Determinism in Disguise

Refutation of the Theory that Sophocles’ Oedipus Has Free Will

DOI

10.2991/assehr.k.220504.336How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Oedipus; free will; destiny; divinity

Abstract

In Sophocles’ Oedipus the King, Oedipus, ostensibly having free will, is in essence manipulated by the divinity. For one thing, the gods, especially Apollo, endow him with the unchangeable disposition, namely loyalty to truth regardless of any risk and the inclination to react immediately, to ensure his doomed end; for another, even though the gods have done nothing to human beings yet, the divine authority would function as the effective deterrent against hubris—that is why Oedipus is forbidden by Creon to exile himself unless the divine will is double-checked. Nevertheless, this tragedy is not intended to educate the audience the so-called Greek justice (δίκα) that we ought to completely yield to the divine governance. In fact, it accentuates the dilemma of such justice. Furthermore, Oedipus, in fact, incarnates the Athenians spirits at Sophocles’ time. Therefore, his miserable reversal insinuates the potential crisis for Athens.

Copyright

© 2022 The Authors. Published by Atlantis Press SARL.

Open Access

This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC 4.0 license.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Kai Chen
PY  - 2022
DA  - 2022/06/01
TI  - Determinism in Disguise
BT  - Proceedings of the 2022 8th International Conference on Humanities and Social Science Research (ICHSSR 2022)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 1852
EP  - 1856
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/assehr.k.220504.336
DO  - 10.2991/assehr.k.220504.336
ID  - Chen2022
ER  -