“Ismene: You have a hot mind over chilly things” (Antigone 160).
“Nothingness lies coiled in the heart of being— like a worm” (Sartre).
The year that was still four to five centuries before the Common era, there was still- not as what is knowable, nowadays- no technical term to define or determine existential philosophy. On the other hand, the year that was approximately less than a smattering of many centuries away from the Modern literary era, there arrived the coinage of the term “ontology”. It basically posed a “philosophical enquiry” to define the “fundamental nature of existence or reality” (Cox).
Antigone by Sophocles could, thus, be termed not just from the view that suggests it as one of the pioneering outspoken phenomenon on a woman’s right. But, it portrays a shift of character and further than that consciousness, as Antigone undergoes a transformation of being an object in its own right— to a being phenomenon for its own matter of existence. That calls for some clarifications that Jean-Paul Sartre, an Enxistentialist philosopher, has divided (stratified) the concept of being into two subbranches:
The perfect examples of being-in-itself (in its own right, rather) would demand reference to objects such as a chair, a table, or even a tree. These objects, can be agreed on, that do not possess self-awareness of their location, for example. Therefore, they lack consciousness and subjectivity.
Having said that, things- that is, people- who are beings for themselves are characterized by the quality of consciousness. “Nothingness … like a worm”, that said, Sartre matches the activity of the conscious (way of thinking) as a rupture in being. In other words, consciousness is a continual worker that is characterized and activated, all the time, through realization of the lack/ absence of something.
Antigone’s situation, thus observed through existentialist lens, maintains that— of course, the death of Polyneices is a catalyst, but, the heroine has been driven towards a fork. On the shoulder of one of these paths rests “one truly serious philosophical problem” known as suicide, and the other, revolt. Meanwhile, Antigone’s only remaining limb, Ismene, is stuck in what is called by existentialists as “bad faith”, which is basically to use your freedom against yourself. In the case of Ismene, she’s resolved to sustain her place of courteous royalty, that is royal dignity is the intentional object she gathers her mind around. Meanwhile whatsoever may come upon her path, Antigone swaps the indeterminate life she sustains for revolt to compensate for the amount of her suppression and repression.
As mentioned by Gary Cox, a successful author of several good books on existentialism and general philosophy, in The Existentialist’s Guide to Death, the Universe, and Nothingness, “None of us are fixed entities… but indeterminate, ambiguous beings in [a] constant process of becoming and change”. Or, as famously said in Being and Nothingness of Sartre, “Freedom is the freedom of choosing but not the freedom of not chosing”. Retrospectively, Antigone decided to take on to hold herself accountable: “We’re condemned to be free”. So, while the level of issue is to that absurdity, Antigone proves herself person and shrewd enough as to justify her own existence and put a definition/ identification upon her person.
The facticity (i.e. circumstances and conditions) that Antigone was born into is male-dominated and tyrannical. Yet, she held the notion of transcendence- by existentialists- sacred that what obstacle falls on her way, if anything, she can set her mind into overcoming it. That kind of a burden gives the indication that she has, in one way or another, arrived at the conclusion that “human existence is essentially meaningless”. So combined with that notion, Antigone confesses having nothing to lose. As well, then, if Creon sees the world as dominated by a single ultimate truth, considering him being more aged, Antigone has sooner than never reached the assumption of an otherness.
References:
Cox, Gary. The Existentialist’s Gide to Death, the Universe and Nothingness. Bloomsbury, Academic, 2017. The_Existentialists_Guide_to_Death,_the_Universe_and_Nothingness.pdf.
Sartre, Jean-Paul. Being and Nothingness : An Essay on Phenomenological Ontology. Trans, Barnes, Hazel E. University of Colorado. Being and Nothingness An Essay on Phenomenological Ontology (Jean-Paul Sartre, Hazel Barnes) (Z-Library).pdf
Sophocles. Antigone. Trans. Unknown.
Maytham Khaghani
