Hegel and the gods as Tragic Heroes

Robert Leib, 2013

[email protected]; http://fau.academia.edu/RobertLeib 1

Citation: Robert S. Leib, “Tragedy of Tragedies: The Gods as Tragic Heroes in Hegel’s

Phenomenology of Spirit.” Academia.edu. Unpublished essay, 2013. Accessed [date].

<https://www.academia.edu/4191227/Tragedy_of_Tragedies_the_gods_as_Tragic_Heroe

s_in_Hegels_Phenomenology_of_Spirit>

Tragedy of Tragedies:

The Gods as Tragic Heroes in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit

ABSTRACT: In this article, I argue that the gods, and not the mortals, are the heroes of

Greek tragedy in the context of G.W. F. Hegel’s analysis of tragedy in the “Spiritual

Work of Art.” Given the way the gods are characterized in this section of the

Phenomenology of Spirit, I argue further that the subject matter of ancient tragedy is not a

particular situation in which one human meets his or her fate in a way that elicits fear and

pity from the spectator. Rather, tragedy concerns the untenable nature and inevitable

dissolution of the ethical world in general.

KEY WORDS: Hegel, Sophocles, Tragedy, Phenomenology of Spirit, Antigone

mailto:[email protected]

http://fau.academia.edu/RobertLeib

https://www.academia.edu/4191227/Tragedy_of_Tragedies_the_gods_as_Tragic_Heroes_in_Hegels_Phenomenology_of_Spirit

https://www.academia.edu/4191227/Tragedy_of_Tragedies_the_gods_as_Tragic_Heroes_in_Hegels_Phenomenology_of_Spirit

Robert Leib, 2013


I. Introduction

In this article, I argue that the gods, and not the mortals, are the heroes of tragedy in the

context of Hegel’s analysis of tragedy in the “Spiritual Work of Art.” Given the way the

gods are characterized in this section of the Phenomenology of Spirit, I would like to

suggest that the subject matter of ancient tragedy is not a particular situation in which one

human meets his or her fate in consequence of some conflict of duties, but rather, it is the

tragic nature of the ethical world itself. That is to say, tragedy, as a form of art, takes the

tragic itself rather than some particular misfortune as its subject, even though such a

misfortune, in eliciting fear and pity for those who look upon it, may be labeled ‘tragic’. I

will pursue this by looking at Hegel’s use of Antigone within the section of “Spirit”

entitled “The Ethical Order” in contrast with his use of the Eumenides within the section

of “Religion” entitled “The Spiritual Work of Art.” Martin Donougho makes a similar

distinction between the way in which Hegel discusses the content of tragedy and its form

as tragedy. He says:

One of the oddest features of contemporary discussion of Hegel’s

Antigone is a tendency to elide content and form…the tragic and tragedy,

the action represented in the play and its display or presentation. Attention

has almost always focused exclusively on ethical content (e.g., Antigone’s

character and deeds), at the expense of the ethical or political implications

of the tragic genre or of particular plays in performance…Hegel treats

them separately—in chapters VI (“ethical life”) and VII (“art-religion”) of

the Phenomenology.1

My purpose in this paper more or less accepts this division. However, I see what I plan to

do here as significantly different from Donougho because I do not agree with him that the

“Spiritual Work of Art” is a discussion of Antigone at all, but of the ways in which the

Eumenides, while similar to Antigone in many respects, uniquely characterizes the form

of tragedy more than it does any kind of tragic content.

To my knowledge, articulating the connection between Hegel’s uses of Antigone and

Eumenides in the Phenomenology is not a major theme in the literature and

commentaries. This is likely due to the different conceptual emphases Hegel places upon

1 Martin Donougho, “Hegel’s Pragmatics of Tragedy,” Idealistic Studies. Vol. 36, 3: 155.



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each work in its respective section of the text. “The Ethical Order” is concerned primarily

with the secular Spirit as it emerges for the first time through the spontaneous cultural

affinity between different families, who come to understand themselves as a people. The

over-arching conflict in this section concerns the forgetfulness of the Greek polis, or the

embodiment of the human law, as having its basis in what Hegel calls the “unconscious”

law of the family. In contrast, “The Spiritual Work of Art” is concerned with the Greeks’

representation of the divine to themselves as being like themselves through national

works of art. The over-arching conflict in this section concerns the recognition that the

concept of a community of anthropomorphic gods, as represented in the highest possible

human form through poetry, is doomed to dissolve itself. The community, or pantheon,

dissolves because its notion contains within it a contradiction between the proclaimed

absoluteness of each god and the necessity of each having to cede this absoluteness when

it comes into conflict with the absolute claims of other gods.

In spite of these differences, however, we can discern a parallel structure to the two

movements, which falls out in three phases. First, a community arises which is conscious

of itself through its parts. The parts themselves are not self-conscious individuals but only

display an immediate knowing of how the world is. Second, one of the parts acts

unreflectively according to his immediate knowledge of what must be done in some

instance, given how the world is for him. This action elicits a conflict via an equally

legitimate, yet contrary, claim against his action by another party for whom the world

appears essentially different. Each of these parties, however, derives its claim from the

composition of the community itself. The situation, thus, shows itself to each of the parts

as one of ignorance rather than of knowing. Third, the recognition of the rightness of

each is the ‘death’ of both, leading ultimately to dissolution of the ethical community

surrounding them.

The major difference between the content of the two sections concerns the author of the

deed that, in each case, sets the notion upon its movement toward self-destruction (i.e.

phase two). In Antigone, the deed belongs to Creon, who has proclaimed that no one shall

bury Polyneices, a traitor to Thebes. In the Eumenides, the deed belongs to Apollo, who

has commanded that Orestes kill his mother in retribution for the murder of her husband,



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the king. The general conflict in each case arises in response to the deed. In Antigone,

Antigone responds to Creon’s proclamation by burying Polyneices in accordance with

what she understands to be the law of the gods and the family. In Eumenides, the Furies

respond to Apollo’s oracle by seeking the death of Orestes on the charge of matricide. I

argue for a parallel here: whereas Antigone and Creon bring forth misfortune due to their

one-sided commitment to his or her own law, Apollo and the Furies, as the laws

themselves, bring forth the character of the tragic itself due to their one-sided

commitment to himself or herself. In regard to this latter, the humans in the Eumenides

are not the ethical agents per se, but are merely beholden to this clash of the laws as mere

pawns of the one-sided deities. Under this interpretation, the sections concerning the

ethical order and the spiritual work of art are shown to have parallel outcomes as well

(i.e. phase three). The individual ethical community, or Spirit, which undoes itself by the

relative ignorance of each of representatives of the two laws, shows itself as similar to the

community of ethical communities, or pantheon, which undoes itself by the relative

ignorance of each of the gods themselves.

II. The Ethical Order

The ethical community, or polis, arises out of nature through the joining together of

families. As Stewart points out, this is not a contractarian view of the beginning of

society—one where individuals choose to be included in its formation—but one in which

a community comes forth from “the intense communal identification is based on

spontaneous love of or affinity with one’s own culture.”2 Hegel is not clear how this

happens initially, though he mentions war as the primary way in which the polis “checks

their tendency to fall away from the ethical order”—i.e. their political unity.3 Having

arisen from Nature in this way, the community promptly forgets Nature and thinks of

itself as all-powerful. Spirit arises for the first time as this community and contains within

it aspects of both nature and the polis.

2 Jonathan Stewart, The Unity of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit: A Systematic Interpretation (Evanston:

Northwestern UP, 2000), 299. 3 G.W.F. Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. A.V. Miller (New York: Oxford UP, 1977), ¶455.

Henceforth, all citations marked with a simple paragraph number refer to this edition of Phenomenology of

Spirit.



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At the outset of the “Spirit” chapter, Hegel articulates his notion of Spirit as having a

twofold aspect. It is equally the ground for all ethical action, the world in which ethical

action is possible, and the action itself, insofar as the individuals comprising the

community act in relation to this ground.4 He says, “As substance, Spirit is unshaken

righteous self-identity; but as being-for-self it is a fragmented being, self-sacrificing and

benevolent, in which each accomplishes his own work, rends asunder the universal being,

and takes from it his own share.”5 Hegel first shows Spirit in its unified form as a world,

and then as divided through a “real ethical situation,” for which he uses Antigone as his

prime example.6

Both aspects, however, are present in his formulation of Spirit, for it is their interaction

that accounts for the self-consciousness of Spirit at this stage. That is to say, Spirit, or the

polis, is not conscious of itself as such, but only through its individual members. The

community exists only because it is made up of individuals. Likewise, the individuals are

not self-conscious as individuals, but only as members of a particular community. Here,

there are no individuals divorced from a community. The two are, thus, interdependent

aspects of Spirit’s shape. Hegel says: “As actual substance, it is a nation, as actual

consciousness, it is the citizens of that nation.”7

Although the target of his analysis is the Greek polis, Hegel does not mean to discuss any

particular community, and therefore, the notion of individuality involved is of “self-

consciousness in general, not of a particular, contingent consciousness.”8 Thus, his use of

Antigone and Creon as ethical actors, while necessary given the need for a particular

ethical situation, does not gain its explanatory force from their being possibly historical

individuals but from their being embodiments of types of ethical roles. In his initial

formulation of the ethical world, Hegel talks of an “actual situation with many ethical

connections,” but since they derive their significance from being types, this quickly

simplifies into two ethical roles pertaining to just two ethical laws.9

4 ¶439. 5 ¶439. 6 ¶446. 7 ¶447. 8 ¶447. 9 ¶446.



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The first is the human law, or law of the state, which is that law through which Spirit as

the community is conscious of itself. This law joins the people, who existed previously as

disparate families, into a single community. This law is “known law, and the prevailing

custom”, which is “openly accepted and manifest to all.”10 Hegel calls this the law of

men because, in Greek society, the men were the ones who left the family and, as

citizens, participated in shaping the community in this public and universal way.11 It

operates according to a model of justice that actively seeks to maintain the harmony of

the community as a community by punishing individuals who act out against the

community’s interests.12 The second law is the divine law, or law of the family, which

Hegel describes as “unconscious.”13 This law signifies the way in which families

maintain themselves against the outside world as families. It is not articulate, as the laws

of the state are, but intuitively known by all of its members in a subconscious way, and

thus, Hegel characterizes it as the law of the nether world. The divine law belongs to

women, who do not go out into the public sphere, but remain at home as the heads of the

household and masters of their own particular affairs.14 The justice of the divine law is re-

active, rather than active, and it manifests itself in the form of vendettas and vengeance.15

The most important ethical duty of the otherwise mundane divine law, Hegel tells us, is

burial of the individual, which completes him as a particular individual and makes him

part of the family as “something done.”16

Having been simplified in this way, the duties of man and woman are set forth as clearly

demarcated. Though we can see the ethical community as comprising these two distinct

laws, the limited individuals of the community cannot. Thus, the individuals in their

universal ethical capacities are characterized by immediate knowing. Hegel says: “Qua

ethical consciousness, it is the simple, pure direction of activity towards the essentiality

of ethical life, i.e. duty.”17 Further, given that the basis of one’s duty is his or her sex, the

10 ¶448. 11 ¶458. 12 ¶462. 13 ¶450. 14 ¶459. 15 ¶462. 16 ¶452. 17 ¶465.



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content of what is to be done is never a matter of decision. As ethical consciousness, he

says, one has always “already decided whether to belong to the divine or human law.”18

This is the static model of the Greek community as shown in its structural harmony and

equilibrium of powers. As we have said, an individual acts according to his or her law

without reflection, and in terms of ethicality, this is how one achieves status as an

individual. Therefore, until there is some ethical action, there is no individual.19 As

Hegel says, “the deed is the actual self.”20 But given that the community has divided its

duties absolutely, there exists the inherent possibility for conflict between them. Thus, the

deed, when it appears, “disturbs the peaceful organization and movement of the ethical

world.”21 Again, this disturbance is not the appearance or entrance of something alien to

the community but the logical outcome of the community’s structural composition. In

knowing his or her law immediately, the ethical individuality acts in a necessarily one-

sided way, and Hegel deems this mode of action the individual’s “pathos” and

“character.”22 The former is the immediate affect of the law present in the individual and

the latter is its expression in the action. Looking ahead, we should note that this pathos,

taken in itself, turns out to be a god. In his lectures on aesthetics, Hegel equates ‘pathos’

with the gods, saying: “The gods become human ‘pathos’ and ‘pathos’ in concrete

activity is the human character.”23 As it stands for the moment, however, the pathos is

seen, even by ‘us’—the readers of Hegel’s Phenomenology—as a kind of commitment

having issued from its law. Ethical action as action proceeding immediately according to

‘pathos’, or from one law, is therefore necessarily only half the story. Hegel tells us that

this is true especially in the immediate condition of the ethical actor because there is no

possibility for the actor to pervert the content of the law to his or her personal

advantage.24

18 ¶465. 19 Samantha Mills, “Pathos and Destiny: Hegel’s Notion of ‘Tragic Collision’,” International Studies in

Philosophy, Vol. 36, 1: 83. 20 ¶464. 21 ¶464. 22 ¶466. 23 G.W.F. Hegel, Aesthetics Vol.1, trans. T.M. Knox (Oxford: Clarendon, 1975), 236. 24 ¶467.



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As we said, ethical action plays out within a particular concrete situation. Hegel sees

Antigone as the archetypal ethical situation. The conflict is over the burial of Antigone’s

brother, Polyneices, who fought to the death against his brother, the rightful heir, for

control of the city. Creon, the successor of the brothers, issues an edict that Polyneices

shall not be buried because he is a traitor. Creon here is the embodiment of the human

law. His speeches are given solely in terms of his capacity as king, a public figure. He

proclaims: “…whoever places a [loved one]/ above the good of his own country, he is

nothing.”25 This edict elicits a reaction from Antigone, the embodiment of the divine law.

Her speeches are given solely in terms of her capacity as a sister, a private, familial

figure: “He is my brother…No one will ever convict me as a traitor.”26

Because of the shape Spirit takes in the ethical world, the individuals involved cannot

formulate the explicit content of their laws for themselves. That is, Antigone understands

that what she strives to do is in defense of the gods, but she is not far enough removed

from her duty to articulate the rule she is following or why this will please them. It

simply shows up for her as what must be done in the face of what she sees as Creon’s

self-serving edict. Creon, on the other hand, only recognizes his own law during the

conflict. He refuses to see Antigone’s burial of her brother as having any authority

beyond her own wish, and he is therefore outraged that she does it in the name of the

gods: “Exactly when did you last see the gods/ celebrating traitors? Inconceivable!”27

Hegel describes this situation as such:

Since it sees right only on one side and wrong on the other, that

consciousness which belongs to the divine law sees in the other side only

the violence of human caprice, that which holds to human law sees in the

other only the self-will and disobedience of the individual who insists on

being his own authority.28

The two sides thus fall into a deadlock and refuse all offers of outside advice because

each side claims to know its duty. However, it is important to note that the auxiliary

characters do offer their points of view. Ismene serves as a foil for Antigone’s one-sided

25 Sophocles, “Antigone,” in Three Theban Plays, trans. Robert Fagles. (New York: Penguin, 1982) lines

203-205. Further, he says: “Remember this:/ our country is our safety./ Only while she voyages true on

course/ can we establish friendships, truer than blood itself” (Ant. 210-213). 26 Sophocles, Antigone, lines 55-57. 27 Sophocles, Antigone, lines 326-327. 28 ¶466.



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view, while Haemon attempts to persuade Creon of his rashness. Despite the play’s

diremption into a simple conflict between two sides, the other humans do not easily

submit to the conflict. The chorus, too, while refraining from offering advice does not

simply surrender to fate. Indeed, the chorus does not bemoan fate, which will play a

significantly different role in the Eumenides, until after Antigone is sealed up in the

cave.29 Thus, Hegel says, only in the downfall of both stubborn powers, “the negative

power which engulfs both sides, that is, omnipotent and righteous Destiny, steps on the

scene.”30 Before this moment, Nature, as the forgotten other of the community, remains

unconscious to those in the play. Only the resolution of all contingencies brings relative

ignorance to the surface as an element of the action, and this recognition is what elicits

the corresponding fear and pity from the audience. Even here, on the level of its

performance, however, Antigone is not manifestly a clash between two laws but only a

recognition of the possibility that the supreme right of the ethical order is, in fact, a

supreme wrong.31

III. The Spiritual Work of Art

There should be little that is controversial about this characterization of the unfolding of

the ethical world in terms of Antigone, for my argument does not lie with it. We must

move toward the argument now by attempting to show the ways in which the movement

of Spirit within its shape as the spiritual work of art can be seen as parallel to the ethical

world, with the gods now inhabiting the roles formerly held by Antigone and Creon.

Before doing so, however, we should note several objections to the comparison I am

about to make; I will note three. First, some argue that the tragic hero is essentially

mortal. When this is taken to be the case, the analysis of the two sections can become

blended in an indiscriminate way. Mills, for example, claims that the essential conflict in

tragedy is the desire of mortals to be more than mortal and, in doing so, are destroyed by

their efforts. In contrast to this, she says, “Immortals, no matter how odd and capricious

they appear, are not ever out of place or disharmonious; for they are one pantheon, the

29 Sophocles, Antigone, line 1045. 30 ¶472. 31 ¶474.



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mighty and indestructible order.”32 That is, the humans and their ethical communities are

unstable and mutable in a way the gods and their pantheon are not. Therefore, arguing

that the gods are the ones destroyed by ethical conflict makes no sense. A second

objection recognizes the gods as the proper subjects of the Eumenides, but claims that the

Eumenides cannot be a tragedy at all because it does not contain the essential quality of

tragedy—the tragic downfall. Bisticas-Cocovos, in his examination of Hegel’s dramatic

references in the “Ethical Order”, separates them and keeps them distinct from Hegel’s

later references to the Eumenides on the grounds that the “Eumenides largely concerns a

conflict between the gods, not humans.”33 However, he takes it that an obvious

“downfall” is the essential outcome of tragedy, and this does not occur in the Eumenides.

He only sees its ostensive “peaceful resolution” and “the constitution of a community, not

its destruction.”34 A third and final objection to my reading is somewhat similar to the

second, but it focuses on the effect of a given play on its spectators. Roche separates

Hegel’s Antigone from his Eumenides by claiming that only the former is a tragedy. He

calls the Eumenides a “drama of reconciliation” because the reconciliation of the gods on

stage does not evoke the proper kind of reaction in the viewer—namely, one in which the

ethical substance is corrected for having purged the guilty from its midst. Of tragedy, he

says: “The human result is death, but the absolute end is the re-establishment of the

ethical substance” in the consciousness of the spectator.35 In contrast, the Eumenides is an

example of a “drama of reconciliation” because of its lack of human death and its

“harmonious resolution”, not just on stage, but in the consciousness of the audience as

well.36

We will have to deal with these through the course of our analysis. In drawing out the

parallel between the two sections as I have outlined above, I hope to show that: 1) Hegel

sees the gods of the Eumenides playing the role of the heroes formerly held by Antigone

and Creon; 2) he does not see the Pantheon as anymore unified or indestructible than the

ethical community; 3) he uses the Eumenides, not as an example of the reconciliation of

32 Mills, “Pathos and Destiny,” 97. 33 Marcos Bisticas-Cocovos, “Tragedy, Comedy, and Ethical Action in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit,”

Epoche, Vol. 10, 1 (Fall 2005): 110. 34 Bisticas-Cocovos, “Tragedy, Comedy, Ethical Action,” 110. 35 Mark W. Roche, “Introduction to Hegel’s Theory of Tragedy,” PhaenEx 1, no. 2 (fall/winter 2006), 17. 36 Roche, 18.



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the gods back into community, but as an example showing the death and dissolution of

both; and 4) ancient tragedy, as given here by Hegel within the subsection of the

“Spiritual Work of Art” entitled “Tragedy”, does not depend on the audience’s reaction

for its status, but attains this designation in terms of the way its structural unfolding bears

upon its cultural context, a relation it attains by making the tragic character of the ethical

world its subject. Viewed in this manner, the outcome of the action for mortals and even

its effect on the spectators do not determine its status as tragedy.

For Hegel, the Greek world represents a unique historical and conceptual nexus at which

the spheres of ethics, religion, and art coalesce. Hegel characterizes Greek religion as

Kunstreligion, because the general tendency in the development of the Greek conception

of the divine displays an aesthetic movement by which the gods become progressively

like the Greek people themselves. “The Spiritual Work of Art” thus represents the

ultimate expression of Greek divinity. Through poetry, the gods emerge, not only in the

shape of human beings, but also their communal organization and ability to express

themselves through language. As other than the Greeks themselves, however, the gods,

through the artist, are able to serve as mirror to what was experienced unreflectively in

the unfolding of the ethical order. Thus, it makes sense that the general movement of this

section would be identical with that of the ethical order, except that all the organization

structures have been shifted up one level. For instance, “The Spiritual Work of Art”

begins with “Epic,” which parallels the construction of the ethical world out of the

families into the state. Here, however, the coalescence is of whole communities, or

national spirits, themselves into a “collective nation.”37

In the “Ethical Order” we were dealing with just one community, so it received no

characterization as such; it was the unity that was conscious of no other. Its self-

consciousness, as we saw, existed only internally, as a function of the relationship

between the state and its individual members. Here, however, the community, or Spirit, is

one among many, and through recognizing other spirits, it attains a particular,

determinate shape and becomes a particular patron god. Hegel says: “The national Spirits

which become conscious of their essence in the shape of a particular animal coalesce into

37 ¶727.



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a single Spirit. Thus it is that the separate beautiful national Spirits unite into a single

pantheon…”38 This is achieved, as it was previously in the case of the state gathering the

families, in the context of gathering allies for war.39 Far from being absolutely unified,

this pantheon holds the same tenuous status as the ethical community because it is a

combination of universal and individual, and the gods, like the individual humans in the

ethical world, are characterized by immediate knowing.40 This further means that the

tenuousness is not initially visible to the members of the pantheon. Throughout this

section, as we will see, the upward structural shift ends up placing all of the action with

the gods, leaving the humans largely out of it. Here, humans are merely the occasion for

the conflict between the gods.

Through this shift, the gods now occupy the place held by Antigone and Creon in the

ethical world—namely, of ones who know their duty immediately and unreflectively.

Thus, for each god, what is to be done is not a matter of decision. Just as the division

between sexes meant that Antigone and Creon were always already for one of the two

laws in the ethical community, here, having a particular shape means that each god is

already decisively for what is to be done based on how the world appears to him or her—

i.e. the law of which he or she is the essence and personification.

Through this creation of a pantheon, the individual communities, or gods, become

conscious of themselves at a higher level than each was by itself in the ethical world of

this or that individual community because the gods of nature, which caused the downfall

of the individual community by being neglected, are included among those present: “The

assembly of national Spirits constitutes a circle of shapes which now embraces the whole

of Nature as well as the whole ethical world…By themselves, they are the universal

substances of what the self-conscious essence in itself is and does.”41 The pantheon,

therefore, includes not simply the human laws, but the natural laws, too, and these two

kinds of law will now come into conflict with one another, as their male and female

representatives did in Antigone. In the Eumenides, the structural parallel with Antigone is

38 ¶727. 39 ¶727. 40 Hegel says: “This universality which first issues from the individuality of the ethical sphere, which has

not yet overcome its immediacy” (¶727). 41 ¶728.



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exact down to the sex and order of action. The gods of the human laws, represented in the

play by Apollo, maintain the priority in action, while the nature gods, represented by the

female Furies, are originally hidden, reactive forces of vengeance and equilibrium.

As in “The Ethical World,” which began the previous unfolding, the world of “Epic,”

contains no deed to begin this unfolding, even though the notion of action is present in its

composition. Hegel says, “The content is an action of the self-conscious essence.”42

There is action—namely, the Trojan War—but not of the gods. At this point, the heroes

of whom Hegel speaks are still humans, but their deeds are hardly consequential. Hegel’s

purpose here is to transition from the manifestation of the god in the human’s character to

the action of the pathos, or god, itself. We can see the beginning of this movement by

Hegel’s allusion to Achilles, who despite his efforts, “feels his life is broken and

sorrowfully awaits an early death.”43 Even the greatest of human heroes, that is, now

lacks agency because fate, evoked for the first time at the outcomes of Antigone, is in

force from very beginning of this movement. In order for the gods to be fit to receive the

roles of acting agents, however, they must be filled out in their details and made as like

the humans as possible. Thus, although Hegel describes them as eternal natures, “exempt

from transitoriness and the influence of alien powers” they must become at the same time

“specific elements, particular gods, which therefore stand in relation to others.”44 Each

individual god is shown to exhibit the same tension within itself as was present in the

ethical community—namely; it comprises both a universal and a particular aspect.

In order to act, each god must now come forward as the pathos itself, which was present

in “Ethical Order” not in itself but only through the characters and deeds of Antigone and

Creon. The transition is not wholly apparent at this moment in the Phenomenology, but

by turning to the Aesthetics, we can see it more clearly:

Now the poets go further still in their explanation [of what comes to pass

in human actions], because what concerns the universal and essential

‘pathos’, the moving power of human decisions and actions, they ascribe

for the most part to the gods and their deed, so that human activity appears

42 ¶730. 43 ¶732. 44 ¶731.



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at the same time as the deed of gods who bring their decision to execution

through men.45

In the middle ground of epic, then, gods and men share the deeds, for which

reason, Hegel says, they have “done one and the same thing.”46

In “Tragedy,” the second phase of this unfolding, however, a god steps forward as the

one who does the deed, and leaves the mortals behind. Hegel marks this transition as he

did the one from the “Ethical World” to “Ethical Action” by speaking in terms of a

disturbance of balance: “The acting disturbs the tranquility of the Substance and excites

the essence so that its simple, unitary nature is divided and opened up into the manifold

world of natural and ethical powers.”47 The gods, rather than universal humans who

exemplify one law or the other, are now clearly the ones who act: “The universal powers

have the form of individuality and hence the principle of action in them; what they effect

appears, therefore to proceed entirely from them and to be as free an action as that of

men.”48

Their actions are not only as free as men, but as conceptually troublesome as well. Within

“Epic,” the concept of many gods, many universals, who live in society with one another

is not a contradiction. However, here as immediately conscious actors, the gods run into

the same issues as Antigone and Creon did. They act without self-consciousness, or true

individuality, and thus do not understand that they are different from the other gods.

Because they are different, what appears to them to be done in any particular situation is

different from what appears to the other gods.49 Of course, they are different from

Antigone and Creon in that they do not merely represent specific laws, but are themselves

the embodiment of those laws. However, since Antigone and Creon clashed with one

another qua actors, we should expect the clash to be repeated here.50

45 Hegel, Aesthetics, 497. 46 ¶730. 47 ¶730. 48 ¶730. 49 Hegel says: “Just as the gods fall into a contradictory relation with the self-like nature opposed to them,

so too their universality comes into conflict with their own specific characters and its relationship to others”

(¶731). 50 They are torn between the notion that their actions have absolute rightness in themselves and the

realization that they are merely one center of action among many: “They are the eternal, beautiful

individuals who, serene in their own existence, are exempt from transitoriness and the influence of alien



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It would seem that Apollo and Furies qua the laws themselves would be in a stronger

position of knowing than their representatives in Antigone. Truly, they have direct access

to the law, while Antigone and Creon only knew the effects as manifested within their

own concrete situation. Whereas Antigone knew what to do but not why, the gods, Hegel

says, “give utterance to the inner essence, they prove the rightness of their action, and the

‘pathos’ which moves them is soberly asserted and definitely expressed in universal

individuality, free from the accidents of circumstance and personal idiosyncrasies.”51 In

the Eumenides, it is true, the gods speak for themselves. As it turns out, however, the

purity of their knowledge does not thereby make it any more complete than it was for

Antigone or Creon. Again, each god only knows half the story. Hegel says: “He takes his

purpose from his character and knows it as an ethical essentiality; but on account of the

determinateness of his character he knows only the one power of substance, the other

remaining for him concealed.”52

In terms of the Eumenides, we must now say how the gods, and not Orestes, are the true

actors. This can be seen most easily by recalling that the Eumenides is a product of poetic

contrivance and not a pure chronology of events.53 Hegel speaks to this difference in the

Aesthetics, saying that it is the province of poetry that it “shall take the listener at once in

medias res”, aiming, not at a true beginning to the troubles, for this is often in the distant

past, but at the “one great situation and action, in the course of which [the hero] is

unveiled as he is.”54 Orestes’ murder of his mother, having taken place in the Libation

Bearers, serves as the background and substance for the conflict in the way that

polyneices unburied body does in Antigone. In this way, Orestes himself holds the

position, not of Antigone, who committed a contentious act, but of the unburied body

itself. What is to be done with him? No one shall give him asylum, etc. The conflict thus

powers. But they are at the same time specific elements, particular gods, which therefore stand in relation

to others” (¶731). 51 ¶733. 52 ¶737. 53 It is true that Antigone is also, but in the context of an ethical community without any genuine

individuality, the poetic form of the play cannot enter into Hegel’s analysis. In the figures of Antigone and

Creon, the members of the audience only see what they themselves would have done, and so, only learn

about the possibility of their own tragic position within the ethical world, not about the structure of the

ethical world in which they live. For the audience of the Eumenides, however, there exists a possibility for

the recognition of this latter, as we will see in the resolution of the action below. 54 Hegel, Aesthetics, 218-219.



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arises over him, but not in terms of his deed. Or rather, the content of the conflict

concerns the connection that each of the interested parties has in terms of him. Apollo’s

oracle told him to kill his mother, and the Furies mechanistically pursue those who have

committed matricide. Thus, the deed here is not the murder, but the conditions

surrounding its having been ordered—i.e. Apollo’s deed.

This can be seen further by noting the absence of Orestes’ own will in role in the murder.

By himself, Orestes did not see what had to be done about his mother. He acts, not from

his own ‘pathos’, but because Apollo himself came forth and told him what must be

done. Orestes’ passivity is typical for the humans in the Orestia. In Antigone, all of the

characters had an opinion and sought to persuade one another about what was right, and

they did not speak of fate until the action had come to its completion. In the plays leading

up to the Eumenides, however, all the human characters display a general attitude of

deference and powerlessness. They either take their direction, or hesitate to act for lack of

having received direction, from the gods. At the beginning of the Libation Bearers, the

chorus laments:

The pride not to be warred with, fought with, not to be beaten down

Of old, sounded in all men’s

Ears, in all hearts sounded,

Has shrunk away. A man

Goes in fear. High fortune,

This in man’s eyes is god and more than god is this.55

This shows, I believe, humans are playing a fundamentally different role here. They are

what Hegel describes as “merely the positive and passive material of the individuality of

the government [i.e. national spirit, or god] confronting it.”56 Therefore, it is right to say

that, in terms of the conflict, Orestes is truly no more an actor than Polyneices’ dead

body.

The god, on the other hand, who issues the decree claims ultimate authority. Because of

this, Apollo comes to take the place of Creon. The oracle, once given, must be followed,

55 Aeschylus, “Libation Bearers,” Aeschylus I, trans. Richmond Lattimore (Chicago: University of Chicago

Press, 1953) 54-60. 56 ¶734.



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and so its being given was as good as its being done.57 Since Orestes is, as in the epic,

merely the vehicle of Apollo’s will, the Furies’ response issues not from the killing as

much as it’s having been ordered. Thus, we see that, while the play begins with the

Furies’ pursuit of Orestes, they only enter into a clash when they meet with Apollo, and

the conflict arises as they accuse him of the crime, saying: “You are the one who did it;

all the guilt is yours.”58 Apollo disagrees he is guilty, but agrees to take the whole burden

of the situation upon himself, saying “I bear/ responsibility for the mother’s murder.”59 In

the ensuing courtroom exchange between the gods, the Furies’ complaints are directed

primarily at what they see to be Apollo’s capricious decree.60 Like Antigone, the Furies

know that against which they are acting, at least as a claim, but they see Apollo as

Antigone saw Creon—a figure of political power who believes his decrees to be ultimate.

They say: “Such are the actions of the younger gods. These hold/ by unconditional force,

beyond all right, a throne/ that runs reeking blood.”61 Like Creon’s stance toward

Antigone, Apollo initially denies that the Furies have any claim at all and takes offense at

their suggestion that they have legitimate duty in connection with the gods. He says:

“Neither among the elder nor the younger gods/ have you consideration.”62

The outcome of the courtroom scene in the Eumenides, like the outcome of the action in

Antigone, is the recognition on the part of each character that his or her knowledge is

only partial. The individual gods themselves suffer the same experience of both knowing

57 Orestes says: The big strength of Apollo’s oracle will not

Forsake me. For he charged me to win through this hazard,

With divination of much, and speech articulate, /…/

Told me to cut them down in their own fashion, turn

To the bull’s fury in the loss of my estates.

He said that else I must myself pay the penalty

With my own life, and suffer much sad punishment;

(Libation Bearers, lines 269-271, 273-277). 58 Aeschylus, “Eumenides,” Aeschylus I, trans. Richmond Lattimore (Chicago: University of Chicago

Press, 1953), line 200. 59 Aeschylus, “Eumenides,” lines 578-579. 60 In this, they echo Antigone’s criticism of Creon’s edict: “Robber is all you are./ A young god, you have

ridden down powers gray with age,/…/Yourself a god, you stole the matricide away./ Where in this act

shall any man say there is right?” (Eumenides, lines 150, 153-154). 61 Aeschylus, “Eumenides,” lines 162-164. 62 Aeschylus, “Eumenides,” lines 721-722.



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and not knowing that was the downfall of both Antigone and Creon.63 Thereby, each

realizes his or her immediate assessment of what must be done does not guarantee things

will turn out according to it. Hegel thus says, “Ethical rightness, which holds that what

actually is, is in itself nothing when opposed to absolute law, learns that its knowing is

one-sided, its law only a law of its own character, and that it has seized on only one of the

powers of the substance.”64 In keeping with the drive toward anthropomorphic

representation of the gods, Hegel says this loss of immediate knowing necessitates some

kind of equal destruction to both of the parties involved.65 This, however, may seem

puzzling, since the gods are said to be eternal. However, we must understand the sense in

which this is so. It is at this moment that Hegel pulls us back, out of the action of the play

in order to draw our attention to its structure as a play composed by an artist for a specific

purpose. The antithesis of knowing and not-knowing, which was apparent only for us in

the case of Antigone, is now revealed as the explicit subject of the artist’s production. The

spectator of the play, being outside the action, is able to see the two laws as such, sees

each law claiming absolute validity through its very existence, and sees them as being in

conflict with one another on this account. This clash, though operative in Antigone was

never present as such to its spectator.66 The clash between gods, however, is overtly one

between an essential plurality of absolutes, and what emerges is the realization that “none

of them by itself is the essence.”67 Apollo’s oracle, which gives Orestes permission to kill

his mother, necessarily evokes the Furies against Orestes, and thus, Hegel says, “the

commands of this truth-speaking god and his announcements of what is, are really

deceptive.”68 Their reconciliation shows the spectator that both gods, both laws, are

equally right: “This nether right sits with Zeus on the throne and enjoys equal honor with

63 ¶737. Hegel says, “Spirit when acting appears qua consciousness over and against the object to which its

activity is directed and which consequently, is determined as the negative of the knower; the doer finds

himself thereby in the antithesis of knowing and not-knowing” (¶737). 64 ¶738. 65 ¶740. Hegel says: “The action, in being carried out, demonstrates their unity in the natural downfall of

both powers and both self-conscious characters” (¶740). 66 This can be seen by the progression Hegel follows toward the dissolution of the ethical world. The

spectator of Antigone comes to see society as unstable, not because of opposing laws, but because of the

sexual difference accidentally attached to each (¶475). Here, however, despite the fact that Apollo is a male

god and the Furies are female, the debate is settled by the gender-neutral Athena, who is biologically

female but, lacking a mother, has no special affinity for the family and is “always for the male”

(Eumenides, line 737). 67 ¶740. 68 ¶737.



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the god who is revealed and known.”69 However, because one can only act according to

one of the two contradictory laws in any given instance, both are equally wrong.70 The

spectator sees that he is left with no avenue of legitimate absolute ethicality, and thus,

breaks off any honor paid to this or that law. This honor, which formerly brought forth

the existence of the gods in the character of humans assigned to one or the other, ceases.

The laws are no longer in themselves pathos for any hero, Hegel says, but “sink to the

level of the passions in the hero, to the level of contingent, insubstantial moments.”71

Hegel presents comedy as the successor to tragedy, which seems to allude to the fact that

the sheer terror that could conceivably result from this state of affairs is not brought to the

surface. This is another, later unfolding of Spirit. The terror and uncertainty expressed by

the humans in the play does not endure to the end and, therefore, seems to be a function

of the intermediate movements of the tragedy—i.e. a residuum of the notion that one does

have an objective duty, for which guilt and punishment is the outcome if one proves

remiss in upholding it. The chorus and other human characters in the Oresteia express

fear and pity throughout, but not at the outcome. Orestes’ acquittal belies the fears of all

involved, so completely that he does not even stick around until the end of the final

scene.

I would like to point out that Hegel does not characterize tragedy as ending in fear and

pity, but in an unmasking and a recognition that everything is all right because we were

just playing. This makes sense in terms of the Eumenides, but not in terms of Antigone.

The gods each show themselves to be ultimately of no consequence, and the result is

absurdity and hypocrisy.72 Through this double aspect of the play’s outcome, the

Eumenides, as Hegel’s chosen model of tragedy, serves as the foundation of both comedy

(Aristophanes) and rational thinking (Socrates), and my reading helps make sense of the

transition to the following section in the text. The Eumenides could bring forth either one

depending on whether one hears Athena’s courtroom plea to the Furies to “be

reasonable” about her ruling as having the subtext, ‘there’s nothing any of us can do

69 ¶738. 70 ¶740. 71 ¶741, emphasis added. 72 ¶742.



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about it’ (comedy), or ‘we can straighten out this misunderstanding’ (philosophy).73 This

question, and not mere fear and death, is the ultimate result of the Greeks’ ethical world.

This question only springs naturally from the conflict in the Eumenides, however, if we

recognize Hegel as having conceived of the gods, and not mortals, as the proper tragic

heroes of tragedy. Thus, we can see that Hegel cites this play, not as one, or even the

best, example among others, but as the ultimate illustration of Spirit at the stage of its

unfolding called ‘tragedy’.

73 Aeschylus, “Eumenides,” line 829.



Hegel and the gods as Tragic Heroes

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