Longitudes: A Collection of Essays, Ideas and Writing in Progress

A Look at the Conflict and Evolution of Passion and Reason
in Early Western Thought

In approaching an understanding of the struggle between passion and reason, we might start by identifying four of the principle constructs by which the evolution of this relationship is given expression in the world: society, culture, civilisation and the individual. Reason, born out of the desire to satiate need, is initially expressed through work and is foundational in the development of society––protecting mankind from from nature and from himself. As the needs of the primitive society manifest themselves through work, they become increasingly codified into language and custom; the inherent complexity of the social strata increases and the structural imprint or culture of the society takes shape. In a primitive, preliterate society, the construct of culture is a matter of survival because in order for a society to survive and flourish it must have some way of identifying itself, some mechanism by which it can begin the formation of the social contract. It is through culture that identity is protected and contextualised by the primitive society and it is here that man begins to imagine his destiny, dreaming of what he might become.

If society’s relations with nature are permitted to go beyond the simple satiation of need, it can begin to engage in activities that are ultimately dependent upon, but not directly related to, its immediate environmental and existential desires. This is the beginning of human artifice, as society creates its own environment, holding itself at a distance from nature. Emerging from this cultural abundance,1 passion and reason begin to manifest themselves as sexual, economic and political entities which begin to evolve in their own right, eventually emerging as mankind’s pursuit of truth and beauty (Eros) and as his desire for control over his destiny. It is through the evolution of cultural tools that man is able to create – from the germs of myth and ritual – the media (art, dance, drama) through which these desires can find expression in society. Eventually, by the grace of language, man is able to construct metaphysics, a kind of platform from which religion and ideology are born – crucial elements in the formation of civilisation and the individual. From this platform, this place of detachment, mankind consciously and unconsciously moulds his own psyche, transforming nature and directing his passion in an attempt to realise an ideal.

What follows is a brief look at the phenomenon of how the development of rational constructs – chiefly language – create the means by which desire and passion are directed with regard to the needs of society, culture, the individual and civilisation. By examining the construct of Greek tragedy, as well as the development of Platonic dialogue and Augustinian Christian philosophy, we will interest ourselves in the ways in which linguistic technology develops to address the balances and imbalances of passion and reason in society and the individual.

We will attempt to show how, under certain conditions, cultural devices – such as tragic drama – were developed by the society in order to face the situation in which it found itself; and how, under different circumstances, discursive methods – such as those of Plato – were developed to reform the understanding of social and natural conditions. Then, in examining the transmission of Platonic thought to early Christian philosophy, we will take a look at how such discursive methods can be – in response to a civilisation in chaos – re-contextualised in remarkable ways to define an inner, spiritual reality that separates itself from the natural world.

In attempting to trace this line from Greek tragedy to the early Christian church, we will examine the Antigone by Sophocles, the Medea by Euripides as well as the Confessions of St Augustine as being representative of their particular periods. Additionally, we will have to find the thread of humanity that joins these periods and will therefore be obliged to take a look at the well out of which the phenomenon of Greek tragedy sprung as well as the conditions that gave birth to the early Christian church. Therefore, we will also take a brief look at Platonism, Neo-Platonism and the conditions by which the transmission of faith via intellectual means was made possible.

1. The Birth of the Dream Image

Desire continually reaches out for new objects through which it can express itself until it eventually turns to its source: mankind turns its gaze towards itself and begins to dream of what it might become. Although this social narcissism reached its pinnacle with the majesty of Doric sculpture and in the Platonic dialogues, it is in the earlier incarnation of the Homeric hymns and the Olympian myths that we find the birth of the expression of the ideal in the culture of ancient Greece. These hymns and myths were the means by which the society identified itself and created the sacred environment whereby the constituent parts of the society – individual, family and tribe – could share their dreams and understand where they came from; it was a way in which the dreams of man could be expressed against the backdrop of the mysterious ocean of nature, death, procreation and ancient wisdom. Initially, these earliest, preliterate cultural moments were encoded by art itself, choreographed into dance and song.2 Chorus and dance were played out before the community with tales of heroism, pathos and tragedy which placed the various elements of a society in contrast and conflict. This was momentous drama that was intended to teach a lesson, announce possibilities unforeseen or remind one of things that must always be kept in mind if the society was to be kept intact. This cultural phenomenon allowed the Greek individual and society to understand who they were and to recognise what their cultural obligations were.

The evolution of this phenomenon led to the dramas of Aeschylus, Sopholcles and Euripides and it is here that we find ourselves face to face with one of the greatest cultural phenomenona of the Western world: the art of Greek tragedy. Heroic characters – well known to the audience from the myths and Homeric hymns – were pitted against one another and the chorus in order to present moral, political and spiritual conflicts. The drama of tragedy was played out against the larger backdrop of the festival Dionysus, an enormous social event where limits were tested and normal social roles were subsumed into a collective environment.

The force of the struggle depicted in these works, coupled with the flexible manner in which they can be interpreted, speaks to this utility of this remarkable cultural tool which posed the pertinent social questions but left them open for interpretation and evolution. We find in these texts a depth of psychological understanding that continues to inspire until the present day3 and which seems to have been intended to be, in some sense, socially therapeutic – always balancing the aspirations of man with the mystery of nature, the gods and the ancient tribal ways. Represented on one hand by the dream image (sculpture) and the on the other by the imageless (music), these two drives were deified respectively as Apollo – the goals and aspirations of man – and Dionysus – nature, blood ties and the mysteries of life. Always in conflict, these two forces continually stimulated each other to take on new and more powerful forms until finally, as Nietzsche wrote:

“…through a metaphysical miracle of Hellenic ‘will’, they appear coupled with one another and through this coupling give birth to a work of art which is as
Dionysian as it is Apollonian - Attic Tragedy.” 4

Perhaps nowhere else is the balance between the Dionysian and the Apollonian more perfect than in Sophocles and indeed Hegel considered his Antigone (circa 441 B.C.E) to be one of the most perfectly structured pieces of art that Western civilisation has produced. Here the two artistic drives are not played off each other so much as they are shown to be part of the same condition. It is very difficult to draw concrete, categorical conclusions about what we are supposed to think or exactly what Sophocles is trying to tell us; if we are to come to terms with the struggle that this drama presents, we must make a personal investment.

In Antigone we find the characters engaged in a classic struggle with limits. Both Creon and Antigone are driven to transcend social, individual and religious limits and both pay the price. Like most Sophoclean characters, Antigone and Creon are rendered with almost immutable, heroic, Apollonian idealism and appear in stark contrast to the each other and, as the drama progresses, the humanity that surrounds them.

On one hand, Antigone, driven by her fanatical devotion to her family and its fate, is representative of divine law, respect for ritual and destiny:

“And even if I die in the act, that death will be a glory. I will lie with the one I love and loved by him - an outrage sacred to the gods! I have longer to please the dead than please the living here…” [85-90]5

On the other hand, Creon represents the city and the laws that must be upheld in order to maintain civic cohesion:

“whoever places a friend/relative [philo]/
above the good of his own country ,
he is nothing” [203-4]

The positions of Antigone and Creon are further complicated by the evolution that their respective positions undergo over the course of the play.

Initially, Creon is received by the chorus as the keeper of the city – he is the rational voice of justice and civic law. However, as the drama progresses and his position is challenged with increasing force by that of Antigone, Creon begins to show himself as the tyrant he truly is. This transgressive drive renders rational reconciliation with Antigone out of the question and estranges Creon from the city and the very laws he decreed at the outset :

“And is Thebes going tell me how to rule?”[821]

“I will take her down some wild desolate path never trod by men, and wall her up alive in a rocky vault, and set out short rations, just the measure piety demands to keep the entire city free of defilement…”[870]

Antigone moves from a position which demands recognition of divine law and the rights privileges of women to something that resembles tribal fanaticism; by the end of the play Antigone’s position collapses from a universal defence of divine law into an individual expression of the realisation of familial destiny by personal self-sacrifice :

“Land of Thebes, city of all my fathers - O you gods, the first gods of the race!
They drag me away, now, no more delay!Look on me, you noble sons of Thebes - the last of a great line of kings,I alone, see what I suffer now at the hands of what breed of men - all for my reverence, my reverence for the gods!”[1030]

The crisis reaches such a point that only the mysterious intervention of the gods can resolve it, but this resolution is of the most brutal kind: to pay for the imbalance, Creon’s family is destroyed. A core element in Sophcles’ rendering of this conflict shows itself in the way in which he deals with renunciation. When Creon eventually renounces his position – in effect admitting that he has gone too far – he shows that it is not virtue that drives him but rather the fear brought on by Tireseas’ prophecy of doom. This changes nothing in the eyes of the gods; his violent delusions of grandeur are shattered and must spend the rest of his days contemplating his error, knowing that his family and blood line have been destroyed because he could not recognise the limits of his situation.

Ironically, the disparate positions of Creon and Antigone are joined by blood – as uncle and niece respectively – and thus are shown to be part of the same universal condition. The Chorus speaks on the human condition :

“Man the master, ingenious past all measure, past all dreams, the skills within his grasp - he forges on, now to destruction, now again to greatness. When he weaves in the laws of the land, and the justice of the gods, that binds his oaths together he and his city rise high - but the city casts out that man who weds himself to inhumanity thanks to reckless daring.” [406-411]

Sophocles gives us an intricate showing of the conflict between the passion of the blood line – and the unspoken (imageless) divine law it implies – and the rational necessity of the decreed civic law. He makes it clear that these elements of society must be the subject of examination and that the individual must be very critical of the limits within which the expression of his or her desire can function with positive results. Antigone and Creon are so closely matched that we are at pains to decide who is right; but this, of course, is precisely not the point. The elements Sophocles presents should be seen as components that need to be reconciled in a way that is beneficial and balanced for the whole. In taking a somewhat Hegelian view, we could suggest that Creon and Antigone represent spirits looking for synthesis. This is to be a conflict on which we must meditate; and, despite the bloody ending to the play, we should feel as though some positive social analysis is occurring as we work through the significance of their encounter. Sophocles worked towards the preservation of social unity by the rigorous examination the elements that formed it. Remarkably, he was able to render this analysis in a manner that created an open forum for interpretation in which a moral hierarchy was not strictly imposed between the principal elements of the drama. In the Sophoclean drama, passion and reason – society, city, family and individual – were played together, intertwined into an intoxicating fabric spun from the barbaric myths and the dreams of man that bound the society together.

By balancing the elements of conflict in this way, Sophocles offers a method of social and cultural analysis which demands an intellectual and spiritual investment from the individual and society in order to fully affirm life in all its passion; he gave to his society “an allegorical dream image”6 that encouraged a kind of contemplation, rather than blind adherence to dogmatic social doctrine. This would have been in keeping with the spirit of the Athenian democratic dream.

Euripides, although rightly considered a tragedian in the lineage of Aeschylus and Sophocles, presents us with a view of things that is quite different from that of Sophocles. Although he was a contemporary of Sophocles, Euripides was younger and his approach is perhaps more cynical. Sophocles himself was said to have remarked of him: “I portray people as they should be but Euripides shows them as they are.” Both Plato and Nietzsche levelled harsh criticism at Euripides and he is generally regarded as the most controversial of the tragic poets. Indeed, in his Medea we are faced with a very different approach to the art of tragedy from that which we find in Sophocles.

Like the other great tragic poets, Euripides makes use of myth and employs the themes of vengeance which arise from them but his characters are not heroic in the same way as those of Aeschylus and Sophocles. In the character of Medea we face something new and complex. In her we find an incredible number of evolving paradoxes that are seemingly impossible to resolve; quite a change from the solid, Apollonian character types of Sophocles. She is unpredictable, brilliant and violent; she is frighteningly passionate and coldly rational. Medea is also a woman and a foreigner – she has connections to the natural mysteries and the gods, as well as the dark barbaric history out of which Greek culture emerged. In keeping with the tragic tradition, Euripides’ character of Medea plays the woman’s role of passion and defiance against the rational world of men. However, although she may remind us of Aeschylus’ Clytaemnestra in her vengeance or Sophocles’ Antigone in her defiance, Medea is something much more complicated.

Euripides’ version of the mythical tale of Jason’s betrayal of Medea has none of the balance of wills that we saw in the Antigone; if we examine Medea in her relation to her interlocutors, we find that she is always superior to them and manipulates them at will. First, she manipulates the Chorus of Corinthian women by appealing to their common plight in the world of men. She then convinces Creon, the king, to delay her exile – which he has just decreed out of fear of what Medea might do at the announcement of the marriage of Jason and his daughter – by just one day. She bemoans the fate of clever women and asks for pity on the children. Medea then vents her rage on Jason and in doing so makes clear the reasons behind the passion that drives her vengeance. Jason responds to her cooly that it will be better for everyone if he marries Creon’s daughter. Jason to Medea:

“Be assured of this right now, no woman’s charms are the cause of this royal match I have made; no, as I said before now, my intention was to make you
safe and to father princes who would be kindred to my own sons and so
provide security for our family”[557]

From Medea’s point of view this is ridiculous. She continues to lay her plan by extracting safe haven in Athens from king Aegeus and then proceeds to feign repentance to Jason. Then, she asks that their children deliver a wedding robe to the princess as a sign of goodwill; Jason agrees to this wholeheartedly but Medea, of course, has poisoned the fabric of the robe and the king and his daughter are both killed by it. Medea understands that she and her children are without hope and that Jason’s statement about the benefits of his marriage to Creon’s daughter was either a lie or was uttered out of stupidity, naiveté or something of the like. She knows that the children would only be reviled by the new family and, most likely, killed. The messenger reveals this sentiment in the reaction of the princess to the children when they arrive with the “gifts” that Medea has sent to her :

“…at their entrance she showed her revulsion, covering her features with a veil and turning away a white cheek.” [1155]

This brings us to Medea’s most difficult encounter, which is also the most difficult confrontation for us to make sense of. It is, of course, the conflict she has with her self as she prepares to kill her children in order to gain, what seems to be initially, pure vengeance on Jason. From the beginning we understand that Medea has a difficult relationship with her children.
The Nurse :

“She hates her children and takes no pleasure in seeing them”[48]

And Medea herself:

“…O cursed children of a hateful mother, I want you to die along with your
father, and all the house go to ruin”[99]

However, we learn very quickly that for someone like Medea, things are never as simple as they seem. It is the situation that she and her children are in that Medea laments; and it is this situation that she will dominate by destroying it and then, quite literally, by transcending7 it. Before she can do this she will have to face herself and it is only here that she finds any challenge to her will.

Medea’s confrontation with herself as she prepares herself to commit this terrible act takes a toll on her. We begin to see the complexity of her relationship to her children and understand that, as much as she is driven by vengeance, she is also motivated by her inability to accept her situation and the future to which it leads – a future in which her children will face only ridicule, scorn and, more likely, death at the hands of others. Still, we find it difficult to understand how it is possible for a mother to kill her own children and might well begin to regard Medea simply as a monster. There is, however, something about the complexity of this situation that should prevent us from drawing such a simple conclusion as this.

We can hypothesise that, among other things, Euripides was saying something about the moral state of Athens itself. It is possible that Euripides is commenting on the arrogant instrumental bureaucracy as well as the social decay that he must have seen developing around him in the Athens of his day which, by all historical accounts, was beginning to overextend itself.8 Jason himself is representative of this in his dispassionate ignorance and cold desire for status and wealth. His blind devotion to his instrumental point of view is made even more apparent when we consider that he, of all people, should know what Medea is capable of. His ignorance is inexcusable and we can only pity him as a fool. But, where Jason is one dimensional, Medea is awesome in her complexity: protector and destroyer – representative the plight of women – she mixes the balance of nature and the oaths of men with the mysteries of ancient tribal magic which transcend the mortal realm of mankind. Medea is nothing less than everything the civilised Athenian should fear and respect.

Viewed from the perspective of language there is something in the process of Greek tragedy that is antecedent to the very modern conception of Deconstruction as it was made known by Jacques Derrida. Sophocles does not give us definitions in the characters of Antigone and Creon, but rather a system of play which, although liminally bound by the two of them, is none the less undefined. We must deconstruct each of them and put the elements in play with each other in order to be part of a process of understanding. Euripides constructs Medea – and this is a hideous but brilliant perversion of the Apollonian image – out of everything that is Dionysian and imbues her with a rational power that surpasses all others. We must deconstruct her as best we can. We are not given a truth here, but rather are shown a system of elements in play which may be contingently deconstructed, constructed and deconstructed again – much like the continual birth and death cycle of Dionysus himself.9

2. The Construction of Reality

From the drama of tragedy came dialogue,10 in which smaller groups of players carved a dialectical inquiry for the purposes of dispute, critique and analysis which culminated in a revelation, or construction of Truth or the Ideal Forms. The Socratic dialogues of Plato epitomised this practise and it by way of them that philosophy and metaphysics were born out of this world of music, myth, dance, sculpture and painting. By radicalising itself against the old culture – or by positioning itself as a controlling agent of it – Platonic philosophy presented itself as a method by which society could be controlled and reshaped in accordance with an ideal conception. It was by the development of this phenomenon – whose purpose was to benefit mankind by offering a solution to decadence and bad pedagogy – that man and his aspirations were further estranged from nature and the past, and began to rely on the constructs of reason to guide and protect him.

The successfully cultured society – such as that of the 5th century Athens – faces a challenge that emanates from within it: the phenomenon of cultural and economic abundance that, if left unchecked, leads to social dissolution through decadence. As Athens reached the peak of its powers it began to topple into cultural arrogance; its decision makers were lost in their own self-importance and all political wisdom had been dissipated through the excessive use of the kind of specious reasoning made popular by the Sophists. Among other things, a poorly planned Sicilian invasion in 415B.C.E led to the destruction of the Athenian fleet, which left Athens open for defeat by the Spartans who then imposed an oligarchical regime to rule over the city. The Athenians lost their men, wealth, autonomy and their dreams and entered the 4th century under Spartan hegemony. It is not surprising that when democracy was finally restored in Athens many of those those who had lived and fought through the errors it had created were not very sympathetic towards it. We can certainly see this attitude in the person of Socrates11 as we know him through the dialogues of Plato.

It is with this situation of political incompetence in mind that we can begin to understand Plato’s disgust for the ignorance and decadence of the Athenian state at the time. It was Athens that killed Socrates, his mentor and hero, and had ruined itself through its own hubris. Plato could not trust the Democratic ideal, nor the rule of the “theatre goers” or “the mob”; it became his mission to lead Athens out of darkness and into the light of true reason incarnated by his Republic, which expressed the ideal city in ideal moral terms.12 Given the terrible state post Periclean Athens was in, it is not surprising that Plato would have been loath to find the way towards this illumination via society itself and, as a result, he turned to the purity of mathematics and geometry13 to inspire his Forms. Towards the end of his life Plato wrote a dialogue called the Timaeus which, although resembling natural study,14 was full of spiritual significance.

In contrast to modern physical science, or even the physical science of Plato’s day for that matter, the Platonic natural model presented in the Timaeus is highly teleological15 and therefore, moralistic – it had to fit into Plato’s conception of what constituted the transcendent ideal. He postulates that what we experience on earth is merely a poor representation of perfect Forms and therefore the true and divine reality exists largely beyond the bounds of our earthy reach and can only be approached by reason as it is manifested by the dialectic and mathematics. Plato was not impressed by the external world of the senses and nature; he demonstrates a scepticism towards the empirical, rejects a materialistic view of nature as amoral and gives preference to inward contemplation. He moves towards a theodicy, a view in which everything supports the divine idea, telos, or will of God:

“We can now claim that our account of the universe is complete. For our world has now received its full compliment of living creatures, mortal and immortal; it is a visible living creature,it contains all creatures that are visible and is itself an image of the intelligible; and it has thus become a visible god, supreme in greatness and excellence, beauty and perfection, a single, uniquely created heaven.”16

By presenting the idea of a rational and creating God, Plato gives us something that resembles the framework of early Christianity. It is no coincidence that the Timaeus – in an unfinished translation by Calcidius17 – was one of the few Platonic texts that the early fathers of the Christian church would have had access to via the writings of the Neo-Platonists, such as Plotinus. This platonic theodicy would prove to be a helpful model for early Christian intellectuals, like St Augustine, in their efforts to reconcile faith and reason and thereby make the church into a political entity that could stand as a beacon of order amongst the chaos of the decaying Roman Empire.

3. Transmission, Integration and Laceration

Despite the obvious resemblance that the platonic model has with Christianity, we can ask the question: why would a rational perspective – such as that of the Neo-platonists – have been so valuable to the early church, which seemed to rely more on divine inspiration than rational inquiry? To answer this question we must consider the necessity of transmission and infrastructure.

The success of any religion depends on the promulgation of its fundamental tenets which must be able to be expressed by some system of ideas and signs so that the convert may move from one set of ideas to another in the most convincing manner possible. This, obviously, is no small task as the transmission from one system of thought to another must be taught through some kind of vernacular. This must be constructed carefully so as not to alienate the potential convert and in such a way that it is stimulating to the passions as well as the intellect. A completely anti-intellectual attitude is not helpful for the successful promulgation of any religion, creed or ideology as it would deny those intellectual elements which are so important in the creation of dogma and the political infrastructure that supports it. It was thanks to the neo-plationic interpretations of St Ambrose,18 that St Augustine was to find the rational elements he searched for in order to balance his passion for the Christian faith with his love of rational inquiry.19

The challenge that faced Augustine was to somehow reconcile philosophical scepticism with the credulity of the early Christian church – to find a rational argument that would underpin the non-empirical nature of faith. In the writings of Plotinus he found the basic elements of Platonic thought and, in the end, it was the sceptical nature of the neo-platonic arguments itself that would prove to be the most helpful to Augustine in creating the moral and spiritual hierarchy that was to be the foundation of his thought. The marvel of St Augustine is how he was able to recover the metaphysics of Plato, find in it that which was redolent of the teachings of the Church and eventually use this material to promote these teachings to his fellow intellectuals in a way that appealed to the passions as well as the intellect. This, of course, was a huge achievement and in realising it he was able to lay a large part of the foundation of the Christian church as a political entity, not only because of the power of his own writings themselves, but also because of the kind of educated minds his work would attract.20

In the Greek philosophy not dominated by Plato – of which there is a great deal – man is nothing if not a part of the natural order. Although we do find transcendent elements in the work of Aristotle,21 his philosophy is of a basically biological nature: mankind does have this identifying characteristic of rationality, but is still limited by the laws of nature. Epicurus promoted and developed the materialistic ideas of Democritus which, like Aristotle’s, dealt with a natural view of the world but instead of a biological approach, Epicurus expresses his ideas largely in terms of physics. These approaches placed man firmly within nature and expressed the Universe as a place of eternal change in which the phenomenon of human life was but a small discontinuous part. Far from being sceptical or pessimistic, these biological and materialistic points of view offered a reasonable way of understanding and accepting natural limits – birth, death, knowledge – as well as practical ideas of good living and the happiness that man derives from being who he his, even amongst the chaos of a civilisation in decline.

This certainly is not the attitude espoused by early Christianity where our proper location is in another time and place than the one in which we find ourselves. This is why for someone like Augustine – already stricken with the detestation of this world – the scepticism of Platonic thought was so appealing and so practical when applied to his efforts to understand his faith as it related to the world in which he found himself. For Augustine, neo-plationic metaphysics was the key in rationalising his faith and it is in his Confessions that we see him working through this process.

What is striking here is that, although Augustine’s prodigious intellect is made apparent from the outset of his text, anyone who has spent any time with the Platonic dialogues cannot help but be struck by a certain fragility in his rhetoric and the weakness of his logic. Any real kind of dialectical process is very diluted and his discourses on time, the senses and general epistemology are ultimately rendered useless by his refusal or inability to ground them in rigourous empirical study. Instead he floats around endlessly in enthusiastic speculation :

“Another view might be that past and future do exist, but that time emerges from secret refuge when it passes from future to the present, and goes back into hiding when it moves from the present to the past. Otherwise, how do prophets see the future, if there is not yet a future to be seen? It is impossible to see what does not exist. In the same way people who describe the past could not describe it correctly unless they saw it in their minds, and if the past did not exist it would be impossible for them to see it at all. Therefore both the past and the future do exist.”22

There is none of the lucidity of an Aristotle or an Epicurus nor is there the hard rigour of the true Platonic dialectic. Still, we cannot help being stuck by a certain honesty in the depiction of his angst and, if we are compassionate, we can only marvel at the enormity of his search as well as the remarkable way in which Augustine used what was available to him to come to his own spiritual conclusions, regardless of where our personal opinions of their validity might lie.

St Augustine’s testimony in the Confessions is an account of his Passion. It is the narcissistic struggle with his own identity and fate; it is a catharsis of guilt and fear as well as a quest for the limits of his desire and the locus of his passions – it is radically individualistic. Everything is turned inward, towards the self and its relation to God; that which does not conform with the ideal is rejected. There is something which now takes on the dynamic of a spiritual economy where the individual’s excess of feeling, desire or passion can either be ‘invested’ in some way or repressed, denied and detested.23

Although the Confessions is certainly self analytical, Augustine would have had no way of performing an analysis of the above type on himself, limited as he was by the discursive rational tools he had available to him and by the society in which he found himself. If we take into account the disparate and chaotic nature of the crumbling civilisation in which he lived, it is not surprising that a person like St Augustine would have longed for homogeneity and stability, even only as it existed in the realm of faith as he rationalised it discursively. He invested his passion in the construction of a world of faith – a world apart, brilliantly furnished with rhetorical constructions, fabricated largely out of neo-plationic discourse. While we must try to understand Augustine on his own terms and appreciate the fact that it was in no small part due to him that the light of reason, in some form, was kept dimly burning through the Early Middle Ages, we cannot not ignore the legacy his thought represents as we view it from our modern vantage point.

The evolution of Catholic orthodoxy promulgated a homogeneous belief system and a rejection of nature and life in exchange for an ideal that man created, and maintained, for himself with the tool of language. It seems that idealism was a natural response for man to deal with the chaos of civilisation in ruin. This evolved into the paradox of Christian orthodoxy, where man protects himself from reality – and civilisation – by retreating inwards towards a conception of his relationship with the divine, while at the same time constructing a complex mythological and rhetorical system by which nature and the body are rejected: man denies what he is and affirms what he imagines himself to be. This laceration stands in stark contrast to the vigourous, life and nature affirming perspective of the Dionysian festival and surpasses even the lofty idealism of Platonic thought which, although holding its ideals at a distance from nature, was intended to be of practical benefit to society. The state of man’s desire to transcend his limits – nature, the earth, mortality, civilisation – as well as the difference between the original Augustinian angst and the Christian orthodoxy that emerged from it is described ironically by Norman O. Brown:

“… Augustinian theology recognises human restlessness and discontent, the cor irrequietum, as the psychological source of the historical process. But Christian theology, to account for the origin of human discontent, has to take man out of the real world, out of the animal kingdom, and inculcate into him delusions
of grandeur. And thus Christian theology commits its own worst sin, the sin of pride.” 24

The ancient Greeks used their myths and drama to define their limits in an attempt to ensure the health and survival of their society, thereby investing the excess or abundance of their culture back into itself in an attempt to ensure that the passionate dreams of man would remain in rationalis with the natural world. When the cultural decadence of Athenian society reached a point where it could no longer invest wisely with regard to its social well being, Plato, with his dialogues, imposed an new set of limits on the society so that he might rescue it from destruction and imbue it with virtue. He could not, in theory, allow the society self-realization because of its past transgressions;25 and so he created a reality out of dialectical discourse in order to provide an ideal model by which man could aspire politically (The Republic), aesthetically (The Symposium) and spiritually (The Timaeus). In doing so he believed that he could guide man’s passions towards virtue and truth. His method of dialectical inquiry fiercely attacked the status quo in order to improve society by imposing a strict order through which the elements of society would remain in harmony.

Likewise, St Augustine was responding to the times in which he lived which, by all accounts, was in almost total chaos. Where Epicurus responded to the Athenian social decay by turning away from the city, towards nature and a small community of friends, Augustine – late in the life of the Roman Empire – turned inward, rationally investing his passion in the image of the immutable divinity of God that he created inside himself. This was an attempt to find a solution to, or protection from, the very real personal and social problems he faced. There is a sense in which we can view the artifice of Plato and Augustine as a natural response to very difficult conditions in which the social, cultural and individual elements of civilisation were in sharp decline.

Regardless of the difficulty we might have in drawing definite conclusions from the dramas of Sophocles and Euripides, however distant the thought of Plato and St Augustine might seem to us at times, we must resist the temptation to let our modern judgement of ancient thought and practice distract us from the real analytical work that faces us in our attempts to understand the human condition. Although the examination of the evolving relationship between passion and reason presents itself as an endless task, it puts our minds in touch with the process of existence and offers us fleeting glimpses into reality from the vantage point of human consciousness. The nature of man is constantly engaged in the struggle to reveal itself; Apollo and Dionysus are continually at work.

October, 2007

1.I’m using this term loosely as it applies to culture and language as well as pecuniary matters. Inspired by Marcel Mauss’ Essai Sur le Don and George Bataille’s La Part Maudite, I would like to attempt to incorporate economic ideas of abundance and investment into the larger social panorama. For an overview of the ideas of Bataille - as inspired by Mauss - on this subject see: Michael Richardson, George Bataille, Chapter 5: Expenditure and the general economy, London: Routledge 1994
2. When Theseus emerged from the labyrinth he returned to the mainland and deciphered the maze though the dance of the crane; he showed in dance what one would have to do to get out of the labyrinth.
3. We see influences in art, literature, music and psychoanalysis.
4. Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy, tr. Douglas Smith, New York : Oxford University Press, 2000
5. All references to Antigone are taken from : Sophocles, The Three Theban Plays,tr. Robert Fagles, London: Penguin.1984
6. Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy p.24
7. Medea – carrying the bodies of her children with her – leaves for Athens on a divine chariot sent by her grandfather, the sun god.
8. This would have been all too apparent to someone like Euripides as the Medea was presented in the same year that the war began between Athens and Sparta 431B.C.E.
9. Hera was enraged that Semele had borne Dionysus by Zeus and ordered the Titans to dismember him and eat him raw; Zeus consumed the Titans with lightning – Dionysus with them. Dionysus was restored and from the ashes of the Titans and the blood of Dionysus, man sprang forth : god, rage and divine aspiration fused. Dionysus is the god who dies and is reborn.
10. Plato (428 - 347B.C.E.) the dramatist : apparently Plato was on his way to submit some of the dramas he had written when he ran into an ugly man who convinced him that writing plays was not a socially constructive endeavour. Plato threw his plays out and began writing dialogue. The ugly man’s name was Socrates.
11. Plato presents Socrates as an ideal man, morally, intellectually, physically and civilly. In a sense, Socrates is to Platonic thought what Jesus is to Christianity; like Jesus, we never hear directly from Socrates. He is mediated by Plato and Xenophon although it should be pointed out that Xenophon’s portrayal of Socrates is not idealised to the same degree as Plato’s.
12. Everything for Plato has its locus in moral order; politics, the individual, art etc. are all centred around moral issues. In this way he is antecedent to Kant and the other idealist philosophers.
13. Plato raises an important epistemological question: How is it that can arrive at certain ideas which are not derivable from our empirical environment? How is it that we could think of a perfect cube, and yet no such thing exists in our observable world? He answers this by postulating that these ideas are real and come to us though reason from a higher an more perfect plane of existence. For Plato the clearest line to this reality was through mathematics and geometry.
14. The Timaeus is as close as we get to a Platonic view of cosmology and the place of human life in nature, veiled as it is in Pythagorean mathematical mysticism and mythology. Before we relegate Plato’s ideas of the physical universe to the realm of implausibility, we must always keep in mind that Plato is working from a very different perspective than that of modern natural science; he would not have seen the conquest of nature which came from modern scientific developments. He was always more concerned with internal inquiry (the soul,morals and the like).
15. Plato does not ask how things are the way they are but rather, why? He then makes the how fit with the why; physical theory must conform to moral theory, or rather, in Plato’s case moral truth: the stars in the sky are put there by God to teach us geometry … the human intestine is the length that it is in order to give us enough time between meals to study philosophy! In any case, with Plato the moral theory comes first.
16. Plato, Timaeus and Critas,p124 (Conclusion), tr. Desmond Lee, London: Penguin, 1977
17. For a brief but clear depiction of the transmission of Platonic thought to the early Christian church
see: John Marenbon, Early Medieval Philosophy, 2nd edition, London: Routledge, 1988
18. St Ambrose was bishop of Milan when Augustine was posted there as professor of rhetoric and was very influential on him.
19. Augustine searched long and hard to find a system of thought that would quench his desire for faith and reason. For many years he was a follower of Manicheism but was never fully satisfied with its teachings. Although he ultimately rejected Manicheism for Christianity there are still echoes of it here and there in his thought
20.Although St Augustine would have had a certain influence in his lifetime it was only well after his death that his writings gained the power that they did.
21. Although Aristotle denies transcendence to Plato’s Ideas and the soul, he does grant it to one concept : the Intellect (nous)
22. St Augustine, Confessions, p.267, tr. R.S. Pine-Coffin, London: Penguin , 1961
23. An orthodoxy does not permit the heterogeneous or individual expression of abundance and represses it by dogmatic indoctrination and channels it homogeneously.
24. Norman O. Brown, Life Against Death: The Psychoanalytical Meaning of History, Middletown Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press,1959
25.The abundance that had been invested in the arrogant expansionism resulting in the destruction of the Athenian fleet and the fall of Athens to the Spartans had become, to use Bataille’s terminology, an “accursed share.”

Passion In Manacles:
Hamlet, Orestes and the Crisis of Knowledge

Deprived of a rational foundation on which our understanding of the order the things can rest, our emotional engagement with the world is either held captive or is reduced to incoherent acts of barbaric violence and destruction. I believe this to be the central theme of Shakespeare’s Hamlet1 and the driving force behind the trial of Orestes in Aeschylus’ The Oresteia.2 With the intention of developing a deeper understanding of the nature of emotion in times of epistemological crisis, I offer here an analysis of Hamlet’s delay which will begin with a brief look at the three most common theories of explanation. Following this, I will introduce a fourth, less common view, that not only incorporates the themes and inconsistencies of the previous three, but also expresses an historically consistent condition in which reason, knowledge and understanding are in a state of disunity. Then, in order to add depth to the understanding of this theme, I will look briefly at the character of Oedipus as we know him through Sophocles’ Theban Plays.3 Finally, I will introduce for comparison the plight of Orestes which – as it comes through the trials of slaughter and madness and finally emerges into the light of reason and hope – mirrors the despair of Hamlet’s irremediable condition in a remarkable way.

Shakespeare’s Hamlet (1599-1601) is one of the most examined, criticised and discussed works in all of Western literature. And indeed, perhaps the most debated topic of the play is the Danish prince’s agonising hesitation in exacting revenge for the murder of his father. In searching for potential avenues – and there are a great many of them – by which one might arrive at some explanation for the prince’s inability to act, we find three basic theoretical themes dominating the field of inquiry: the theological, the moral and the psychological.4 Although they all hold positions which contribute to an understanding of the play in someway or another, it is my view that they are also incomplete because they adhere blindly to a restrictive assumption about the nature of art.

Hamlet is an intelligent man. He’s an intellectual, a philosopher and a lover of the theatre. He is also a protestant; he went to school in Wittenburg, home of Martin Luther and centre of Protestant intellectual life late in the 16th century. While this much is clear, what is not clear is the religious affiliation of the Ghost claiming to be the immortal spirit of Hamlet’s father: is the Ghost Catholic or Protestant? This problem is the crux of the theological approach to understanding Hamlet’s paralysis. In act 1 scene 4, Hamlet and Horatio consider the two protestant alternatives with regards to the nature of the Ghost: either it is a demon sent from hell to torment and corrupt Hamlet, or it is an angel come from heaven to instruct him. Neither of them consider purgatory, as this would have been a purely Catholic concern. The Ghost, however, describes himself in purely Catholic terms; he states that he comes from purgatory, which arouses confusion and raises questions about the credibility of his claims. Hamlet, being the rational, intelligent fellow that he is, decides that validation is needed; and, after proof of the Ghost’s claims are provided by Claudius’ reaction to the play within a play, it seems that Hamlet can act with a clear conscience. And he does act, killing Polonius by accident, mistaking him for Claudius. Hamlet then goes off to England and has no way of getting to Claudius until the end of the play. This theological perspective seems to neatly resolve the problem, showing that there is no real hesitation after all, and that Hamlet acts as expediently as conditions permit once sufficient evidence has been given to verify the claims of the Ghost.

But what of this instance just before the death of Polonius, where Hamlet approaches Claudius at prayer with a drawn dagger? He already has his evidence, which is confirmed by Horatio – his peer and most trusted friend – and yet he hesitates out of theological concerns which are purely Catholic. This confusing situation is then accentuated later in the play by the impassioned words of Laertes, Polonius’ son, come to seek revenge on Hamlet for the death of his father and sister:

To cut his throat i’th’ church. (IV, VII, 125)

Additionally, Hamlet himself speaks continually of his delay, questioning it again and again, from different perspectives; he is painfully aware of it until the waning moments of the play. Even after the truth of the Ghost’s claims are assured, we are still left with the problem of Catholic/Protestant confusion as well as the distinct impression that Hamlet is yearning for satisfaction but is restrained by something almost metaphysical. This approach, while explaining the delay in a superficial way, does not deal effectively with the deeper and more confusing questions it raises.

The theory that Hamlet’s hesitation is brought on by a certain moral repugnance aroused by the anachronistic nature of the conflict between 16th century Christian doctrine – whether it be Catholic or Protestant – and the essentially pagan act of revenge which he is asked to perform, only leads to more confusion. While it does, in a sense, render the Catholic/Protestant quagmire essentially moot by replacing it with the larger issue of Christianity vs. Paganism, this moral perspective is ultimately rendered impotent because it cannot find support in the play itself. Nowhere in the play do we find any real objections from the characters themselves with regards to the moral implications of revenge. We’ve seen Laertes’ response on the subject of revenge and, indeed, Hamlet himself seems quite satisfied after killing Polonius, all the while thinking it was Claudius that he was running through:

Thou wretched, rash, intruding fool, farewell.
I took thee for thy better. (III,IV, 31-32)

Hardly the words of someone who is incapacitated by the moral implications of revenge.

The psychological perspective, most famously posed by Ernest Jones in his book Hamlet and Oedipus,5 meticulously develops Freud’s interpretation of the play which asserts, as the title of Jones’ book suggests, that Hamlet delays because he is in the grips of a repressed Oedipal complex. Jones asserts not only that Claudius is an usurper politically, but that he has usurped Hamlet oedipally; in effect, Claudius has done what Hamlet desires to do: kill his father and sleep with his mother. This, according to Jones, explains Hamlet’s inability to act as a psychological problem: Hamlet cannot kill Claudius because of repressed Oedipal guilt and because, sub-conciously, he views Claudius to be nothing less than his own alter ego. Given that Claudius has usurped Hamlet both politically and psychologically, killing Claudius – according to this interpretation – would mean killing himself. This explains, perhaps, the frequent mixed references to suicide and revenge as well as the fact that it is only after the Queen is dead and Hamlet knows himself to be dying, that he is finally able to move swiftly and decisively in exacting his revenge; the restraint of Oedipal guilt is dissolved and Hamlet is now free to act.

This perspective is given some credence in the play by the frequent instances in which Hamlet expresses his disgust for what he views as an incestuous relationship between Claudius and Queen Gertrude; the anger Hamlet displays over the murder of his father is often overshadowed by the horror aroused in him by the the union of his uncle and his mother. However, on closer inspection we are confronted with certain facts which compel us to recognise that this Oedipal point of view cannot be accepted as a definitive solution to our problem either. This perspective does not address the theological problems we have just examined and, furthermore, it does not deal in a convincing manner with the very proof that the theological position gives in arguing that Hamlet’s paralysis is, in fact, a non issue. Hamlet kills Polonius accidentally, mistaking him for Claudius. His intention is without doubt: in the moment of action, it is Claudius that Hamlet thinks he is killing. It just so happens that it was not Claudius concealed behind the curtain, but rather Polonius.6

In addition to the internal inconsistencies that these three positions are encumbered with and the omissions they make in order to prove themselves, we have seen that they also contradict each other in fundamental ways. The psychological perspective takes the position that Hamlet cannot act because of a psychological restraint: the Oedipal complex. The theological perspective shows that, although he does hesitate because of the uncertainty surrounding the providence of the Ghost, once proof of the Ghost’s statement is attained Hamlet does act but kills the wrong man. We have also seen that a moral explanation with regards to a religious or personal repugnance that the act of revenge might present is unsupported by the text, and brings to the surface additional conflicts with regards to how the play mixes general Christian values with those of a pagan or barbaric nature. The Catholic/Protestant confusion is never resolved and the text is full of passages that are both supportive and contradictory with regards to the perspectives we have just examined.

This brings us to the very crux of the problem: all of these points of view demand a kind of coherency that is not always commensurate with reality. They deny art the ability to be, on some level, incomprehensible. We cannot understand the mystery of Hamlet in purely rational terms – as some kind of localised system of cause and effect – because the very nature of play lies in the unravelling of reason itself; the innate incoherence of the play is, in fact, the vehicle of its meaning. However, by addressing the myriad of inconsistencies we find in the text directly – by deconstructing them and putting their elements into play – Shakespeare’s drama begins to show itself as an expression of late 16th century neurosis brought on by a large scale changes in the foundations of Western thought.

When viewed from an historical perspective, the apparent inconsistencies in the play begin to reveal elements that are consistent with of the kinds of changes that were undermining the epistemological foundations of European thought late in the 16th century. The Protestant reformation begun by Martin Luther in 1517, criticised the Church and the Pope; the most controversial points in Luther’s thesis centred on the practice of selling indulgences and the Church’s policy on purgatory. Although Protestantism was established unequivocally in England under Edward VI, on a popular level religion in England was still in a state of flux. Following a brief Roman Catholic reaction during the reign of Mary 1553-1558, Protestantism was restored by Elizabeth I but remained on shaky ground for sometime. With this in mind, it seems very likely that Shakespeare’s audience would have understood the significance of the religious confusion as it was presented in the play as the issue of Christian factionalism would have been front and centre in the social psyche of the day.

Politically things were also changing at this time. The conception of ruler as a divinely ordained entity was being challenged by new conceptions of power acquisition, not the least of which being those found in Niccolo Machiavelli’s The Prince7 (posthumously published 1531/2). Machiavelli delivers a cold, relativistic pragmatism with regards to the role of the prince and the manner by which his power should be acquired and maintained; a universal understanding of ruler is exchanged for a conception based on contingency which leaves no space for moral absolutism. The old pretensions of Christian morality and divine right of kings – as well as the traditional conception of lineage – were being challenged. In Hamlet, the amoral nature of Machiavelli’s politics is perfectly incarnate in Claudius who plays the benevolent uncle/king while his dark soul bubbles with ambition. In his very person, he strips away the conception of royal lineage and family cohesion. The fact that Polonius is killed in his place depicts poetically the old rationality unknowingly going off to slaughter; its outdated rhetoric rendered useless, it is put down by Hamlet’s blade.

Additionally, we can site the paradigm shift away from the Ptolemaic model of the heavens introduced by the Copernican Revolution as well as the discovery of the New World late in the 15th century as contributing factors to this general mood that everything that had once been understood as immutable was now breaking apart. Church, state and family, as well as geography and the heavens, were no longer able to be conceived of in their traditional guises. And this was only the beginning, the Scientific Revolution of the 17th Century was to completely reform mankind’s understanding of himself and his position in the universe, culminating in new ideas about subjectivity such as Descartes’ “Dubito, ergo cogito, ergo sum”, which treats perception of the external world with scepticism.

Hamlet is caught in the centre of all this. There is nowhere for him to rest, nowhere he can find a foothold in this world that seems to dissolve into irrationality at every touch. While Ophelia literally drowns in her own madness, Hamlet is reduced to philosophical games to keep himself from slipping into dementia; and, even then, his hold on sanity seems tenuous at best. Philosophically this is a very different world from the clear spiritual and social track offered by pre-Reformation Catholicism and a far cry indeed from the Aristotelian claim that the universe itself is based on clear immutable laws and that aesthetically, poetry should be an image of this coherency. In Hamlet’s world nothing is as it seems: Rosencrantz and Guidenstern’s friendship turns into treachery, a lover (Ophelia) becomes a spy and an uncle becomes a father.

We now have an alternate conception of the nature of Hamlet’s delay in which it is viewed as an expression of the angst brought on by epistemological uncertainty. With the intention of reaching a more profound understanding of this timeless theme, I will now turn to look briefly at two of Hamlet’s tragic predecessors, Oedipus and Orestes, as dramatised by Sophocles and Aeschylus respectively. In addition to the psychological similarities we considered above, Hamlet and Oedipus resemble each other in a contextual way as well. Both struggle to confront the impossible complexity of their situations in an attempt to understand the nature of their emotions and the meaning of action already manifested in the world. Hamlet constantly agonises over what it means to act and, when he does, he kills the wrong man. Oedipus is confronted with the results of his own actions – the significance of which were unknown to him, or rather, misunderstood by him from the start. Both Hamlet and Oedipus are tyrannised by their emotions; the actions aroused by their feelings do not result in rational effects of clearly understood causes, but rather, finish in confusion, or, as with Oedipus, the horrific revelation that all that was understood to be true was an illusion and that he himself is the agent of his own deception and the cause of the curse on Thebes.

Both are, in effect, imprisoned by a crisis in the relationship between emotion and knowledge; the link between intention, understanding and the manifestation of action is broken. Both prince and king are polluted (miasma) by their situation; but, while Oedipus exiles himself to Colonus and receives a purification (catharsis), Hamlet can receive no such absolution: he must take the remnants of family and state with him to the grave, welcoming Fortinbras and his conquering armies with his last breath.

While Oedipus shares a great deal with Hamlet in terms of psychological angst, it is the plight of Orestes that mirrors most remarkably the epistemological concerns that we uncovered in approaching Hamlet from an historical perspective. Aeschylus’ Oresteia is the story of mankind’s emergence into reason and democracy; and, although it moves in a direction opposite to that of Hamlet, the fundamental problems confronting us here are almost identical to those we have been examining up to this point. The Greek term ate8 sums up the conditions of crisis, both in the rotting state of Hamlet’s Denmark and in the cursed house of Atreus. Ate, as generally defined by E.R. Dodds,9 refers to a condition distinct from that of rationality, often involving a curse, some kind of supernatural conflict, the intervention of daemonic forces or some such situation that either tempts a mortal character, or group of characters, towards irrationality or renders conditions such that rational understanding and coherent action are rendered impossible. We see this force cursing the house of Atreus from its mythological inception; Cassandra, at the moment of her arrival from the conquered Troy, senses this dark power in the house of Agamemnon and Clytamnestra and recoils in horror. E.R. Dodds writes:

Cassandra sees the Erinyes [Furies] as a band of daemons, drunken with human blood; to Clytamnestra’s excited imagination, not only the Erinyes but ate itself are personal fiends to whom she has offered her husband as a human sacrifice; there is a moment in which she feels her human personality lost and submerged in that of the alastor [avenger, passer of sin from parent to child] whose agent and instrument she was.10

As in Hamlet, the characters in Aeschylus’ play move through an atmosphere thick with ate; their very beings are permeated with it, emerging as they do from their polluted history of infanticide, cannibalism and blood vendetta. Agamemnon is infected with it as he confronts the meaning of Chalcas’ interpretation of the omen of the eagles and the pregnant hare; he must face the impossible conflict between the action demanded by Zeus and the sacrifice demanded by Artemis. Pressed into action that goes beyond any rational instinct, he kills his daughter, committing the most heinous act in order to appease a religious conflict, thereby stimulating the ate that lurks in the house of Atreus. These religious conflicts do not go away with the forcing of Agamemnon’s hand; rather, they intensify as the drama progresses, invigorated by the confusion created around irrational acts.

Agamemnon’s deed committed, the power of the ate gnawing away at the house of Atreus swells and empowers Clytamnestra, not only to take her revenge on Agamemnon, but also to corrupt the existing monarchy into a tyranny, thereby eroding the political status quo. In killing Agamemnon, she facilitates the destruction of the family as well as the lineage between father and son; it shatters the expectation that the son should not only receive the father’s throne, but also his guilt. In this respect she is very much like Claudius – an usurping mother rather than an uncle – and becomes the locus of Prince Orestes’ desire for revenge. Orestes, like Hamlet, hesitates before acting on his desire, but Pylades – who brings to mind Horatio – reminds him of his oath to Apollo and revenge is enacted. This action shatters everything and Orestes now sees before him the terrifying incarnation of the Furies who claim justice for this violation of the ancient chthonic laws which tie the psyche of mankind with the rites of nature. Haunted by these ancient daemons, he falls into madness, unable to understand the meaning of his bloody action and the passion that drove it on. It is only through the intervention of the younger gods – Apollo and Athena – and by the consensus of the polis in the newly incarnated Areopagus, that these conflicting forces are controlled, subsumed and given a rational context in which to function. The guilt born out of the bloody chaos of the past is annulled. The religious incoherence between the old gods, the young gods and the Furies is balanced, and Orestes can be acquitted by the deciding vote of Athena. The curse on the house of Atreus is lifted and family, tribe and state are redefined in rational, civilised terms; mankind is purified and the ate that so polluted his reason is washed away.

Both Shakespeare and Aeschylus offer us profound insights into the effects that epistemological failure and massive upheavals in the foundations of understanding have on the human psyche and civilisation itself. By addressing the fundamental institutions of mankind – religion, justice, family and politics – as well as the relationship between barbarism and civilisation, both dramatists touch at the very heart of the human process and the foundational elements that constitute knowledge and understanding. Both Hamlet and the Oresteia present the interconnected nature of reason, passion and action by placing it in crisis. They both show the impossibility of freedom when mankind is deprived of consistent rational structures on which to base his knowledge of the world. They also demonstrate the inability for passion to manifest itself as coherent action when fundamental elements of understanding are in conflict. The fact that both plays are born out of myth speaks to the timeless power of this recurring theme and brings to the surface the danger and hope implicit in the process of humanity.

Aeschylus traces western man’s emergence out of barbarism and blood vendetta. He depicts the awakening of the ancient Greek culture into the light of civilised democracy, religion and social contract which is backed by law and and the gods. The trial of Orestes creates the very foundational understandings by which the passions themselves are defined in a civilised environment and their engagement with the world secured, albeit tenuously, within the rational boundaries of civilised institutions and common social psychological constructs.

Shakespeare, inversely, presents us with a situation in which the erosion of these foundational understandings is all but complete. This is a nightmarish world where only incoherent fragments remain of the rational foundations of the past – an eerie, enigmatic environment in which everything Hamlet touches falls away from him. Shakespeare shows us that, far from freeing passion, this failure of reason leads the individual and society into the chains of neurotic confusion, the tyranny of madness and irrational acts of barbaric destruction. While the final optimism of the Oresteia contrasts sharply with hopelessness of Hamlet it is clear that both plays demand their audience to consider the fragility of the relationship between rational thought and coherent emotional engagement with the world.

November, 2007

NOTES:
1. William Shakespeare, Hamlet, Arden Edition, London: Thompson, 2003
2. Aeschylus, The Oresteia, trans. Robert Fagles, London: Penguin Classics, 1977
3. Sophocles, The Three Theban Plays, trans. Robert Fagles, London: Penguin Classics, 1984
4. I have chosen to ignore the aesthetic perspective – put forward by Voltaire in the 18th century and T.S. Eliot in the 20th – which postulates that the glaring inconsistencies in the play are not purposeful and that Hamlet is simply an artistic failure.
5. Ernest Jones, Hamlet and Oedipus, New York: Norton Library, 1979
6. Jones does address this issue obliquely, offering a complicated theory which presents, among other things, Polonius and Claudius as a kind of mythical bifurcated father figure. See Jones p.133-150
7. Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince, London: Penguin Classics, 2003
8. Ate is often seen in in more recent publications with a circumflex: Atê. I retain Dodds spelling as he is my reference here.
9. Dodds, The Greeks And The Irrational, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1968 p.28-50
10. Ibid p.39-40