The essence of the tragedy lies in the struggle between the freedom of the subject and the inevitable reality of the objective, a struggle which ends not in the victory of one or the other, but in the fact that both sides become both victors and victors —i.e., utter indistinguishability. - Schelling, Philosophy of Art
Oedipus Rex
Description: (431 BC) It is the masterpiece of Sophocles. It is based on Greek myths and legends about Oedipus killing his father and marrying his mother.
Readers who have just finished reading the story may marvel at the mysterious and powerful power of fate in the darkness, believing that the root of tragedy lies in the immutable and inevitable direction of fate. This is also argued in the view of the German philosopher Schelling, who believed that the essence of tragedy lies in the misfortune of fate and at the same time a voluntary choice, and is willing to accept punishment to prove that the freedom he has lost is precisely this freedom.
The value of tragedy lies not in expressing suffering or misfortune, but in expressing the competition for destiny. Tragic characters fail in one sense or external way, but tragic characters look above the world around them in another sense, and tragic characters generally end up suffering misfortune or disappearing of life, but it is not so much that they have lost their lives as they have been liberated from life.
This is a view and reflection on the tragic view of fate, but I prefer another statement, that is, the tragedy of King Oedipus is not that he was destined to do something, but that it was the nature of what he did. In essence, the tragic root of Oedipus lies not in his inability to escape the fate of his own inevitable killing of his father and mother, but in the nature of his ethical crime of killing his father and mother. Oedipus could not avoid a certain fate, but this fate did not necessarily lead to his tragedy, because fate simply meant that something could not be avoided happened. What kind of result what happens depends on the nature of the thing that happened.
If Oedipus had not killed his own father and married his own mother, it would have been a crime at best, but it might not have led to his tragedy. However, in the context of the new social ethical order based on patriarchy and the moral norms for maintaining this order, Oedipus's father and motherhood is a serious ethical crime.
Looking at the mystery of the Sphinx, the Sphinx's existence as a sphinx-faced individual is also a question of the definition of man. The Sphinx, which possessed the upper body of man, was undoubtedly rational, and this was also the search and awakening of ancient civilizations for an epistemic understanding of human reason.
As an ancient Greek drama, "King Oedipus" undoubtedly plays a social function of educating the people, and the excavation and affirmation of ethical values revealed in it is also the result of the progress of human civilization, which gives people ethical and moral warnings with the tragedy of King Oedipus. From the perspective of scientific value, it has also promoted the progress of human evolution, and the prohibition of the reproduction of close relatives has also made human quality optimized.
The tragic development of Oedipus also represents the tragic process of the development of moral civilization, illustrating the inevitable tragic price that human beings need to pay in maintaining new ethical and moral values. From this point of view, whether it is an ancient Greek drama or a medium for contemporary human beings to understand historical and literary civilization, "Oedipus King" has a landmark educational significance for the awakening and development of human civilization.
Thank you for seeing you here, and I hope we can all get something out of the lost days. [Rose]
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