Abstract

By examining the notion of philia in fifth-century Greece and Antigone's fascination with her own death, Chapter Five refines our understanding of the ways in which Sophocles's play struggles to identify the value of a living individual. The key to this value, hinted at but never entirely expressed in Antigone, would lie in the affection felt for a person in his or her uniqueness. Desire - and especially feminine desire - would thus express that value, but within the play the importance of interpersonal desire can be validated only through the death of the heroine herself. Once again, the significance of an individual life can be asserted only through its extinction. The reading in this chapter contextualizes Sophocles's play through reference to Aeschylus's Seven against Thebes and Euripides's Suppliant Women. It also includes an extended analysis of Hegel's notion of war in relation to tragic representations of the city.

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