Tag Archives: sophocles

The Origin of Politics: Sophocles, “Oedipus at Colonus”

Nearly all the observations in this post are adapted from Seth Benardete’s essay “On Greek Tragedy,” cited below. Parenthetical references that are only numbers are line numbers. 1. Oedipus’ crimes of incest and parricide have been revealed. His eyes are gone, he has been exiled from the city. With his daughter Antigone, he trespasses on

Running into a Professor on the Internet feels Weird: On Sophocles’ Antigone, 334-375, the “Ode to Man”

Karl Maurer is a professor of mine, so it is with an especial pride I present to you these lines. I ran into him accidentally on the Chronicle of Higher Education’s “Brainstorm” blog, and the passage he cited by Nietzsche there is well worth your time. The comment below was left on the blog by

Brief Incomplete Comment on Sophocles’ Oedipus Tyrannus (Oedipus Rex)

Adapted from an e-mail I sent recently; I am aware this doesn’t address Benardete’s “trapdoors,” it’s not meant to. What is below is mostly from the essay “On Oedipus Tyrannus,” by Seth Benardete, in the book Ancients and Moderns: Essays in Honor of Leo Strauss. You can deduce how this reading came about by thinking