Natural and Divine orders: The Politics of Sophocles’ Philoctetes

Abstract

A closer look at the character of Odysseus in the opening passages of the Philoctetes reveals a more nuanced psychology of guilt and justification than commentators have thus far appreciated in the cunning hero’s role. This paper examines the relations of sympathy (oiktos) between Odysseus, Neoptolemus, and Philoctetes as a way of entering into the complicated political drama of the work. Conceiving politics in the Philoctetes as a hybrid construction of the demands of nature (including the phenomenon of sympathy) and the demands of the gods, this study provides a reading of Sophocles’ play as an observation of the necessity for political regimes to efface the very conditions of sympathy that made them possible in the first place. On this reading, Sophocles’ tragedy is to be seen as an explorarion of the damage incurred by individuals when such effacement takes place.