This article has a four-fold purpose: (I) to point out the interface and overlap of Classics and Philosophy; (ii) to encourage the take-up of A level Philosophy as a fitting companion for Classics courses, linguistic and non-linguistic; (iii) to reinforce the correction of certain crucial misunderstandings about Sophocles’ play, Oedipus Rex, especially concerning the agency of Oedipus both in the play and the back story of the play; (iv) to present a ‘thought experiment’ in order to show how modern philosophy might be applied to an ancient Greek play in order to resolve issues of truth and necessity.

In 1664, in a letter to a friend, Spinoza shares a dream he had of a “black, scabby Brazilian.” At the historical moment of a fierce race among Europe’s colonial powers, when the Amsterdam Jewish community’s vested interests in the Dutch colonial enterprise have reached a formidable status, Spinoza’s dream reflects an early awareness of the postcolonial predicament. The dream figures this awareness as the moment of the awakening—inseparable from the imagining—of the modern subject. Although the dream has been discussed with regard to its significance for understanding the role of the imagination for Spinoza as well as the issues of freedom, slavery, and question of race, the paper addresses the specifically postcolonial juncture that Spinoza’s dream and the letter marks. Spinoza’s dream figures the philosopher’s awakening to the precarious status of the postcolonial subject position as recognition of the constitutive significance of the postcolonial constellation for the formation of modern awareness.