TRAGIC RECOGNITION: ACTION AND IDENTITY IN ANTIGONE ...

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etween êthos and virtue. Instead, it suggests that êthos is simply something like that which gives rise to a distinctive and stable pattern of behavior on the part of things of a certain kind—a pattern of behavior whose virtuousness or viciousness is one, but only one, interesting thing about it. 66 Chamberlain’s broader account of the meaning of êthos fits well with Aristotle’s own use of the term. In the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle does not define êthos as such. But in book 2 of the Eudemian Ethics, Aristotle says that êthos is a “quality” [poiotês] that we possess in respect of our “capacities for affections” [dunameis tôn pathêmatôn] such as anger, fear, shame, or desire; as well as in respect of the states or habits [hexeis] that determine how we experience and respond to those affections (1220b5–20). 67 A quality, in turn, is a “differentia” [diaphora] (Metaph. 5.14, 1020a33); it is simply “that in virtue of which people are said to be such and such” (Cat. 8, 8b25). And because the states or habits that differentiate us are “lasting and firmly established” (Cat. 8, 8b27), when we give accounts of the êthos of a person, we are saying something about what we take to be that person’s persistent qualities with respect to affection, rather than their momentary attributes. In sum, as Nancy Sherman says, Aristotelian character “has to do with a person’s enduring traits; that is, with the attitudes, sensibilities, and beliefs that affect how a person sees, acts, and indeed lives.” 68 What do these genealogies and definitions show? There are two possible conclusions to be drawn, either of which would be adequate to establish a productive connection between the themes of action and character in the Poetics, and the themes of action and identity in the Antigone and elsewhere. The first conclusion is stronger. If Aristotelian êthos, far from being limited in meaning to the various qualities of virtuousness or viciousness we possess, actually includes the whole range of “enduring traits” that influence our behavior (arguably excluding 23
those relating to thought or intellect), then êthos is capacious enough to include “identity”—for “identity,” as I have been using it here, refers not simply to a set of personal or social characteristics, but to a set of such characteristics that have practical force. So, for example, when Creon, through his speeches, demonstrates how heavily his sense of the meaning of philia (and therefore his understanding of his obligations and responsibilities) has been shaped by his status as citizen and king, it makes sense to say that he has shown us something of his êthos: he has laid out the terms that govern his action. 69 The second conclusion is a bit weaker. Even if we remain skeptical that êthos can encompass identity, there is nevertheless an important analogy to be drawn between character and identity on the basis of the way each relates to action. The preceding discussion should at least have brought into the foreground the fact that êthos—even êthos narrowly construed—is typically taken to be prior to action in the same way that Antigone and Creon (and the contemporary normative discourse of recognition) take identity to be prior to action. Our qualities of character are stable and persistent attributes that help to determine the actions we perform (NE 2.2, 1104a27; 3.5, 1114b25), and for this reason, as Sherman says, character helps us explain “not merely why someone acted this way now, but why someone can be counted on to act in certain ways”; it introduces predictability, “pattern,” and order into our doings. 70 Indeed, this basic view of êthos has been understandably central to contemporary neo- Aristotelian revivals of virtue ethics, which focus on the underlying qualities, formed through practice, habituation, and education, that dispose people to act well: in his account of Aristotle’s ethics, for example, MacIntyre writes that “the immediate outcome of the exercise of a virtue is a choice which issues in right action,” and again that “the virtues are precisely those qualities the possession of which will enable an individual to achieve eudaimonia and the lack of which will 24
Page 1 and 2: TRAGIC RECOGNITION: ACTION AND IDEN
Page 3 and 4: Of course, the tradition of dramati
Page 5 and 6: one with itself by virtue of its tr
Page 7 and 8: At first glance, the Antigone doesn
Page 9 and 10: Yet the Antigone’s struggle is no
Page 11 and 12: commanders but also to Polyneices,
Page 13 and 14: Creon’s first speech sharply cont
Page 15 and 16: What happens when Antigone and Creo
Page 17 and 18: (844). Given the function of the la
Page 19 and 20: Worse still, Creon’s acts, like A
Page 21 and 22: preceding events; she leaves the ro
Page 23: not in the agency-enhancing recogni
Page 27 and 28: argument that is consistent with, t
Page 29 and 30: causal order of the world, the will
Page 31 and 32: This is not altogether wrong, but i
Page 33 and 34: the paradigmatic recognition scene
Page 35 and 36: 6. This ambivalence is registered i
Page 37 and 38: 19. See for instance Lysias 2.7-10
Page 39 and 40: thus either to love [philian] or ha
Page 41 and 42: etween (and therefore the inseparab
Page 43 and 44: 61. This use of Aristotle’s Poeti
Page 45 and 46: arbitrary, see Marion Smiley, Moral

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