Make Political Philosophy Cool Again
Part II: When Is Lawbreaking Morally Acceptable?
Now I’d like to loop back farther in time to what is arguably the first work of western political and legal philosophy, Antigone, a play written by Sophocles. (This is the translation I’ll use). Once we get started, you’ll see why Antigone is next.
Even if you’ve never heard of Antigone, you have probably heard of her famous father, Oedipus, the King of Thebes, who inspired Freud’s famous phrase, The Oedipus Complex. When Oedipus was born, a seer announced that he was cursed: He would grow up to kill his father and marry his mother. To foil the prophesy, his father took the infant far away and abandoned him to die, but a shepherd rescued the infant (not knowing the baby was the prince) and, as you might guess given that we are in the realm of Greek mythology, a series of unforeseen consequences caused Oedipus to kill his father (not knowing it was his father) and marry his mother (not knowing it was his mother.) Then, in the spirit of classical tragedies, in the end all the main characters die.
Oedipus had four children, two sons and two daughters. Antigone was one of the daughters.
When Antigone opens, her parents are dead, and she and her sister just learned that their two brothers, Eteocles and Polyneices, died fighting in opposite sides of a war. Polyneices fought against Creon, Antigone’s uncle. Eteocles fought on Creon’s side. Creon became king at the end of the fighting. The new king, Creon, was understandably angry at Polyneices.
The play’s conflict is given in the opening dialogue between the strong-willed Antigone and her cool-headed sister, Ismene. I’ll summarize the opening scene here (I hope the Sophocles purists will forgive some summarizing and paraphrasing):
Antigone:
Ismene, my dear sister. You are and I are left to pay the penalty to the gods for the sins of our father. I have never seen such misery and madness! Have you heard the terrible news?
Ismene:
I have heard nothing since the day we lost both our brothers.
Antigone:
I knew you hadn’t heard! That is why I called you here.
Ismene:
Tell me!
Antigone:
Eteocles, who fought on Creon’s side, has been given a proper burial. But Polyneices is to be shamed. Creon has decreed that his body is to be left to the vultures to be a sweet treasure for their sharp eyes and beaks. He also proclaimed that anyone who attempts to give Polyneices a proper burial will be stoned to death.
Now, my sister, show your true colors. Are you true to your birth? Or are you a coward?
Ismene:
I don’t understand. If we are in this noose, what could I do to pull or tighten the knot?
Antigone:
If you help me raise the corpse —
Ismene:
Do you mean to bury Polyneices against the law?
Antigone:
He is mine. And yours. Like it or not, he’s our brother. They’ll never catch me betraying him.
Ismene:
But Creon forbids it!
Antigone:
He has no right to keep me from my own.
Ismene:
Think carefully, my sister. Our father died in hatred and disgrace. Next, his mother and wife (she was both) destroyed herself in a knotted rope. Now both our brothers, in one day, killed each other in a terrible calamity. We are alone. How horrible it would be to die outside the law, if we violate Creon’s decree!
No. We must keep this fact in mind: We are women. We do not fight with men. We’re subject to them because they are stronger and we must obey this order, even if it hurts us more. The dead will understand that we are held back by force.
Antigone:
I will not press you any further. I would not even let you help me If you had a change of heart. I will bury him. I will have a noble death. Call it a crime of reverence but I must be true to what I revere. You keep to your choice: Go on insulting what the gods hold dear.
Ismene:
I am not insulting anyone. By my very nature I cannot take up arms against the city.
I am so worried for you!
Antigone:
Don’t worry about me. Put your own values straight.
Ismene:
Your heart’s so hot to do this chilling thing!
Antigone:
But it pleases those who matter most.
Ismene:
Yes, if you had the power. But you don’t have the power to do this.
Antigone
When you say this, you set yourself against me. Nothing bad will happen to me that is half as bad as dying a coward’s death. Go on insulting what the god’s hold dear.
(Antigone exits)
Ismene:
Then follow your judgment. Go. You’ve lost your mind, but you are holding to the love of your loved ones.
Notice how much is going on in that opening, including gender issues — women are subjected to men because men are stronger. Mostly though, the play presents issues of political and legal theory. We have the individual against the ruler. We have conflicting laws: the higher law of morality that Antigone is prepared to follow versus the secular (or state law) that she is prepared to violate. We have echoes of crime and punishment. It’s all here in a powerful story with strong characters.
We also have a theme hinted at in Euthyphro: On one side, there is morality, or what is right. On the other, there are laws made by humans, which may or may not lead to justice. If a law is unjust, and you follow the law, you might be a good citizen, but not a moral person. Going against the law is dangerous, so Ismene prefers to be a good citizen. Antigone would rather be a moral person.
The terms used by legal philosophers are positive law, which refers to human made laws and natural law, which refers to the higher morality that properly governs human behavior. Human beings can discover natural laws through their capacity for rational analysis. Positive laws, in contrast, are issued by legitimate governments.
You can probably guess where this is going. (Hint: It’s a tragedy so it ends with lots of death.) Antigone defies the law of the city in the name of a higher law: the law of kinship, loyalty, family, and morality. Creon then orders Antigone to be buried alive as her punishment. In a fit of anger, he decrees that Ismene must die with her sister, but later changes his mind. The problem for Creon was that public opinion was with Antigone. “The entire city is grieving over this girl,” reports Creon’s son Haemon (who is also Antigone’s fiance) when he tries to get his father to change his mind. He warns his father that the people of the city believe Antigone should be rewarded for her devotion and courage instead of punished. When Haemon can’t change his father’s mind, he kills himself. Creon’s wife kills herself when she learns about the death of her son.
At the last minute — before Creon learns that his wife and son are dead — he has a change of heart. A prophet and the chorus urge him to change his mind. The people of the city are sympathetic to Antigone and they let him know that the law of the city is secondary to the law of the gods, which determines burial rights. But Creon’s change of heart — or moment of wisdom — comes too late to save himself and the other main characters. Only Ismene is spared.
Death in a classical tragedy is symbolic. Romeo and Juliet die because young love — that first blush of passion — doesn’t last. It might mature into something more stable and lasting, but it can’t last with the intensity of young Romeo and Juliet.
The fact that Antigone is a Greek tragedy gives us clues about how to interpret the action. Aristotle tells us that a great tragedy centers around a noble or lofty figure who falls because of a flaw or mistake. Tragic heroes make their tragic errors without evil intent, but as a result of the error, they bring about their own destruction and the destruction of those closest to them.
The play is named after Antigone, so you might think she is the central, tragic figure. If you view her as the tragic figure you’re likely to see the play as a conflict between a dictator and a conscientious citizen, or between good and evil, or between a woman and a patriarchy.
One problem with seeing Antigone as the central, tragic character, is that much of the action, including Creon’s change of heart, happens after she dies. It is also hard to see her as falling from a lofty position. Yes, she was a princess, but one without parents or power. Moreover, she was a woman in a culture that gave women no power or voice. Finally, we have to search for her tragic flaw. She is not without her faults. She is headstrong and doesn’t consider what her own death will do to her sister, who will then have lost every single member of her immediate family. But stubborn steadfastness in the face of a tyrant hardly seems like a tragic flaw.
The German philosopher Hegel said that Antigone was “one of most sublime and in every respect the most excellent work of art of all time.” He rejected the good vs. evil interpretation as failing to capture the complexity of the plot. He interpreted the play as being about opposing moral claims.
Under Hegel’s theory, Creon’s claim is that justice means punishing infractions. His position is that the citizen’s highest obligation is to follow the law. If they don’t, there is no order and civilization breaks down.
Antigone’s claim is that justice means doing what is right. For Antigone, a citizen’s highest obligation is to follow her conscience and do what is right. If the law is unjust, the law must be disregarded.
Seeing the play as presenting two opposing moral claims respects the complexity of the plot, but presents another problem: It is hard to see these two competing views as equal given that Creon’s order is cruel and capricious.
Prof. Michael Tierney offers a better interpretation. Tierney sees Creon as the tragic figure who began in a lofty position as the new king, but made a tragic error in judgment. He didn’t understand that state law, to have legitimacy, must conform to what is good or moral. By the time he realized his error, it was too late. He had already set the tragic events in motion.
The idea that state laws should bend to a higher morality is an enlightened view. The older view (which came back into vogue in Europe in the middle ages) is some form of the divine rights of kings, which says that a king derives authority from God (or the gods) and therefore, anything he does is good in the eyes of God. The divine rights of kings leads to: “I have might. Therefore, I am right.”
Nope, says Antigone. You have might, but you still have to do what the gods consider right.
Antigone dies a martyr’s death for that higher law. Creon’s contempt for that higher law brings about his ruin. Meanwhile, Ismene knows Antigone is right, but she also knows that we break the city’s law at our peril.
Sophocles understood the concept of natural law versus positive law. As Antigone says, the laws she follows are “unwritten laws. These laws weren’t made now or yesterday. They live for all time.”
If you read Part I, you may be thinking, “Wait a minute! It isn’t that easy to agree on what constitutes natural law.” Euthyphro and Socrates had different ideas about what was just or right. Neither was able to persuade the other. Even after Socrates expertly debunked Euthyphro’s reasoning, it is unlikely that Euthyphro gave up his own ideas of right and wrong.
Public support solidified behind Antigone and helped bring about Creon’s change of heart, but Athens was a relatively small, homogenous non-secular city-state. The Ancient Greek religion was tightly entwined in the political and social life of the Greek city-state and the private activities of the individuals. Athenians, therefore, could agree that Creon was violating natural law.
The idea that state-based laws must conform to universal moral principles is all well and good — but what happens if citizens have different ideas about what constitutes moral law? A scientist can conduct an experiment to prove (for most people at least) the laws of physics.
But what experiment can prove laws of morality?
A white Evangelical Christian living in Tennessee is likely to have different ideas about what makes a government moral than a person living in San Francisco or Berkeley. A libertarian will have a different idea of what constitutes a moral government than a climate change activist. If half the nation holds one set of natural laws, and half the nation holds another, a lawbreaker may be glorified by part of the nation and condemned as a criminal by another part.
See the problem?