Natural or Human Creation? Part II

Posted On August 15, 2023

Part II

There is a higher law than any human statute that has been known since ancient times. An illustration of the ideal is found in Sophocles play Antigone, for within the exceptional Greek tragedy, is a harsh critique of Athenian society and the Greek city-state. Sophocles’ Antigone articulates the unending struggle between the Athenian state and an individual Greek, human legislation and natural law, and the vast gulf between what the state and the individual attempt to define, then and now, and what destiny awaits everyone. Within the beautiful gripping work, is found the very reason why the People are what they are today. But to understand the theme, one must know the play.

The heroine, Antigone, seeks to provide both of her brothers a respectable burial, however, both of her brothers fought on opposing sides during a civil war in Thebes, an important Greek city. One brother, Eteocles, fought for Thebes; but the other, Polynices, fought against Thebes. Antigone is the daughter of Oedipus, the former king of Thebes, and is willing to face capital punishment – death, as decreed by her uncle Creon, the current king, the penalty for anyone burying Polyneices, for he was determined to be a traitor – Polyneices had been killed during an attack on Thebes, and the posthumous punishment for his involvement in the attack, Creon had forbidden the burial of his corpse within the city. Antigone, obeying all her feelings of love, devotion, and a higher law than any human statute, defies Creon and respectfully buries her brother. Due to his conviction the purpose of the state prevail over family ties, Creon refused to commute Antigone’s death sentence, but by the time Creon is convinced by the prophet Tiresias to yield and set Antigone free, however, he soon learned that she committed suicide while in prison. At the play’s end, Creon is left desolate and broken in spirit. In his narrow and unduly rigid adherence to his civic duties, he challenged the gods through his denial of humanity’s common obligations toward the dead and was surely punished for it. The play, accordingly, addresses the concerns of conflicting obligations of civic versus personal loyalties and religious mores.

Creon

You, you with your face bent to the ground, do you admit, or deny that you did this?

Antigone

I declare it and make no denial.

Creon

(To the Guard.)

You can take yourself wherever you please, [445] free and clear of a heavy charge. (Exit Guard.)

To Antigone.

You, however, tell me—not at length, but briefly—did you know that an edict had forbidden this?

Antigone

I knew it. How could I not? It was public.

Creon

And even so you dared overstep that law?

Antigone

[450] Yes, since it was not Zeus that published me that edict, and since not of that kind are the laws which Justice who dwells with the gods below established among men. Nor did I think that your decrees were of such force, that a mortal could override the unwritten [455] and unfailing statutes given us by the gods. For their life is not of today or yesterday, but for all time, and no man knows when they were first put forth. Not for fear of any man’s pride was I about to owe a penalty to the gods for breaking these. [460] Die I must, that I knew well how could I not?. That is true even without your edicts. But if I am to die before my time, I count that a gain. When anyone lives as I do, surrounded by evils, how can he not carry off gain by dying? [465] So for me to meet this doom is a grief of no account. But if I had endured that my mother’s son should in death lie an unburied corpse, that would have grieved me. Yet for this, I am not grieved. And if my present actions are foolish in your sight, [470] it may be that it is a fool who accuses me of folly.

Aristotle’s most weighty scholarship of individual integrity and the boundaries within human existence is found in his work the Nicomachean Ethics, whichhas for twenty centuries been a broadly studied and influential book. Though written back in antiquity, the work offers the contemporary reader numerous respected insights into essential human behavior. For instance, all human conduct and inclinations are aimed towards some good, that can be delineated as a purpose or intent of the act or selection, and depending on a particular interest being studied, Aristotle asserts there are no known clear moral values; “every principled belief needs to be grounded on an understanding of psychology and securely founded on the experiences of human nature and daily life.”

People have changed little in the centuries since Aristotle first addressed ethics at the Lyceum in Athens. The human mannerisms and difficulties discussed are known to everyone. The conventions of behavior and rationalizations of honesty and integrity proposed can help contemporary individuals to achieve richer and, as a participant in a society, a gratifying appreciation for responsibility Most of all, the understanding acquired would convey a purpose to their existence.

Aristotle’s Ethical Philosophy

1. The highest good and the end toward which all human activity is directed is happiness, which can be defined as continuous contemplation of eternal and universal truth.
2. One attains happiness by a virtuous life and the development of reason and the faculty of theoretical wisdom. For this one requires sufficient external goods to ensure health, leisure, and the opportunity for virtuous action.
3. Moral virtue is a relative mean between extremes of excess and deficiency, and in general moral life is one of moderation in all things except virtue. No human appetite or desire is bad if it is controlled by reason according to a moral principle. Moral virtue is acquired by a combination of knowledge, habituation, and self-discipline.
4. Virtuous acts require conscious choice and moral purpose or motivation. Man has personal moral responsibility for his actions.
5. Moral virtue cannot be achieved abstractly — it requires moral action in a social environment. Ethics and politics are closely related, for politics is the science of creating a society in which men can live the good life and develop their full potential.