Book contents
- Heidegger and Literary Studies
- Cambridge Studies in Literature and Philosophy
- Heidegger and Literary Studies
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Contributors
- Heidegger and Literature: An Introduction to the Question
- I Literature and Poetry
- II Heidegger and Greek Literature
- 6 Heidegger and Sophocles
- 7 Playing with Shadows in Heidegger’s Reading of Greek Tragedy
- III Heidegger and Literary Works
- Heidegger, Index of Works
- General Index
- References
6 - Heidegger and Sophocles
Antigone’s Êthos of Intimating and Waiting
from II - Heidegger and Greek Literature
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 09 November 2023
- Heidegger and Literary Studies
- Cambridge Studies in Literature and Philosophy
- Heidegger and Literary Studies
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Contributors
- Heidegger and Literature: An Introduction to the Question
- I Literature and Poetry
- II Heidegger and Greek Literature
- 6 Heidegger and Sophocles
- 7 Playing with Shadows in Heidegger’s Reading of Greek Tragedy
- III Heidegger and Literary Works
- Heidegger, Index of Works
- General Index
- References
Summary
Heidegger, in the 1946 essay Letter on Humanism, famously remarks that the tragic dramas of Sophocles are in some sense superior to the philosophical ethics of Aristotle in their ability to “preserve” the site of human dwelling in language. This chapter first offers a reading of Aristotle’s Ethics, suggesting in what sense they might be deficient, from Heidegger’s perspective. Next, Heidegger’s reading of Sophocles’ Antigone in the 1942 lecture course Hölderlin’s Hymn “The Ister” provides our focus, and we find there a poetization of the site of human dwelling, as opened up by a play between homeliness and unhomeliness, familiar order and uncanniness, presencing and absencing. Thirdly and finally, we ask precisely how Sophocles’ poetizing manages to preserve this dynamic play and, moving beyond Heidegger, we suggest that Antigone herself, as she moves through the plot of Sophocles’ play, eventually and dramatically models how humans properly inhabit this site as such, in her questioning way of thinking and in her hesitating way of taking action.
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- Information
- Heidegger and Literary Studies , pp. 121 - 149Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2023