Efstathios Lianos-Liantis

Dispirited, Tiresias enters the courtyard of Oedipus’s palace, cognisant of the workings of fate that will transform the chosen one into an accursed figure. At the culmination of the anti-hero's tragic self-delusion, the seer appears on stage to become the catalyst for catharsis, which constitutes the moral consummation of the tragedy. The dichotomy between knowledge and ignorance is presented in a chiastic structure with the opposition of sight and blindness. The blind seer, Tiresias, tells Oedipus that he will become: ‘τυφλὸς γὰρ ἐκ δεδορκότος’ [blind, though once he could see]. At that moment, Oedipus can see but does not know, in contrast to Tiresias, who knows but cannot see. The motif of the confrontation between the ruler and the holy seer is found at the very dawn of the Western literary canon, in the episode between Agamemnon and Calchas, and in the Odyssey, when the suitor Eurymachus insults and dismisses Halitherses, telling him: ‘ταῦτα δ' ἐγὼ σέο πολλὸν ἀμείνων μαντεύεσθαι’ [In these matters I am a far better seer than you]. In the ancient Greek imaginary, a victory achieved without the aid of the gods constitutes both arrogance and folly. Oedipus solves the riddle of the Sphinx without the assistance of supernatural agents, as he himself describes: ‘ἀλλ᾽ ἐγὼ μολών, ὁ μηδὲν εἰδὼς Οἰδίπους, ἔπαυσά νιν, γνώμῃ κυρήσας οὐδ᾽ ἀπ᾽ οἰωνῶν μαθών’ [But I came, Oedipus, who knew nothing, and I stopped her, hitting the mark with my intellect, not learning from birds of omen]. This is a form of denial of the divine, a rejection of the gods, which activates the moral framework that culminates in 'τίσις' (retribution), the crushing of the transgressor. Ultimately, it is the chorus of elders, the collective conscience of the polis, that stigmatises hubris as the cause and characteristic of the tyrant, along with irreverence towards the sacred: ‘ὕβρις φυτεύει τύραννον […] δίκας ἀφόβητος, οὐδὲ δαιμόνων ἕδη σέβων, κακά νιν ἕλοιτο μοῖρα’ [Hubris begets the tyrant […] if he does not fear Justice and does not revere the seats of the gods, may an evil fate take him].

In the 19th century, German philosophy, chiefly represented by Hegel and Nietzsche, constructed the philosophical analysis of tragedy, rendering it a theatre of ideas. The transformation of tragedy into a philosophical concept resulted in a political reading, which posited that democratic Athens, at the zenith of its power, captured through the pen of Sophocles the role of religion in the socio-political sphere as the element that restores moral equilibrium when political authority loses its sense of measure and becomes part of the problem rather than its solution. This philosophical perspective, with its anthropological character, perceives in Sophocles’ work the harmonious synthesis of the Dionysian and Apollonian spirits: a temperate political clarity, the middle path between the extreme political rationalism that rejects religion—as seen in Oedipus Rex—and the piety that rejects reason—as exemplified in Oedipus at Colonus.

‘What I relate is the history of the next two centuries. I describe what is coming, what can no longer come differently: the advent of nihilism. This history can be related even now; for necessity itself is at work here. This future speaks even now in a hundred signs, this destiny announces itself everywhere; for this music of the future all ears are cocked even now. For some time now, our whole European culture has been moving as toward a catastrophe, with a tortured tension that is growing from decade to decade: restlessly, violently, headlong, like a river that wants to reach the end, that no longer reflects, that is afraid to reflect.’ With these words, Nietzsche described the trajectory of the Western tradition of rationalism towards the abyss. In his critical perspective, he drew argumentation from the Sophoclean sense of measure in Oedipus. Nietzsche’s sociological viewpoint suggested that an extreme political rationalism—that is, an attempt to govern society solely through the prism of logic—ultimately fails, because tradition and piety are indispensable to socio-political life. As one of the most eminent contemporary philosophers summarily observes: ‘The aim is no longer to regulate governance according to truth, but to regulate it according to rationality.’

‘Καὶ ἰδὼν συκῆν μίαν ἐπὶ τῆς ὁδοῦ ἦλθεν ἐπ᾿ αὐτήν, καὶ οὐδὲν εὗρεν ἐν αὐτῇ εἰ μὴ φύλλα μόνον’ [And seeing a fig tree by the road, he came to it and found nothing on it but only leaves]. A de-ideologised and de-sacralised conscience, the European barren fig tree is being felled by the crisis-generating, capitalist Protestantism of America and the monolithic politico-religious power structures of the East. The economic union that, at the beginning of the final decade of the 20th century, believed it would ‘export democracy’ to the countries of the ‘Soviet-bloc socialism’, today resembles a post-ethical Weimar Republic. The semblance of prosperity, the limitless expansion of production, immoderate consumerism, and the dominance of the economy may have substituted for, but have not answered, deeper existential and broader social questions. Thus, a technological Middle Ages will constitute a long era of assimilation and transition to a new social imaginary with new collective desires. In the formation of this imaginary, the political interpretation of the religious phenomenon will play a significant role as a constitutive choice for collective subjects. What will become apparent in practice is the way in which a potential Renaissance will bring about, as a structured unity of clarification and activity, the political relationship that measures, and therefore restrains, the unlimited exercise of power in the direction of the wisdom that Sophocles dramaturgically taught.

Civilisations, as exceptionally complex systems, are composed of diverse components, which are organised asymmetrically and interact with one another through forces of attraction or repulsion. Such systems may, for a time, give the impression of functioning in a reasonably stable manner and being in a state of equilibrium, whereas in reality they are in a constant state of adaptation. The moment arrives, however, when they enter a critical phase, triggered by a single event or a series of events. In this crucial phase, strategy and diplomacy undergo a process of mutual co-inherence, each drawing sustenance from the other.