THE PLEASURES OF ANGER AND THE REJECTION OF REASON
The clearest sign that Oedipus does not accept the thrust of his own argument regarding the power of self-love is his anger. According to his argument, it is unreasonable for humans or gods to be angry with him for having killed his father because he was compelled to do so out of his love for life and for himself, and it is unreasonable to be angry with someone for doing what he can not help doing.
Indeed, he goes so far as to claim, “I suppose the soul of my father, being alive, would not speak against me” (998—9). Rather than rage and curse, the slain Laius would understand and forgive his son. But in the course of the play, Oedipus himself is extremely angry, with (at first) the chorus, his parents, Creon, Thebes, and, above all, with his own sons, for acting against him, for inflicting pain and suffering (though not death) upon him, in order to benefit themselves: “And did the most evil ones... place tyranny before longing for me?... But they have chosen, instead of him who begot them, to hold sway with the throne and the scepter and to be tyrant of the land” (418-19, 448-9; see 427-30). So bitter is Oedipus that, when his son Polyneices comes to ask for forgiveness for his neglect, he responds by accusing his son of patricide: “You, most evil one, who, holding scepter and throne, which now your blood-brother in Thebes holds, you yourself drove away your own father here and made me without a city, to bear also these clothes, which now beholding you shed tears over, because you have happened to go into the same labor of evils as I. These things must not be bewailed but must be borne by me, just as I should live, having remembered you, a murderer” (1354—61). Oedipus goes on to unleash what may be the angriest curse ever uttered by a father to his sons in all of Greek literature: “Go, spat out and unfathered by me, most evil of evil ones, having collected these curses, which I now call on you, you will not hold sway over your native land by spear, nor will you ever return to hollow Argos, but by kindred hand you will die and kill him, by whom you were driven out. Such things I curse, and call on a hated, paternal darkness of Tartarus, I call on these daemons, I call on Ares, who has cast among you the terrible hatred” (1383— 92).[56] Here Oedipus prays not only for the death of both his sons but that they may become stained with the crime of fratricide, the crime of shedding “kindred blood,” as he himself has been stained with the crimes of incest and patricide, and apparently damns them to an eternity of suffering in Tartarus.[57]Given the glaring contradiction between his argument that he is not to be blamed but forgiven for his actual patricide and his argument that his sons are to be pitilessly blamed and punished eternally for their virtual, tacit, attempted patricide, one might wonder how it is possible for Oedipus to fail to recognize this contradiction. Ifhe were genuinely concerned with justice, as his righteous indignation might seem to suggest, would he not feel the force of this contradiction at the heart of his belief that he deserves divine rewards? Would he not feel compelled to wrestle with this contradiction and reflect on it? What prevents him from recognizing it, and allows him not to see it, is his towering and willful anger, an anger that is ultimately more fundamental to him than a genuine concern for justice.[58] Indeed, so willfully angry is Oedipus with those who have harmed him that he refuses even to consider why they might have harmed him and whether they may not have been led to do so by such considerations as led him to kill his father.[59]
But what is the cause of such willful anger? What might be the positive appeal of feeling such anger? Anger would seem to be a painful experience, since it is occasioned by either suffering pain oneself or seeing a loved one suffer pain. Yet anger means more specifically suffering pain in a way that gives you hope. For anger is not stirred up by pain accompanied by the belief that the pain you suffer is justly inflicted or caused by blind necessity.
Anger is rather provoked by pain that you believe has been deliberately, maliciously, and unjustly inflicted upon you. And, as Aristotle points out in the passage cited earlier, that experience — that sense of righteous indignation — naturally gives rise to the heartening belief that justice demands that you be aided and that the unjust be punished, and hence that there be gods who favor you as you deserve and punish your enemies as they deserve (see Rhetoric 2.5.21—22).24Within the play, Oedipus's confidence that the gods favor him is greatest when he is most angry at what he perceives to be injustice.[60] [61] It is only after the Athenian elders have demanded that he leave and have thereby, in his judgment, violated their promise to shelter him, that he denounces their impiety, affirms that he is himself “sacred and pious,” and declares that the gods will reward the pious but punish the impious (compare 203—27 with 258—91). It is only after Creon attempts to seize him that Oedipus confidently calls on the gods to punish Creon and his family (compare 761—847 with 863—70). But the height of Oedipus's confidence comes immediately after his interview with Polyneices. Just before that interview, Oedipus asks himself whether it is “righteous” for him to thank Theseus for rescuing his daughters by embracing and kissing him. Oedipus evidently fears that he may suffer from an indelible “stain” from his crimes, as Creon has argued, however involuntarily he may have committed those crimes according to his own argument (1130-8; see 944-9, Jebb 1955, 202-3). But immediately after that interview, Oedipus confidently declares that the gods are now summoning him to eternal rewards in Hades (1457—61, 1472-6, 1505-12, 1536-52).
Oedipus evidently feels especially confident that the gods will reward him during the interview with Polyneices because he feels acutely the magnitude of the wrongs he has suffered. It is during this interview that Oedipus claims to have been the intended victim of the gravest of crimes — patricide — at the hands of his sons.
Accordingly, his rage here is greater than it is at any moment in the play, even greater than it is when Creon seizes him and his daughters. For while he denounces Creon as “impious,” “shameless,” and “most evil,” Oedipus denounces his son as “most evil of evil ones” and as a would-be patricide, disowns him, and calls down on him the curse that he both commit and suffer fratricide and that he be punished by the gods after death (823, 863, 866, 960, 1354, 1383, 1360-6, 1369-96). Oedipus feels so confident after this interview that he will be rewarded after death because he believes that, given the outrageous wrongs he has suffered, justice demands not only that his sons be punished but that he be rewarded.Oedipus's tremendous anger blinds him to the unreasonableness of his confidence that he deserves rewards from the gods (Winnington-Ingram 1980, 277). Indeed, Oedipus relishes and embraces the feeling of anger precisely because it enables him to feel in his bones, regardless of the contradictory nature of his arguments, that justice demands that he be rewarded with everlasting well-being. Oedipus's anger specifically protects and supports his hope for immortality. Now, the hope for immortality would seem to be natural to human beings, since it would seem to arise naturally from our awareness that we are mortal and our longing for immortality. But anger reflects our passionate rejection of our mortality. In the case of Oedipus, anger transforms his hope into a confidence that he will be rewarded with immortality for it inspires in him the pious conviction that he deserves to be so rewarded. Yet, as Oedipus's own argument concerning the compelling power of selfinterest suggests, and as the play as a whole suggests, reason teaches that, since we human beings are incapable of transcending our concern for ourselves, we are incapable of deserving the reward of immortality. To follow reason means to accept our mortal nature as a harsh truth of our condition, as a given of our world. But anger means the refusal to accept the world as it is. It means refusing to accept, as Oedipus refuses to accept, that human beings are necessarily self-interested and hence that his parents love life and that his sons seek to defend themselves against harm as surely as he does. It means refusing to accept that we are incapable of deserving the divine reward of immortality. It means refusing to accept, as Oedipus refuses to accept, not only the self-interested nature of human beings but their mortal nature as well.
More than his blindness, it is Oedipus's anger that reflects his pious rejection of reason. The case of Oedipus suggests that religious antirationalism is rooted in such essential features of our human nature as our awareness of our mortality, our hope for immortality, and, above all, our angry refusal to accept our mortality. In this way, the play suggests that religious anti-rationalism is an enduring feature of political life.