Introduction

Since the end of the secular, Cold War struggle between liberalism and communism, conflicts around the world have increasingly reflected a religious challenge to liberalism and its rationalist thesis that reason is our “only Star and compass” (Locke 1988, 182).

The importance of the issue of religious anti-rationalism and political rationalism in Sophocles has been recognized most emphatically in modern times by Nietzsche, the deepest philosophic source of post-modernism. Indeed, when Nietzsche launched his attack on the Western tradition of liberal, democratic rationalism — an attack so momentous for the post-modern world (see Rorty 1989, 27—30, 39—43, 61—6, 96—121; 1991, 32—3) — he did so in the name of the ^[1] tragic grandeur of Sophocles' and Aeschylus's heroes. Nietzsche argued that, in contrast to the cowardly, dogmatic rationalism and shallow optimism of the scientific world view, founded and embodied by Socrates, the tragic world view, set forth by Aeschylus and Sophocles, courageously and honestly faced the world as it truly is: chaotic, cruel, and ultimately impenetrable to human reason.^[2] Yet the tragic human being was not broken by this vision of cosmic indifference and conflict, but rather lovingly affirmed “the infinite primordial joy of existence,” as well as “the eternal suffering” at the heart of Being, and celebrated “the playful construction and destruction of the individual world as the overflow of a primordial delight” (1967, 105, 112, 142).

But that culture was destroyed by Socrates, who replaced it with a rationalistic culture, one based on the optimistic, anti-tragic, “faith” or “illusion” that reason “can penetrate the deepest abysses of being”; that happiness is the proper goal of life and that reason can lead human beings to happiness; and hence that the life based on reason is the best way of life for a human being (1967, 95—7; see also 86-8, 91). Socrates is consequently “the one turning point and vortex of so-called world history” (96). The culture he founded remains our culture, characterized by “the triumph of optimism, the gradual prevalence of rationality, practical and theoretical utilitarianism, no less than de­mocracy itself” (21, emphases in text; see also 109-14, 91). The triumph of Socratic political rationalism, however, foreshadows “the over-all degeneration of man,” for Socratic culture is not only deluded in its rationalistic understanding of the world and in its self-contradictory “faith” in reason but, more importantly, is degraded by its incapacity to face and experience the ennobling tragedy of human existence (1989, 118, emphasis in text; see also 54, 103—4, 112—4, 158—9).

To avoid the final victory of the democratic, peaceful, subtragic, subhumanly happy “last man,” Nietzsche, who dubs himself “the first tragic philosopher,” calls for a rebirth of tragedy, the re-establishment of a tragic, warlike culture that is based on a rejection of political ratio­nalism, an “affirmation of passing away and destroying....

superman.”

The principal example Nietzsche gives of a human being who exemplifies the tragic world view is Sophocles’ Oedipus.^{[4] [5]} In the first place, Oedipus has the courage to confront the world honestly, “with intrepid Oedipus eyes” (1989, 161). Furthermore, “Sophocles under­stood the most sorrowful figure of the Greek stage, the unfortunate Oedipus, as the noble human being who, in spite of his wisdom, is destined to error and misery but who eventually, through his tre­mendous suffering, spreads a magical blessing that remains effective even beyond his decease” (1967, 67). “The wise Oedipus” achieves the greatest wisdom and nobility because, through his suffering — an unjust suffering, unprovoked by “sin” — he comes to understand, to accept, and ultimately to affirm the utter cruelty and mystery of the world and the inability of reason to comprehend the world or to guide our lives (42, 68—9; see also 46, 73). Most importantly, “the most sorrowful figure of the Greek stage, the unfortunate Oedipus,” also finds comfort, a metaphysical and pious comfort, in the mystery of being (1967, 67).

For he “is confronted by the supraterrestrial cheerfulness that descends from the divine sphere” (68). “In the Old Tragedy, one could sense at the end that metaphysical comfort without which the delight in tragedy cannot be explained at all. The reconciling tones sound purest, perhaps, in the Oedipus at Colonus'' (108). Accordingly, “Sophocles in his Oedipus sounds as a prelude the holy man's song of triumph” (70, emphasis in text).

But was Sophocles truly an opponent of rationalism? Did Sophocles present his Oedipus as a model human being who wisely and nobly rejects reason? Did Sophocles anticipate Nietzsche in teaching that human life is fundamentally tragic and that the universe is funda­mentally mysterious and hence impenetrable to the human mind? Or was Sophocles, like his younger contemporaries Socrates and Thucydides, a believer in the private, rational life of the mind but skeptical concerning the practical possibilities of a popular, political rationalism or enlightenment?

The brilliant, richly provocative, and deeply influential interpreta­tion of Sophocles by Nietzsche is not as clearly grounded in convincing, detailed, textual analysis as one might expect. For example, in The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche bases his entire interpretation of Sophocles' Oedipus the Tyrant and Oedipus at Colonus on the claim that Oedipus's solving of the riddle of the Sphinx proves that he is unequivocally wise and that his wisdom was the wisdom of a “holy man” (1967, 42, 46, 67—70). But, in the text of Oedipus the Tyrant, Oedipus claims that he solved the riddle of the Sphinx through unassisted human reason alone and consequently denies the claims to wisdom made by religious prophets and oracles (390-8).^[7] In this book, I assess the interpretation of Sophocles by Nietzsche on the basis of a detailed textual analysis of the Theban plays — Oedipus the Tyrant, Oedipus at Colonus, and Antigone — the very plays on which Nietzsche bases his interpretation of Sophocles as a critic of rationalism.

Since Nietzsche especially — whom Harold Bloom, for example, calls “the truest guide to Oedipus the King” (1988, 4) — the view of Sophocles as a proto-Nietzschean or religious enemy of rationalism has tended to prevail among a wide variety of thinkers and scholars.^[8] Heidegger, for example, affirms that it is Oedipus's “passion for disclosure of being,” the “fundamental passion” of “the science of the Greeks,” that leads to his “downfall” (1980, 107). Bernard Knox claims that Oedipus the Tyrant “is a reassertion of the religious view of a divinely ordered universe” against the “rationalism” of “the fifth-century philosophers and sophists” (1998, 47—8). Charles Segal is less sure of Sophocles' piety but nonetheless emphatic regarding his rejection of rationalism: “The verbal ironies of Oedipus Tyrannus reflect both the ultimate failure of Oedipus to solve the true ‘riddle' of the play — the riddle of the meaning of life in a universe governed by chance or by distant and mysterious gods — and the very incoherence of a universe that logos, reason-as-language, cannot make intelligible” (1986, 73).^[9]

Over the past two decades, trailblazing studies of Sophocles' political thought by J. Peter Euben (1986, 1990, 1997) and Arlene Saxonhouse, (1986, 1988, 1992) have challenged this scholarly consensus by stressing that there are important similarities and continuities between Sophocles and Socratic thought.^{[10] [11]} However, while I am indebted to their work in important ways, I go further than they do in arguing that, although Sophocles is cautiously critical ofpolitical rationalism — namely, the attempt to base political society on reason alone — he clearly points to the need for a theoretical rationalism — namely, the attempt to steer one's own life by the compass of unaided reason.

My own study of Sophocles leads me to conclude that Sophocles is not a critic of rationalism, that he does not endorse the denunciations of reason made by such characters as Teiresias and the blind Oedipus, even though he also does not simply endorse the secular, anti- conventional, political rationalism represented by Oedipus's “tyrannical” rule. I argue, for example, that Sophocles believes that the downfall of Oedipus in Oedipus the Tyrant is ultimately caused, not by his dedication to reason, but by his abandonment of reason and his turn to piety. But Sophocles also believes that political rulers will inevitably abandon reason in favor of pious hopes when confronted with such mortal political crises as Oedipus faces at the beginning of that play. Similarly, I show that it is not the religious, anti-rationalist Oedipus who is the hero of Oedipus at Colonus, but rather the humane and enlightened Theseus, whose states­manship constitutes a middle way between an immoderate political rationalism that dismisses the power of religion — exemplified by Oedipus the Tyrant — and a piety that rejects reason — exemplified by Oedipus at Colonus. Finally, I argue that Antigone ultimately demonstrates her superiority to Creon, not only through her heroic piety but also through her heroic willingness to question her most cherished convictions about justice and about the possibility of an immortal happiness. The Antigone, I suggest, invites one to ascend from the pious heroism of Antigone to the humane wisdom of Sophocles. The true model of rationalism to be found in the Theban plays, I conclude, is Sophocles himself, who presents the problem of politics, reason, and piety with a genuinely philosophic clarity, calm, and depth, but whose rationalism differs from Socrates and even from Thucydides, most notably, in its somber reserve. I close my study with an examination of the teachings of

Nietzsche, Socrates, and Aristotle concerning the relation between tragedy and philosophy. I argue that, notwithstanding the claims of Nietzsche to the contrary, the rationalism of Socrates and Aristotle is not simply optimistic, that it is indeed sensitive to the tragic dimension of human existence, and that it therefore resembles in fundamental ways the somber rationalism of Sophocles.

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