Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t7fkt Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-29T12:59:00.775Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Tyranny of Reason in the World of the Polis

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 September 2013

Arlene W. Saxonhouse
Arlene W. Saxonhouse*
Affiliation:
University of Michigan
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The modern language of tyranny has distorted the significance of the Greek term tyrannos. In ancient Greek the term was accorded to the new ruler in the city, one whose legitimacy did not reside in his bonds to the ancient rulers and ancient families. Tyranny thus suggested a freedom from the past. Reason, as the Greeks understood it, also entailed a breaking away from the physical world. Reason and tyranny thus work together as expressions of freedom, but it is a freedom that in its transcendence of boundaries leads to tragedy. An examination of Sophocles' Oedipus draws out both the glory and the failure of the individual attempt of the political actor to rise above the historical particular and the mere body to build a world where reason alone is power.

Type
Articles
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 82 , Issue 4 , December 1988 , pp. 1261 - 1275
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1988

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Andrews, Antony. 1956. The Greek Tyrants. London: Hutchinson's University Library.Google Scholar
Benardete, Seth. 1964. “Sophocles' Oedipus Tyrannus.” In Ancients and Moderns, ed. Cropsey, Joseph. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Bowra, Maurice. 1944. Sophoclean Tragedy. Oxford: Clarendon.Google Scholar
Euben, J. Peter. 1986. “Introduction.” In Greek Tragedy and Political Theory, ed. Euben, J. Peter. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Gagarin, Michael. 1981. Drakon and Early Athenian Homicide Law. New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Herodotus. 1927. Historiae. 3d ed. Ed. Hude, Charles. Oxford: Clarendon.Google Scholar
Kahn, Charles H. 1979. The Art and Thought of Heraclitus. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Knox, Bernard. 1957. Oedipus at Thebes. New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Knox, Bernard. 1979. Word and Action. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar
MacDowell, Douglas. 1963. Athenian Homicide Law in the Age of the Orators. Manchester: University Press.Google Scholar
Nichols, Mary. 1987. Socrates and the Political Community: An Ancient Debate. Albany: State University of New York Press.Google Scholar
Nussbaum, Martha. 1986. The Fragility of Goodness: Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Plato. 1900. Opera. Vols. 1–4. Ed. Burnet, John. Oxford: Clarendon.Google Scholar
Plutarch. 1916. Lives. Vol. 4. Trans. Perrin, Bernadotte. Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Saxonhouse, Arlene W. 1980. “Men, Women, War, and Politics: Family and Polis in Aristophanes and Euripides.” Political Theory 8: 65–81.Google Scholar
Saxonhouse, Arlene W. 1983. “Classical Greek Conceptions of Public and Private.” In Public and Private in Social Life, ed. Benn, Stanley I. and Gaus, Gerald R.. New York: St. Martin's.Google Scholar
Saxonhouse, Arlene W. 1988. “The Philosophy of the Particular and the Universality of the City: Socrates' Education of Euthyphro.” Political Theory 16: 281–99.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Scodel, Ruth. 1982. “Hybris in the Second Stasimon of the Oedipus Rex.” Classical Philology 77: 214–23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schwartz, Joel D. 1986. “Human Action and Political Action in Oedipus Tyrannos.” In Greek Tragedy and Political Theory, ed. Euben, J. Peter. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Segal, Charles. 1981. Tragedy and Civilization: An Interpretation of Sophocles. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Sophocles. 1928. Fabulae. Ed. Pearson, Alfred C.. Oxford: Clarendon.Google Scholar
Strauss, Leo. 1963. On Tyranny. Rev. ed. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Thucydides. 1900. Historiae. Ed. Jones, Henry Stuart. Oxford: Clarendon.Google Scholar
Vellacott, Phillip. 1971. Sophocles and Oedipus: A Study of “Oedipus Tyrannus” with a New Translation. London: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Vernant, Jean-Pierre. 1983. “Ambiguity and Reversal: Oedipus Rex.” In Greek Tragedy: Modem Essays in Criticism, ed. Segal, Erich. New York: Harper & Row.Google Scholar
Zeitlin, Froma. 1986. “Thebes: Theater of Self and Society in Athenian Drama.” In Greek Tragedy and Political Theory, ed. Euben, J. Peter. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Submit a response

Comments

No Comments have been published for this article.