Related Info Links
More by Authors Links
News and Announcements
RESEARCH ARTICLE
Heidegger’s Antigone: The Ethos of Poetic Existence
Show Less
1 Independent Reseracher of Philosophy 92300, Levallois-Perret , France
Received: 5 April 2021 | Published online: 14 August 2021
© 2021 by the Authors. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution -Noncommercial 4.0 International License (CC-by the license) ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ )
Abstract
In this article, I elucidate Martin Heidegger’s interpretation of Sophocles’ tragedy Antigone from a topological point of view by focusing on the place-character of Antigone’s poetic ethos. Antigone’s decision to defy Creon’s order and bury her brother Polynices is discussed as a movement that underpins her poetic disposition as a demigod. Antigone’s situatedness between gods and humans is identified as the place of poetic dwelling, and the significance of Antigone’s relation to the polis is explained. The main argument of the article is two-fold: 1) When we read Antigone focusing on the notion of dwelling, we can better make sense how Heidegger’s engagement with the question of finitude closes the envisioned gap between ontology and ethics. 2) The idea of poetic dwelling is a confrontation with spatio-temporal limits of human existence, and requires a more holistic way of thinking about the place of humans in the world, thinking beyond being-action dichotomy.
Keywords
Martin Heidegger
Antigone
topology
ancient Greek tragedy
poetic dwelling
place.
References
- Artemenko, N. (2016). The Ethical Dimension of Heidegger’s Philosophy. Consideration of Ethics in Is Original Source. Russian Studies in Philosophy, 54 (1), 62-75.
- Baracchi, C. (2008). Aristotle’s Ethics as First Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- Bernasconi, R. (2013). Poets as Prophets and as Painters: Heidegger’s Turn to Language and the Hölderlinian Turn in Context. Heidegger and Language, 146-162. (Ed. J. Powell). Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
- Butler, J. (2000). Antigone’s Claim: Kinship Between Life and Death. New York: Columbia University Press.
- Foti, V. (2006). Epochal Discordance: Hölderlin’s Philosophy of Tragedy. Albany: SUNY Press.
- Gosetti-Ferencei, J. A. (2004). Heidegger, Hölderlin, and the Subject of Poetic Language. Toward a New Poetics of Dasein. New York: Fordham University Press.
- Hegel, G. W. F. (1977). Phenomenology of Spirit. (Trans. A.V. Miller). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
- Heidegger, M. (1967). Sein und Zeit. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag.
- Heidegger, M. (1976). Wegmarken. Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann.
- Heidegger, M. (1996a). Hölderlin’s Hymns Germania and Rhine. (Trans. W. McNeill and J. Ireland). Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
- Heidegger, M. (1996b). Hölderlin’s Hymn: The Ister. (Trans. W. McNeill and J. Davis). Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
- Heidegger, M. (1993). Hölderlins Hymne: Der Ister. Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann.
- Heidegger, M. (1998). Pathmarks. (Trans. W. McNeill). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- Heidegger, M. (2000a). Introduction to Metaphysics. (Trans. G. Fried and R. Polt. New Haven & London: Yale University Press.
- Heidegger, M. (2000b). Vorträge und Aufsätze. Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann.
- Hölderlin, F. (1988). Sophokles. Sämtliche Werke. Frankfurter Ausgabe, 16. Band. (Ed. M. Franz, M. Knaupp and D.E. Sattler). Frankfurt am Main: Roter Stern.
- Knox M. W. B. (1992). The Heroic Temper: Studies in Sophoclean Tragedy. Los Angeles & Berkeley: University of California Press.
- Krell, F. D. (1992). The Daimon Life: Heidegger and Life Philosophy. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
- Krell, F. D. (2005). The Tragic Absolute: German Idealism and The Languishing of God. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
- Lacan, J. (1992). The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book VII: The Ethics of Psychoanalysis. (Ed. J.A Miller, Trans. D. Porter) New York: Norton.
- Glenn W. M. (2002). Heidegger's Greeks. Arion: A Journal of Humanities and the Classics, 10, 83-9.
- Malpas, J. (2006). Heidegger's Topology: Being, Place, World. Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press.
- Mitchell, A. (2015). The Fourfold: Reading the Late Heidegger. Evanston: Northwestern University Press.
- Nancy, J-L. (2002). Heidegger’s Originary Ethics. Heidegger and Practical Philosophy. (Ed. F. Raffoul and D. Pettigrew). Albany: SUNY Press.
- Nikolopoulou, K. (2012). Tragically Speaking: On the Use and Abuse of Theory for Life. Lincoln & London: University of Nebraska Press.
- Schmidt, J.D. (2001). On Germans and Other Greeks: Tragedy and Ethical Life. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
- Sophocles. (2003). Antigone. (Trans. R. Gibbons and C. Segal). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
- Wright, K. (1999). Heidegger on Hegel’s Antigone. Endings: Questions of Memory in Hegel and Heidegger. (Ed. R. Comay and J. McCumber). Evanston: Northwestern University Press.
- Young, J. (2002). Poets and Rivers: Heidegger on Hölderlin’s ‘Der Ister’. Heidegger Re-examined, vol. 3. (Eds. H. L. Dreyfus and M. A. Wrathall). New York: Routledge.