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Tyranny and Blood: Rethinking Creon
- Philosophy and Literature
- Johns Hopkins University Press
- Volume 41, Number 1A, July 2017
- pp. 1-11
- 10.1353/phl.2017.0018
- Article
- Additional Information
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Abstract:
This essay revisits Sophocles's Theban tragedies to question the usual interpretation of Creon as a tyrant intent on forcing a masculine "rule of law" on an innocent Antigone. By looking at Hölderlin's German translation of Antigone and what we know about kingship and kinship in ancient Greece, I offer an alternative interpretation that shows the character of Creon in a different light, reinforcing claims made by Bernard Williams and Martin Heidegger, among others, about the ways in which we misunderstand the Greeks, and some of the consequences of doing so.