The Limits of Political Rationalism: Enlightenment and Religion inOedipus the Tyrant

Abstract

When Nietzsche launched the postmodern attack on the Western tradition of rationalism founded by Socrates, he invoked the purported antirationalism of Sophocles' Oedipus the Tyrant. Through his account of Oedipus, Sophocles does indicate why a pure political rationalism, that is, an attempt to govern political society in the light of reason alone, must ultimately fail and why tradition, convention, and piety are therefore necessary to political life. For convention makes what is by nature manifold seem simple and clear and what is by nature indifferent to human hopes seem supportive of them. But Sophocles' play does not celebrate convention, for it is Oedipus' unreasonable, conventional hopes that lead him to harm those dearest to him and himself so needlessly and cruelly. However mindful Sophocles may be of the limits of political rationalism, he clearly affirms the superior wisdom and humanity of the individual life guided by reason.Nietzsche launched the postmodern attack on the Western tradition of liberal democratic rationalism in the name of tragedy. He argued that, in contrast to the cowardly, dogmatic, and hopeful rationalism of the scientific world view founded by Socrates, the tragic world view, set forth by Aeschylus and Sophocles, courageously faced the world as it truly is: chaotic, cruel, and impenetrable to reason (1967, 17-18, 89-90, 94-97, 106; see 1954a, 473-74, 478; 1969, 272-73). Yet the tragic human being was not broken by this vision, but lovingly affirmed "the infinite primordial joy of existence," as well as "the eternal suffering" at the heart of being (1967, 105, 112). The "pessimism of strength" of the tragic poets and heroes enabled them to found a tragic culture, open to the sorrow of existence and the mystery of being and yet "saying Yes to life even in its strangest and hardest problems" (1967, 17-18, emphasis in text; 1954a, 562-63; see 1968, 434-35, 448-53). This tragic age of the Greeks constituted the noblest culture ever created, "sure of our astonished veneration" (1967, 88; see 87; 93-94). But Socrates destroyed it and replaced it with a rationalistic culture, based on the optimistic, antitragic, "faith" that reason "can penetrate the deepest abysses of being" and lead humans to happiness, and hence that the life based on reason is the best way of life (1967, 95-97; see 86-88). 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 "