The Clash of Irrationalities in Sophocles’Antigone

Abstract

A study of the Greek text of Sophocles' Antigone provides a deeper understanding of the identities and psychodynamic interaction between the play's two main characters. Creon's particular diction, imagery, and even syntax constitute a subtext reflecting his rigidly hierarchical attitude and paranoid fear that defensively overlie his castration anxiety, his persecutory conception of women, and his own body image. His mental collapse is precipitated by the insightful and lexically powerful ad hominem expressions featured in Tiresias's admonitions. Textual analysis also sheds light on the nature of Antigone's incestuous desires for intimacy and clarifies their archaic origins. As death becomes more imminent, Antigone's complex, evolving reaction includes a verbally marked spatial disorientation.

Three Different Currents of Thought to Conceive Justice: Legal, and Medical Ethics Reflections

“…The strength of Antigone's reasoning is to argue that human law cannot disrespect a divine law. In Antigone's reasoning, we can see the roots of the philosophical-legal vision of natural justice, for which there is a necessary connection between law and morality: only the morally fair right is right; the (intolerably) unfair right is not right [67].…”