Abstract
Abstract Sophocles’ Antigone has been studied intensely for more than two thousand years, but it was especially Hegel’s allegorical use of this tragedy in several of his works (first and foremost the Phenomenology of Spirit) that added yet another fascinating facet to its possible reading: the birth of the legal order and therewith a constitutional system from the conflict between two normative orders. In this contribution, I interpret the dialectic structure of Antigone in a manner in which each normative position – both Antigone’s and Creon’s – are equally justified and thereby antithetic in the ethical world of the Greek polis. It is therefore only by transcending this tragic conflict between the human and the divine orders that we can transform necessary externalities (‘fate’) into a process of a legal status which eventually allows individuals to become the authors of the law itself and thus to guarantee their freedom. I denote this reading of Hegel’s Antigone as ‘symmetrical’, since it accepts both positions – Antigone’s divine law and Creon’s human law – as equal and makes freedom and justice only possible through the law. This means that an ‘asymmetrical’ reading, giving prevalence to either position (for instance, found in Goethe or Habermas) and localizing freedom and justice beyond the law, can never effectively result in a legal status that would allow individual persons to become legal persons.My principal argument consequently is that only a symmetrical view of this normative conflict can justifiably be regarded as making a constitutional order possible in the first place. It is feasible only in a dynamic-genealogical fashion (ie, by constantly generating this order through conflict and the transcending of this conflict through mutual recognition) that concurrently also respects individuals as particular individuals, not just as formal equals among equals, by allowing them to realize their personalities and to find themselves through the arts, science, and philosophy. This is more than a merely formal or negative constitution which recognizes every person as equal and free, but disregards their particularities; this is a material and positive constitution that can guarantee both equality and self-actualization. Such a constitutional order guarantees an identity of universal laws and individuality, and accordingly offers individuals a solution to the conflicting ethical orders of the ancient polis in which they would otherwise remain trapped.
Highlights
Sophocles’ Antigone has been studied intensely for more than two thousand years, but it was especially Hegel’s allegorical use of this tragedy in several of his works that added yet another fascinating facet to its possible reading: the birth of the legal order and therewith a constitutional system from the conflict between two normative orders
Hegel’s philosophical reading of tragedy and his influence on its further scholarly treatment is often cited as comparable to Aristotle’s engagement with it;[2] it needs to be added that Hegel enriches this discussion – especially with and through Antigone – by the very aspect that will be the focus of this paper: the role of law and its birth in the form of a hypothetical first positive-legal constitution from the tragic conflict between two normative orders
Hegel: Birth of the Constitution the reconciliation of the conflicts raging in it by the eventual establishment the legal status – or the beginning of a constitutional order – can be found in the sections on the ethical order (Sittlichkeit) in his Phenomenology of Spirit. Since these very sections provide the structure that most legal philosophers follow in interpreting Hegel’s thoughts on normative conflicts and the bringing about of a constitutional legal order,[8] I follow this line of reasoning here in this paper – and with good reason, I think, as it offers a clear elucidation of the development and progress from the initial ethical order over its inherent conflicts to the birth of the legal order
Summary
For more than two thousand years, Sophocles’ tragedy Antigone has been discussed philologically, and intensively at the triple intersection of literature, law and philosophy – which is probably due to the range of themes it contains, first and foremost the conflict between two normative orders and the aporia of law and justice.[1]. The fact that Hegel does not offer a literary interpretation of Antigone has often been misunderstood, sometimes even to the extent that he was accused of deliberately distorting the text.[14] Yet for him, the sequence of the text stands for that dialectical structure in which every normative standpoint – both Antigone’s and Creon’s – is equal in the ethical order of the Greek polis, and antinomic. By overcoming this tragic conflict can we transform an ever-looming and inevitable external fate into a process leading to a legal status, which, through the autonomy. My essay is best be seen as a critical examination of both readings, but with a clear preference for the symmetrical interpretation of Hegel, whilst an asymmetrical imbalance was most certainly not intended by him
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