Michael wrote:
>The
>hidden meaning of the Theban plague (patricide) is the truth of Oedipus'
>existence, the root cause of his fate as heralded by the Delphic oracle. His
>swollen foot is his fateful im-pedi-ment [nice pun.]
To which Bob replied:
>Rather marks him for chthonic. Complaisance (hubris) with his reason,
>ability to solve riddles, science, is his fateful flaw...his forgetting
>of the essence, chthonic, (dust thou art...), of his being.
>>And would not that ["openness of Beyng"], then, be precisely the meaning
>>of the apotheosis at
>Collonus? ...and the empty tomb? etc.
>
Very interesting! Perhaps you fellas wouldn't mind if we explore these
issues--the 'etc.'--a bit further?
Can Aristotle's 'fatal/ed flaw' analysis (hubris --> nemesis) really
explain the meaning(s) of Oedipus? Doesn't Oedipus come to fully (even
hyperbolically) embody his Apollonian 'essence' (as a riddler with perhaps
too keen an in-sight, "an eye too many perhaps" -Hoelderlin) rather than
"forget" it?
We cannot know that the tomb of Oedipus is empty (I would sttress
this point), rather "the secret tomb" [ieron tumbon] is *hidden* for all
perpetuity from everyone but the King--and only this pact of eternal
secrecy between kings will secure a Kingdom [see Oedipus at Colonus, 1546,
1520ff]. Oedipus tells Theseus that precisely this gift (the hidden site
of his tomb which shelters one city and, by its absence, "curses" another)
is the redemptive offering the gods have promised him for enduring his life
of suffering. [The curse Oedipus sets in motion by denying his body to
his native Thebes sets the stage for _Antigone_. Many other connections
between 'Oed@Colonus' and 'Antigone' should ideally be pursued: The
daughter's suicide also begins here, denied access to the site of her
father's corpse, unable to view him in death--mourning made impossible
without her father's dead body, sign of her father/brother the once-king's
death (the later reaction to Polynices' unburied corpse cannot be unrelated
to this).]
As to the meaning(s) of Oedipus's death--is this not to ask for the
secret meaning of the secret event/death? We know only a few things, such
as can be gathered from the messenger's report of what the chorus saw: "the
man [Oedipus] was no longer there, and the king [Theseus] was holding his
hand before his face to shade his *eyes*, as though some terrifying sight
[phobon phanentos, 1652], which he could not bear to look on, had been
presented. But then, after a moment, with no word spoken, we saw
[Theseus] salute the earth and the sky (home of the gods) at the same
moment [horomen auton gen te proskunounth hama kai ton theon Olympon hen
tauto chrono]."
The coming-together of sky [as home of gods, Olympus] and Earth in
the same moment; how to look at this so as to see what is deliberately kept
>from our sight (for our own good?)? This fusion of the horizons of the
fixed and the possible, earth and sky, mysterious source and holy height, a
fused thanking/commemoration which occurs on the far side of a blinding
event and only for a chosen witness (another King); is it an entrance into
death, or into the ecstatic realm of Dionysus (perhaps Oedipus
crossed-paths with the nomadic and epiphantic presence(s) of Bacchus during
the long course of his blind wanderings)--and would this be an antidote to
Oedipus's fatal Appolonian discovery of his own patricide? Or just another
herald of the final tragic consumption in which O's familial lineage is
sacrificed, that Others who come later might achieve redemption from
their/our own tragedies [i.e., Athens]: Sacrificing his family, Oedipus
tells the 'dearest stranger' or 'most beloved foreigner' [philtate xenon,
1553] "in prosperity remember me when I am dead for your success for ever!
[memnesthe moy thanontos eutukeis aie]."
Oed@Colonus takes place in the no man's land (of the lawless
Furies), where Kings call across to each other as 'stranger' [xenos], it
asks the questions of homecoming and becoming-at-home--in a foreign land,
in death (in death in and as a foreign land). Sophocles's lessons concern
'dwelling' in the death which is always imminent for mortals (Sophocles's
final masterpiece, written in 406 BC, a year before Sophocles own death at
age 90), the death of the King, the father--and succession (and perhaps
even about the way in which, as Epicurus later taught, the 'invisibility'
of death confers us with a tragic kind of immortality). Oedipus passes
on--"teaches" [didaxo]--to Theseus, and only to Theseus (who in turn is to
teach these "cursed secretes" only to his 'eldest and dearest son, and only
when the term of Theseus's own life has expired') "great mysteries,"
"things that are tabboo and which speach must not disturb," literally 'a
discourse which should not itself even be put into motion.' [1518-1538].
(Always already) too late... "In all ways these things stand fast"
[pantos gar ekei tade kuros, 1776-9, the final line of the play].
Let us return, finally, to the question of 'patricide' Michael
raises. It could be argued that Heidegger's destruktion of the ontological
tradition is itself, in the end (e.g. in 1973's Zaringen Seminar), an
anamnetic attempt to clear away the impediments blocking our recall of the
philosophical parricide of the ontological progenitor; Heidegger's work
facilitates a recovery of the "parricide" [patraloian hypolabes] of "father
Parmenides" [patros Parmenidou], as the "Xenos from Elea" in Plato's
Sophist puts it [241d]? (I'd say that this recovery of the parricide is
less a reinarnation than the reconnection of a broken lineage, the
reassertion of a certain succession, perhaps of the 'right' to interpret
the meaning(s) of the event.) And, appropriately, isn't Oedipus somehow
present here, at the moment when Plato stages the primal scene of the
ontological parricide (in this text from which Heidegger launches B&T)?
"Yes, it is plain even to *a blind man,* as they say" [241d].
Iain
--- from list heidegger@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ---
>The
>hidden meaning of the Theban plague (patricide) is the truth of Oedipus'
>existence, the root cause of his fate as heralded by the Delphic oracle. His
>swollen foot is his fateful im-pedi-ment [nice pun.]
To which Bob replied:
>Rather marks him for chthonic. Complaisance (hubris) with his reason,
>ability to solve riddles, science, is his fateful flaw...his forgetting
>of the essence, chthonic, (dust thou art...), of his being.
>>And would not that ["openness of Beyng"], then, be precisely the meaning
>>of the apotheosis at
>Collonus? ...and the empty tomb? etc.
>
Very interesting! Perhaps you fellas wouldn't mind if we explore these
issues--the 'etc.'--a bit further?
Can Aristotle's 'fatal/ed flaw' analysis (hubris --> nemesis) really
explain the meaning(s) of Oedipus? Doesn't Oedipus come to fully (even
hyperbolically) embody his Apollonian 'essence' (as a riddler with perhaps
too keen an in-sight, "an eye too many perhaps" -Hoelderlin) rather than
"forget" it?
We cannot know that the tomb of Oedipus is empty (I would sttress
this point), rather "the secret tomb" [ieron tumbon] is *hidden* for all
perpetuity from everyone but the King--and only this pact of eternal
secrecy between kings will secure a Kingdom [see Oedipus at Colonus, 1546,
1520ff]. Oedipus tells Theseus that precisely this gift (the hidden site
of his tomb which shelters one city and, by its absence, "curses" another)
is the redemptive offering the gods have promised him for enduring his life
of suffering. [The curse Oedipus sets in motion by denying his body to
his native Thebes sets the stage for _Antigone_. Many other connections
between 'Oed@Colonus' and 'Antigone' should ideally be pursued: The
daughter's suicide also begins here, denied access to the site of her
father's corpse, unable to view him in death--mourning made impossible
without her father's dead body, sign of her father/brother the once-king's
death (the later reaction to Polynices' unburied corpse cannot be unrelated
to this).]
As to the meaning(s) of Oedipus's death--is this not to ask for the
secret meaning of the secret event/death? We know only a few things, such
as can be gathered from the messenger's report of what the chorus saw: "the
man [Oedipus] was no longer there, and the king [Theseus] was holding his
hand before his face to shade his *eyes*, as though some terrifying sight
[phobon phanentos, 1652], which he could not bear to look on, had been
presented. But then, after a moment, with no word spoken, we saw
[Theseus] salute the earth and the sky (home of the gods) at the same
moment [horomen auton gen te proskunounth hama kai ton theon Olympon hen
tauto chrono]."
The coming-together of sky [as home of gods, Olympus] and Earth in
the same moment; how to look at this so as to see what is deliberately kept
>from our sight (for our own good?)? This fusion of the horizons of the
fixed and the possible, earth and sky, mysterious source and holy height, a
fused thanking/commemoration which occurs on the far side of a blinding
event and only for a chosen witness (another King); is it an entrance into
death, or into the ecstatic realm of Dionysus (perhaps Oedipus
crossed-paths with the nomadic and epiphantic presence(s) of Bacchus during
the long course of his blind wanderings)--and would this be an antidote to
Oedipus's fatal Appolonian discovery of his own patricide? Or just another
herald of the final tragic consumption in which O's familial lineage is
sacrificed, that Others who come later might achieve redemption from
their/our own tragedies [i.e., Athens]: Sacrificing his family, Oedipus
tells the 'dearest stranger' or 'most beloved foreigner' [philtate xenon,
1553] "in prosperity remember me when I am dead for your success for ever!
[memnesthe moy thanontos eutukeis aie]."
Oed@Colonus takes place in the no man's land (of the lawless
Furies), where Kings call across to each other as 'stranger' [xenos], it
asks the questions of homecoming and becoming-at-home--in a foreign land,
in death (in death in and as a foreign land). Sophocles's lessons concern
'dwelling' in the death which is always imminent for mortals (Sophocles's
final masterpiece, written in 406 BC, a year before Sophocles own death at
age 90), the death of the King, the father--and succession (and perhaps
even about the way in which, as Epicurus later taught, the 'invisibility'
of death confers us with a tragic kind of immortality). Oedipus passes
on--"teaches" [didaxo]--to Theseus, and only to Theseus (who in turn is to
teach these "cursed secretes" only to his 'eldest and dearest son, and only
when the term of Theseus's own life has expired') "great mysteries,"
"things that are tabboo and which speach must not disturb," literally 'a
discourse which should not itself even be put into motion.' [1518-1538].
(Always already) too late... "In all ways these things stand fast"
[pantos gar ekei tade kuros, 1776-9, the final line of the play].
Let us return, finally, to the question of 'patricide' Michael
raises. It could be argued that Heidegger's destruktion of the ontological
tradition is itself, in the end (e.g. in 1973's Zaringen Seminar), an
anamnetic attempt to clear away the impediments blocking our recall of the
philosophical parricide of the ontological progenitor; Heidegger's work
facilitates a recovery of the "parricide" [patraloian hypolabes] of "father
Parmenides" [patros Parmenidou], as the "Xenos from Elea" in Plato's
Sophist puts it [241d]? (I'd say that this recovery of the parricide is
less a reinarnation than the reconnection of a broken lineage, the
reassertion of a certain succession, perhaps of the 'right' to interpret
the meaning(s) of the event.) And, appropriately, isn't Oedipus somehow
present here, at the moment when Plato stages the primal scene of the
ontological parricide (in this text from which Heidegger launches B&T)?
"Yes, it is plain even to *a blind man,* as they say" [241d].
Iain
--- from list heidegger@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ---