ENGLISH

Private Lives, Public Deaths: Antigone and the Invention of Individuality

By Jonathan Strauss

Book information

Publisher
Fordham University Press
Year
2022
ISBN
9780823292448
DOI
10.1515/9780823292448
Language
english
Format
PDF
Filesize
3 MB (3555569 bytes)
Pages
232\232
Library
degruyter.com
Time added
2023-08-21 20:11:27

Description

In Private Lives, Public Deaths, Jonathan Strauss shows how Sophocles’ tragedy Antigone crystallized the political, intellectual, and aesthetic forces of an entire historical moment—fifth century Athens—into one idea: the value of a single living person. That idea existed, however, only as a powerful but unconscious desire. Drawing on classical studies, Hegel, and contemporary philosophical interpretations of this pivotal drama, Strauss argues that Antigone’s tragedy, and perhaps all classical tragedy, represents a failure to satisfy this longing. To the extent that the value of a living individual remains an open question, what Sophocles attempted to imagine still escapes our understanding. Antigone is, in this sense, a text not from the past but from our future.

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