TRAGIC RECOGNITION: ACTION AND IDENTITY IN ANTIGONE ...

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action or actions of persons in an ordinary sense; at other times, he uses praxis in the singular to refer to the whole course of action that is imitated in the plot (muthos) of a drama; and the muthos, in turn, is said to be a combination or arrangement of pragmata—itself cognate with praxis, and which is usually translated as “incidents” or “events.” 56. This claim has sometimes been a source of consternation because it runs counter to our post- Romantic preoccupation with what Hegel called the “subjective inner life” of dramatic characters (Aesthetics: Lectures on Fine Art, trans. T. M. Knox, vol. 2 [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975], 1223). As one of Aristotle’s editors writes: A[ristotle]’s preference for plot as opposed to character has won little approval from most of the critics from the late nineteenth century onwards. To the generations which were profoundly influenced by Bradley’s Shakespearian Studies it was common doctrine that, as Granville Barker once put it, the purpose of drama was to portray character. Interest in the inner life of the individual, which had been developed by the great novelists of late Victorian times in England, France, and Russia, caused exaggerated attention to traits of personality which could be perceived in Shakespeare and contributed to the spread of the belief that they must be contained, could one but find them, in all great drama. D. W. Lucas, “Commentary” to Aristotle, Poetics (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972), 109–110. For a critique of anachronistic tendencies (such as the focus on the “tragic hero”) on the part of modern readers of the Poetics and of Greek tragedy, see John Jones, On Aristotle and Greek Tragedy (London: Chatto and Windus, 1962), chap. 1. 57. For one interesting example of such a reading see Elizabeth Belfiore’s treatment of the relationship between the Poetics and modern narrative theory: “Narratological Plots and Aristotle’s Mythos,” Arethusa 33, no. 1 (Winter 2000): 37–70. In an earlier work, however, Belfiore argues that Aristotle’s prioritization of action in the Poetics is evidence of a split between his dramatic theory and his understanding of “real life,” where êthos does indeed have priority over action; I discuss and criticize this claim in more detail below. 58. On controversies surrounding the text of this passage see Nussbaum, The Fragility of Goodness, 378–79 and accompanying notes. 59. They echo, for example, the discussion of eudaimonia as an activity in NE 1.7, 1098a15–20, as has been noted by Amelie Oksenberg Rorty, “The Psychology of Aristotelian Tragedy,” in Essays on Aristotle’s Poetics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992), 20 n. 12. 60. Nussbaum, The Fragility of Goodness, 379–82; cf. Halliwell, Aristotle’s Poetics, 157. Another way of putting this point is to say that tragedy is the “imitation of an action” not only in the obvious sense that it represents some sequence of events on the stage, but also because its very structure mirrors something important about the nature of action itself. 41
61. This use of Aristotle’s Poetics might be thought to follow through on Nussbaum’s suggestion that insights drawn from the discussion of action and character in book 6 could provide the basis for a reinterpretation of the concept of anagnôrisis: see The Fragility of Goodness, 382. 62. Arendt, The Human Condition, 244. The following account is heavily informed by Arendt’s account of action (especially 188–92, 236–47). For a good synoptic discussion of Arendt’s concept of action, see Maurizio Passerin d’Entrèves, The Political Philosophy of Hannah Arendt (New York: Routledge, 1994), 64–100. 63. This might be taken to be the implication of Elizabeth Belfiore’s claim that “in the Poetics, êthos as a part of tragedy is always an indication of choice”—i.e., of prohairesis—“and never includes a broader set of ‘characteristic peculiarities,’ as êthos sometimes does in the Rhetoric” (Tragic Pleasures: Aristotle on Plot and Emotion [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992], 97). Blundell has suggested that even in the Rhetoric, such attributes as age, sex, and nationality are not to be understood as aspects of êthos but as influences upon and potenial indicators of it: “Êthos and Dianoia Reconsidered,” in Amelie Oksenberg Rorty, ed., Essays on Aristotle’s Poetics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992), 164. 64. Charles Chamberlain, “From ‘Haunts’ to ‘Character’: The Meaning of Êthos and its Relation to Ethics,” Helios 11, no. 2 (Winter 1984): 97–108. 65. Ibid., 101; the passage from Thucydides (2.61.4) is cited at 106 n. 44; see Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, ed. M. I. Finley, trans. Rex Warner (London: Penguin, 1972), 160. 66. Chamberlain also notes that “êthos comes from the Indo-European root *swedh, see also in the Latin suus and suesco, meaning ‘one’s own’ or ‘proper’” (104 n. 8). Exploiting this connection, we might say that something’s êthos is just that which leads it to do what is proper to it, as the sort of thing it is. 67. I am bracketing controversies over the complicated relationship of êthos to thought or intellect (dianoia) both in the Poetics and in Aristotelian ethics, since these aren’t relevant to the aspects of êthos I’m emphasizing here. For discussion and bibliography, see Mary Whitlock Blundell, “Êthos and Dianoia Reconsidered,” in Amelie Oksenberg Rorty, ed., Essays on Aristotle’s Poetics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992). 68. Nancy Sherman, The Fabric of Character: Aristotle’s Theory of Virtue (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989), 1. 69. The Poetics itself says that êthos (here used in the at-one-remove sense of “characterization,” or the dramatic depiction of “character”—on this see Halliwell, Aristotle’s Poetics, 150–51) is that which “shows us the nature of a prohairesis”; certainly Antigone’s and Creon’s efforts to ground their actions in their identities show us aspects of the nature of their choices. (Poet. 1450b8–9; I have used Halliwell’s translation because Bywater unfortunately 42
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 and 24: not in the agency-enhancing recogni
Page 25 and 26: those relating to thought or intell
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: etween (and therefore the inseparab
Page 45 and 46: arbitrary, see Marion Smiley, Moral

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