Realism in Oedipus Rex
This essay will examine a feature of Sophocles’ tragedy which causes the reader to doubt the realism underlying the literary work. Specifically, the essay will consider the feasability of the belief at that time – that the Delphi oracle possessed credibility with the people.
At the outset of the drama the priest of Zeus and the crowd of citizens of Thebes are gathered before the royal palace of Thebes talking to King Oedipus about the plague which is ravaging the city. The king is sorely troubled and laments the sad situation. Then he says:
I have sent Menoeceus' son,
Creon, my consort's brother, to inquire
Of Pythian Phoebus at his Delphic shrine,
How I might save the State by act or word.
And now I reckon up the tale of days
Since he set forth, and marvel how he fares.
'Tis strange, this endless tarrying, passing strange.
But when he comes, then I were base indeed,
If I perform not all the god declares.
From this passage it would appear that the king has full faith in the awaited advice from the oracle at Delphi. Is this notion historicaly accurate? Did Sophocles’ contmeporaries actually put such trust in their pagan gods and goddesses? As Brian Wilkie and James Hurt state in “Sophocles”: “Humanity in his plays is an integral part of a world-order that can be only partially understood at best. The cosmic system includes, besides human beings and nature, those darkly inscrutable forces identified – inadequately – as the gods and fate” (718). When Creon returns, he gives his report publicly:
CREON Let me report then all the god declared.
King Phoebus bids us straitly extirpate
A fell pollution that ...
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...74). Cypselus consulted the oracle, and on the basis of its answer, set to work to make himself master of Corinth (376)which he ruled for many years.
Thus we have seen that Sophocles is not being imaginative when he bases the action of the tragedy Oedipus Rex upon the words of the oracle at Delphi. It is wholly consistent with historical data available from that time period of the fifth century BC.
WORKS CITED
Herodotus. The Histories. Translated by Aubrey de Selincourt. England: Penguin Books, 1972.
“Sophocles” In Literature of the Western World, edited by Brian Wilkie and James Hurt. NewYork: Macmillan Publishing Co., 1984.
Sophocles. Oedipus Rex. Transl. by F. Storr.
http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/etcbin/browse-mixed new?tag=public&images=images/modeng&data=/texts/english/modeng/parsed&part=0&id=SopOedipus
Woodard, Thomas. Introduction. In Sophocles: A Collection of Critical Essays, edited by Thomas Woodard. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1966.
In conclusion, Descartes made an argument to prove God’s existence and seemed to be able to prove that he existed, but after a taking a closer look and revaluating his theories you see that he uses a lot of circular reasoning. It is really tough to believe any of what Descartes is saying. After reading his meditations you are left confused, mostly because you are trying to decipher what he is saying and you end up going around and around because of the circular reasoning. Even without the circular reasoning the argument just doesn’t make any sense, especially in today’s world, without any data. To be able to fathom a sound argument for the existence of God just sounds too preposterous to believe. To believe that God exists based of faith and religion is what people today and in Descartes time, as well, believed. To say that God exists because there must have been some superior creator that put this idea in my head is very far fetched. People don’t need to be told that God exists because most people already believe and most of them know that he does.
In Three Dialogues Between Hylas and Philonous and Discourse on Method and Meditations on First Philosophy, philosophers George Berkeley and René Descartes use reasoning to prove the existence of God in order to debunk the arguments skeptics or atheists pose. While Berkeley and Descartes utilize on several of the same elements to build their argument, the method in which they use to draw the conclusion of God’s existence are completely different. Descartes argues that because one has the idea of a perfect, infinite being, that being, which is God therefore exists. In Three Dialogues Between Hylas and Philonous, Berkeley opposes the methodology of Descartes and asserts that God’s existence is not dependent on thought, but on the senses and
Sophocles: A collection of critical essays edited by Thomas Woodward: Oedipus at Colonus. Whitman, Cedric H. Prentice-Hall, Inc. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey. 1966.
Descartes thinks that we have a very clear and distinct idea of God. He thinks God must exist and Descartes himself must exist. It is a very different way of thinking shown from the six meditations. Descartes uses ideas, experiments, and “proofs” to try and prove God’s existence.
Rene Descartes decision to shatter the molds of traditional thinking is still talked about today. He is regarded as an influential abstract thinker; and some of his main ideas are still talked about by philosophers all over the world. While he wrote the "Meditations", he secluded himself from the outside world for a length of time, basically tore up his conventional thinking; and tried to come to some conclusion as to what was actually true and existing. In order to show that the sciences rest on firm foundations and that these foundations lay in the mind and not the senses, Descartes must begin by bringing into doubt all the beliefs that come to him by the senses. This is done in the first of six different steps that he named "Meditations" because of the state of mind he was in while he was contemplating all these different ideas. His six meditations are "One:Concerning those things that can be called into doubt", "Two:Concerning the Nature of the Human mind: that it is better known than the Body", "Three: Concerning God, that he exists", "Four: Concerning the True and the False", "Five: Concerning the Essence of Material things, and again concerning God, that he exists" and finally "Six: Concerning the Existence of Material things, and the real distinction between Mind and Body". Although all of these meditations are relevant and necessary to understand the complete work as a whole, the focus of this paper will be the first meditation.
Segal, Charles Paul. “Sophocles’ Praise of Man and the Conflicts of the Antigone.” In Sophocles: A Collection of Critical Essays, edited by Thomas Woodard. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1966.
...wax for example, he gathers a better idea of what it means to be a thinking thing. Since even his perceptions are accompanied by thinking, every time he perceives, he also thinks. Thus, he concludes that he knows his mind better than he knows his body; since he both employs his mind all of the time, and since his mind is a better source of knowledge than his perceptions.
Prompt: How does Oedipus see himself? How do others perceive him? Explain how the author uses this juxtaposition to communicate theme?
One of Rene Descartes’ major culminations in Meditations on First Philosophy is “I must finally conclude that this proposition, I am, I exist, is necessarily true whenever it is put forward by me or conceived in my mind” (Descartes:17). This statement can be explicated by examining Descartes’ Cartesian method of doubt and his subsequent discovery of basic truths. Even though I do believe that Descartes concludes with a statement that is accurate: cogito ergo sum, there are areas of his proof that are susceptible to defamation. These objections discover serious error with Descartes’ method used in determining the aforementioned conclusion.
Baird and Kaufmann, the editors of our text, explain in their outline of Descartes' epistemology that the method by which the thinker carried out his philosophical work involved first discovering and being sure of a certainty, and then, from that certainty, reasoning what else it meant one could be sure of. He would admit nothing without being absolutely satisfied on his own (i.e., without being told so by others) that it was incontrovertible truth. This system was unique, according to the editors, in part because Descartes was not afraid to face doubt. Despite the fact that it was precisely doubt of which he was endeavoring to rid himself, he nonetheless allowed it the full reign it deserved and demanded over his intellectual labors. "Although uncertainty and doubt were the enemies," say Baird and Kaufmann (p.16), "Descartes hit upon the idea of using doubt as a tool or as a weapon. . . . He would use doubt as an acid to pour over every 'truth' to see if there was anything that could not be dissolved . . . ." This test, they explain, resulted for Descartes in the conclusion that, if he doubted everything in the world there was to doubt, it was still then certain that he was doubting; further, that in order to doubt, he had to exist. His own existence, therefore, was the first truth he could admit to with certainty, and it became the basis for the remainder of his epistemology.
Woodard, Thomas. Introduction. In Sophocles: A Collection of Critical Essays, edited by Thomas Woodard. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1966.
From the preceding considerations, it is clear that there is an underlying presumption that the wax already exists. But since the Second Meditation should follow the course of his doubt, he fails to convince us that we should judge the human mind as more distinct than the body, without making any recognition of what is external to the mind. More precisely, it is impossible to realize the mind as a distinct thing unless there is already consciousness of an external body from which it is distinct. In conclusion, this distinction cannot be made without first acknowledging the existence of each being: the wax is distinct from the mind as much as the mind is distinct from the wax. Our perception of the body can cease to be obtained in any way by our senses, therefore, our knowledge of the wax remains uncertain.
Descartes affirms that he is certain that he is a thinking thing. His reasoning, however, seems to be a circular argument. Descartes knows he is a thinking thing because “in this first instance of knowledge, there is nothing but a certain clear and distinct perception of what I affirm” (Descartes, 24). He concludes, “everything I very clearly and distinctly perceive is true” (Descartes, 24). Descartes could only know that what he clearly and distinctly perceives is true if he can be certain he is a thinking thing. Throughout this proof, Descartes is trying to use God’s existence as a way of affirming that which he clearly and distinctly perceives. However, he is also trying to prove God’s existence by claiming that the idea of God is a clear and distinct perception. Without inquiring into the existence of God, “it appears I am never capable of being completely ...
In the first meditation he casts doubt on the previous foundations of knowledge and everything he has learned or assumed. He stated "But reason now persuades me that I should withhold assent no less carefully from opinions that are not completely certain and indubitable than I would from those that are patently false." In order to evaluate and discern what is actually true he divides the foundations of knowledge into three sources: the senses, reality, and context.