the subject,” [106] and which is also corroborated by the Foucauldian notion of men’s “discontinuous history.” [107] So in this sense the incompleteness of the self in Greek tragedy, as postulated by Vernant, reflects a “critique of the structuralist and post structuralist about the political subject,” [108] rather than an inherent incongruity in the conceptualization of the notion of the self in fifth-century Athens. Vernant gives us more insight into “the humanism in structuralism than [he] does about legislation in fifth-century Athens.” [109]

I corroborate Leonard’s critique by returning to some of the points I raised earlier in the book [110] that will help us reconsider Vernant’s “difficult, multiple, and incomplete self” in tragedy, and the “incomplete transition” to newer forms of thought, which are not yet fully materialized.

As I advocated earlier, at the end of the sixth century BCE there was a new social signification attached to the abstractions of “Athens” and “Athenians,” which pointed to the will of the Athenians to become an empowered body politic that could collectively effect change in the public realm. The Athenians wished to have an independent polis not adherent to Sparta; they also refused to think of themselves (to imagine themselves, in Castoriadian terminology) as clients to local aristocrats, nor did they tolerate tyranny. The political praxis during the turbulent years between 510 BCE (the abolition of tyranny) and 508 BCE (the Athenian Revolution and the ensuing Cleisthenian reforms) marks the autonomy of a collectivity in the process of developing strong ties between its members and, undoubtedly, creating a new civic identity. This civic identity, which marks the interconnection and interdependence between the individual subjectivity and the collective character of the Athenians, has been examined in chapter 3. I will only remind the reader here that a marked trait of the self in the polis is the accountability of the individuals to their community. The self in this sense is so strongly political that it becomes much broader than Vernant’s political subject, who is principally subject to the law.

With this new concept of “Athens” and “Athenians” in mind, we can understand better how the new political system was conceived and developed so as to produce the radical, direct, participatory, and deliberative democracy of classical Athens as we know it. Fragmenting and reassembling the body politic, Cleisthenes lays the foundation for a system that sees the common traits binding the citizens together behind the multiformity and multiplicity of region, social class, wealth, education, political beliefs, and aspirations. Each new Cleisthenian tribe is living proof of the new ideology of working together and of being together in making polities—in various rituals, festivals, and dances for the city, as well as in battle and in collective burial. The Athenians spent most of their adult lives as members of their political tribe, as political beings. To my mind, this new powerful civic self is strongly represented in Attic tragedy, where the deliberations of those on stage, whether protagonists or the members of the chorus, refer to the wide range of issues associated with this very identity, as I argued earlier in this book. I cannot see anything fragmentary or incomplete in Greek tragedy; [111] on the contrary, fierce debates, strong opinions, and immovable attitudes are the material out of which tragedy is made.

Vernant contended, however, that in tragedy the transition between the older forms of moral action and the self and the new innovations are not clearly demarcated [112] because of an incomplete process. I think that, despite Vernant’s strong structuralist methodology, this idea resonates with an older trend of historicism that sees evolution as a mainly linear progression—the old will be gradually replaced by the new in a continuous line of successive forms and structures. This view of cultural history is no longer adequate, which constitutes the second parameter of the critique that I bring to the discussion. At any given moment in a human society, structures (intellectual, ethical, emotional, behavioral, and so on) exist as a synthesis of various strata, where the old and new exist synchronically in varying proportions and relations. When we come to classical Athens and the tragic genre, we can understand the co-existence of the divine and the human, not as an incomplete transition, but as a new “creation” in the sense that Castoriadis defines it; not as a new discovery of something that was there before, undiscovered, but as a process of “constituting the new,” [113] which is an “active constitution,” during which the Athenians re-conceptualize their “social imaginary significations.” [114] In the words of Castoriadis: For Castoriadis, society “institutes itself in instituting the world of significations that is its own, in correlation to which, alone, a world can and does exist for it”; [116] in other words, “society brings into being a world of significations and itself exists in reference to such a world.” [117] Of course, this has to be understood in the context of the process of the “self-institution” of Athenian society, where an institution, which is a socially sanctioned symbolic network, comprises both a functional and an imaginary component. [118] Since Greek tragedy in particular is one of the main domains of the imaginary, where the re-conceptualization of social significations are formed and explored, we would expect to find there this active creation that comprises the notion of self, the individual, and the agent in the socio-historical context of fifth-century Athens. Human agency presupposes autonomy, and refers to “the relationship between the individual and society, and to the individuals’ self-constitution within their specific social context in order to become subjects of action capable of transforming their reality.” [119] This creation, of course, acknowledges the “pre-political” (in Castoriadis’s sense) existence of the gods and their oracles, and the constraints they impose on mortal lives. The “pre-political” is never fully eradicated, and under certain circumstances will resurface again, when classical political thought weakens in the face of other structures, where the active citizen is replaced by an individual subject to a Hellenistic king or Roman emperor. However, in Greek tragedy, when we are still en plein classical thought, viable forms of the individual, in correlation with the collective, are tried out so as to ensure the continuation of the unobstructed life of the polis. To this end, the social significations should be re-imagined or thought of and consequently sustained or modified; [120] “whatever has been imagined strong enough,” argues Castoriadis, “to shape behavior, speech, or objects can, in principle, be re-imagined (represented) by somebody else.” [121]

Consequently, I consider as fallacious (and an easy way out) any idea that the existence of the gods and their oracles dominate, dictate, and predetermine the thoughts and actions of the characters in a dramatic play; an idea prevalent among laymen and scholars alike. When it comes to Greek literature, nowhere do we find fiercer debates between the dramatic personae employing rational argumentation with a clearer view of the world and their position within it than in Greek tragedy. The comportment of the persons shows a clear evaluation of their position and the possibilities open to them, calculation of how to achieve aims, the making of choices, and the plans and strategies that constitute the essential components of agency and self. [122] If in this strategic planning crucial fragments of information are missing, as with Oedipus, this does not vitiate these actions of the essential parameters of human agency. Most of us (human beings in the twenty-first century CE with a well-established notion of the self) have found ourselves in similar situations where our evaluation of our lives—and our choice-making—has led to mis-planning because of deficient data.

Returning to the actions of Oedipus in Sophocles’ play, all the parameters comprising human agency in action can be discerned: having a notion of the self (albeit with erroneous data), evaluating his life according to this notion, making calculations, and making decisions so as to plot the course of his life. However, these actions, no matter how important, are not, on their own, enough to make him a moral agent. Oedipus needs to recognize some aspirations that fall into the category of evaluating one’s life as worth living: a morally sound measuring up to “human feelings like pride, shame, guilt, sense of worth, love,” [123] and their like. [124] Moreover, the different possibilities, and the choices between them, are evaluated, with the clear intention on Oedipus’ part to live at last a life worth living, eschewing even the remote possibility of killing his father and marrying his mother. In the way that Sophocles handles the story of Oedipus, I can see no fatalistic or deterministic or divinely bound action, but I can see a vital agent, a subject with a strong notion of himself when evaluating, calculating, deciding, planning, and measuring up his actions against highly moral standards. In this sense, the action of self-blinding—which is, admittedly, a choice with a will—encapsulates all his previous actions.

We can also understand fate in Oedipus Tyrannus (that is, the circumscribed limits of the hero’s actions) as “the enabling circumstance that allows tragic events to take place.” [125] In this sense, the oracle/divine action is what Peradotto calls “the narrative itself.” In our play Oedipus acts and responds to the particular circumstances as a human agent and a strong evaluator, with high moral standards. Dodds, as early as 1966, refuted the common assumption of divinely bound action in Oedipus Tyrannus by stating that “everything that [Oedipus] does on the stage from first to last he does as a free agent.” [126] In my opinion, this emerges with crystal clarity in the play; Sophocles’ topic is the transcendent ability of mortals to rise in stature above all external constraints.

To ease the minds of modern readers regarding these constraints (be they the gods, necessity, or fate), we should bear in mind that it is in our own society that we no longer conjoin religious faith with belief in prophecy; but this was not the case in the ancient world, whether pagan or Christian. [127] So, the crucial question in Oedipus Tyrannus must be formulated thus: whether Oedipus acts in a manner “true to himself” [128] —that is, true to his character as portrayed throughout the play. Are his actions and decisions in accordance with what we have come to know as Οedipus? Do they point to the individuality of Oedipus and relate to his ethical dimension? Rush Rehm argues regarding Orestes, where similar issues of coercion and agency are raised regarding the killing of his mother in the Oresteia, that “no one but Orestes must commit this crime, which is another way of saying that murdering his mother Clytemnestra and her lover Aegisthus, for killing his father Agamemnon, is part and parcel of what it means to be Orestes.” [129]

From that perspective, the notion of identity for which I have argued throughout the present chapter emerges: what is to be Oedipus? Oedipus’ actions, from first to last, are implicit in his character. Or, to quote again Cameron’s words regarding his self-blinding, that is the crucial proof of Oedipus’ subjectivity and agency; this act “is made to represent and somehow contain all the other acts which have gone before it.” [130] Oedipus’ choices, as we have seen, are explained in terms of the attachment to the good, for he earnestly strove to attain a life free from parricide and incest. Contrary to the theories that see in him a tyrannical disposition, [131] he is a good king, commanding approval and respect from the people of Thebes; and this reflects the line of conduct that he has pursued throughout his life, despite the lamentable outcome of the series of revelations that have constructed the new narrative of his life.

I conclude this excursus into the pressing and contentious issue of human agency and the subjective individuality that is embedded in the tragic situation in Oedipus Tyrannus (as is in most Greek tragedies) by stating that Oedipus is nowhere powerless in the hands of his gods, despite the renowned constraints to his life. In Oedipus Tyrannus the struggle of the individual in articulating his reasoning while rationally debating his position in this world, and notably in the quest for his identity, emerges with great clarity. Sophocles’ Oedipus is not bound by a family curse as in Aeschylus. He commits crimes in ignorance (agnoia), for which he alone is responsible to the extent that he does not understand the signs of his identity (which are intentionally blurred). In a contemporary court of law he would have been absolved. He uses all his intellectual powers to understand and act according to a set of values that constitute a life worth living. He is a strong evaluator and a moral agent because what he does, he does with courage, intelligence, and determination. He confronts all the constraints of his life with the utmost fortitude. If at the end he falls, he does so with his immense dignity intact.