Knowing Thyself in Oedipus the King

By Joshua Traylor

Introduction

Although one might think that Sophocles is using the characters for other meanings, I will make specific claims about the characters Tiresias and Oedipus. In section one, I will argue that Sophocles is using Tiresias to represent the idea that it is wise to trust in the mystery of fate. In section two, I will show textual evidence that in this scene, the character Oedipus is, in part, representative of the dangers of one who lacks intellectual humility, specifically, in how that relates to his own demise through the rejection of Tiresias’s admonitions and the blatant denial of truth when it is revealed to him. I will also argue that he is a tragic protagonist who takes the pursuit of prophetic knowledge too far, because some knowledge is reserved for the gods and their appointed prophets. Furthermore, I argue that this knowledge should remain with its intended recipient, Tiresias the prophet, who is deemed worthy by Apollo to possess this responsibility.

In this scene, Oedipus essentially demonstrates the hubris of one who fails to display intellectual humility regarding divine matters and divine knowledge. There are some that will argue that Oedipus is more than a tragic hero. They see him as a virtuous paragon, a leader who courageously takes up the investigation solely out of a love of his polis, Thebes, and is tragically exiled for saving his city through self-sacrifice. Though I think Oedipus is a tragic hero in that he is a courageous leader who is trying to save his city, and that he has some admirable virtues and character qualities; I do not think he is such an exemplar as some would say. There is much to be criticized about Oedipus, and I certainly do not think that the early scenes of Oedipus the King portray him as an ideal protagonist whom we should only pity, but that Sophocles puts his hauteur on full display, revealing his fatal flaw which foreshadows his future demise. This essay is also not meant to deal with the character of Oedipus wholistically throughout the play, but rather how the textual evidence presents him during his dialogue with Tiresias. To understand the scene (338–526), it must be noted that the context of the preceding lines (1–337) will be accounted for in this interpretation. But due to the limited scope, I cannot say much about Oedipus in later parts of the play. Therefore, any mention of other parts of the drama will remain limited and will not be explained or analyzed.

I – The Wisdom of Tiresias

Oedipus the King has been the foundation to the overarching conversation of fate and free will for over two millennia, especially regarding the “tragedy of fate.” In fact, this debate was a major topic of contemporary relevance in Sophocles’s time. Looking at the drama in this context, it shines light on many significant dialogues within the drama. Specifically, that of Oedipus and Tiresias, the prophet of Apollo.

Of course, one can hardly discuss such a scene without mentioning the Greek concept of fate and freedom. In general, we have two choices for interpretation with Sophocles: 1) Sophocles the religious critic and reformer, and 2) Sophocles as the Religious Traditionalist. In the former, Oedipus is presented as the tragic hero of the play, and Sophocles is critical of the old way of seeing Apollo and the gods. Whereas in the latter, Sophocles is defending the religious tradition that predates him, where the gods are more capricious, rather than fixed, such as in the Homeric epics.

Regardless of which scholarly camp one finds themself in, there is a mix to be understood here. Yes, there are elements of the traditional religious views, which we see explored with the role of Tiresias being a kind of bridge between the gods and humans; yet we also see elements of Oedipus being presented as a tragic hero in the play, in which he is brought down by both a fatal flaw and misfortune. In this way, Sophocles is attempting to develop a sense of compassion for Oedipus, but I do not think he is presenting him as merely a scapegoat to be pitied, or a perfect hero. One thing that is clear is that there is a motif worthy of exploration in this scene: there is a large chasm between the knowledge belonging to the gods, and the knowledge of man.

Immediately, as Tiresias enters the scene, we see Oedipus addressing him in this way: “Master of all the mysteries of our life, all you teach and all you dare not tell, signs in the heavens, signs that walk the earth” (341–43). This direct address is immediate and appears to show that Oedipus is at least a mildly religious man who appears to have a reverence and respect for Tiresias, for prophecy, and for the gods. But is Oedipus genuine in his religious claims here? Or is he merely attempting to cater to Tiresias for the purpose of getting his way? It seems initially that Oedipus is genuine, because in context, he does not seem to have a reason to want to manipulate Tiresias. There is also no contextual evidence to suggest that Oedipus assumes Tiresias will be reluctant to tell him the prophecy. Furthermore, in the prior scene, as Oedipus is speaking out to the crowd in Thebes, the leader amongst the crowd speaks-up for the people, and Oedipus’s response is telling: “but to force the gods to act against their will–no man has the power” (318–19). This scene provides some immediate context to the focal scene of this essay, that on its own implies that Oedipus has some respect for the power of the gods, and acknowledges man’s inherent limitation; showing humans as being ontologically inadequate to thwart their will, in some murky, undefined way. But just as the text demands that we ask about his motives when initially addressing Tiresias, it had also already demanded a question of Oedipus’s motives in the public light. Perhaps, Oedipus is playing the role of a modern politician rather than a philosopher-king, and is merely trying to appease the crowd, and accomplish things in the spotlight for his own glory.

As for Tiresias, his introductory lines immediately signal that he is reluctant to provide the prophecy. In his entrance, Tiresias presents his central motif for the entire scene: “How terrible-to see the truth, when the truth is only pain to him who sees!” (359–60). This serves as the backdrop for the entire conversation, which will ensue for the remainder of this scene. And it appears that Sophocles is using the character Tiresias as a mouthpiece for the view that we should not long to know our own fate and future, that there is an immeasurable gap of knowledge between the divine and the human, and that even the leaders of the day, such as Oedipus, are meant to be left in this sense of alienation rather than knowing prophetic details with certainty. Steven Lattimore rightly identifies this:

It is not that the gods will help or inform Oedipus-they cannot; their knowledge and very existence are too alien from his, and the extreme economy of expression which comes naturally to beings who know all this unintelligible to those who must learn, step by step. All too anthropomorphic in form and feelings (like Athena in the Ajax), Teiresias represents the gods of Oedipus Tyrannus and dramatizes this alienation.

Sophocles writes the prophet Tiresias as being divinely inspired, who has a genuine word from Apollo. This puts him in a category of being that makes his knowledge not that of a god, but beyond that of man. It is a knowledge that exists in a celestial, daimonic space which should not be fully comprehended by man in this life. Essentially, Tiresias is a paradoxical figure: He is certainly a man who matches Oedipus on the human plane of existence, where he matches him in fault (άμαρτια), yet this is juxtaposed with him being able to see the things of a god. This indicates that Tiresias is something more than mere man, at least in his foreknowledge. I must note that I do not fully agree with Lattimore’s assumption that he necessarily sees the same things as the divine, because prophecy, for the role of the prophet is to behold a tiny glimpse into the Divine Nous; however, I do think Lattimore raises an important point regarding the way in which Tiresias and his prophetic role serve as a symbol of the chasm between divine knowledge and human free knowledge.

This is very reminiscent to the conversation between Raphael and Adam in Book VIII of Paradise Lost, in which the archangel exhorts Adam to “Be lowly wise” and to “think only what concerns thee and thy being.” Much like Milton would illustrate two millennia later, the figures such as the prophets in Greece, or the Angels in Christian literature serve as being on a plane of existence somewhere between Earth and the heavens. Though Tiresias exists in bodily form on the Earth, his knowledge is somewhere above it, yet not on-par with the heavens.

Another key phrase that demands our attention is amid Oedipus’s outburst against Tiresias, before he finally reveals the prophecy to him. Tiresias echoes the seemingly deterministic phrase: “What will come will come. Even if I shroud it all in silence.” (388–89). Initially, this line could be read evidentially to support a type of hard determinism, but a closer reading shows that Tiresias’s phrase is more of a de dicto statement rather than a de re, where he is speaking of these events as a mere tautology in which the events are hypothetically determined, rather than actually determined. We cannot simply say that Tiresias is a fatalist, but rather that he is saying the future will happen inevitably as time unfolds, but not that everything in the universe is completely controlled and atomically pre-determined by the gods in its totality, in a very mechanistic sense. The tension between fate and free will is more complicated than that, and the way that the characters are woven into that dramatic tension is much more mysterious than that explanation, which I find to be a bit reductionistic.

That said, I think these lines point to a deeper meaning in the drama: that at some point, humans must accept their limitations, and rest in the mystery of fate. What does it really add to Oedipus that he acquires this knowledge? I am not saying that the message of this dimension of Oedipus the King is an ignorance is bliss philosophy, where there is no place for reason, wonder, curiosity, and discovery, nor that Sophocles and Tiresias are some sort of proto-Epicureans. However, Tiresias does seem to indicate that there is a limit to reason, and a kind of wisdom in resting in what we cannot know. From the introduction to the plot when the priest exhorts Oedipus to act and raise up the city (57–59), through to the climactic moment of Oedipus’s self-revelation (1301–10), he is isolated from his fellow men, on a detective’s journey where the culprit and solution of the play is himself, where he reaches this end by the recurring “daemonic insistence: I must find out, I must reveal, I will know.”

Though Tiresias does eventually tell Oedipus of his terrible fate, he seems to do this to make Oedipus as an example to others and show them that they need to be careful what they wish for, that understanding the fate of the gods is beyond human reason, and that it is for our good that we do not know. It would hardly be plausible that Tiresias is merely intimidated by Oedipus, as when the ad-hominem attack comes (380–383), Tiresias’s response back is direct, collected, and even leaves a clue about the revelation to come: “You criticize my temper… unaware of the one you live with, you revile me” (384–385). It is important to note that since Tiresias knows the prophecy, which he reveals just a few lines later, he not only possesses the knowledge of Oedipus’s fate, but also of the atrocity which he committed, and that the consequence of this atrocity is the very fate he will bear in the climax and conclusion of the drama, and throughout the events of Oedipus at Colonus. Since we know that Tiresias already possesses not only the foreknowledge of Oedipus’s future fate, but also the knowledge of what Oedipus being the cure and corruption of the land (401), we can conclude that Tiresias does not reveal Oedipus’s fate to him out of feelings of intimidation, but rather to make an example of him.

This ties into my criticism of Oedipus: it is not with his pursuit of knowledge in general, but his pursuit of knowledge specifically regarding divine matters. Oedipus serves as a symbol, like a Promethean flame, in which he presses onward towards knowledge, even if that pursuit of knowledge is miserable. This is a classic example of why man’s pursuit of knowledge is sometimes his own downfall. Oedipus must know the truth, and he cannot accept the mysterious aspects of fate and free will, which should be a warning to us all. This is much like the general truth to what Horace says in his famous lines to Leucon: “do not seek (it is a crime to know) the end which the gods have given to me and to you (ne quaesieris (scire nefas) quem mihi, quem tibi finem di dederint).” Though the Epicureanism of Horace can be taken to extremes, there is deep, rich wisdom here that a character like Oedipus would benefit from adhering to. Instead of seeing the events play out in his life, he ends up pursuing knowledge too far, not accepting that there is a place in which we should become comfortable with locating divine mystery and resting in what we can know and cannot know. Where Oedipus is trying to understand what he cannot, and pursues what he should not, Oedipus should take the advice of the Delphic Injunction: “Know thyself (Γνῶθι σεαυτόν)”. But Oedipus does not know himself in his place in the cosmos. He should have been hearing the words of Tiresias and been like Moses taking off his sandals before treading on holy ground (Exodus 3:5). Being mere human, Oedipus should rightly acknowledge his place before the divine, rather than continuing his pursuit of the things reserved for the divine. Rather than knowing himself in his place before the gods, he takes his first major step in the downward spiral of a tragic hero defeated by his own fatal flaw.

II – The Hubris of Oedipus

In his book From Achilles to Christ, Louis Markos takes the approach that Oedipus is not just a tragic hero, but an ideal, self-sacrificing hero, which he summarizes in the following passages:

Though generations of readers have tried to pin on Oedipus a “tragic flaw” that leads to his downfall, a careful reading of the play shows that Oedipus’s demise is not brought about by his negative qualities-his pride or rashness or paranoia. Rather, it is his good qualities-his love of his people and devotion to the truth-that propel him to uncover secrets about himself that a less brave or dedicated man would have left alone.

Oedipus is, supremely, the riddle solver, and he will not let fear or danger hold him back from a pursuit that will lead him to the truth. Oedipus loves Thebes as much as Hektor loves Troy, and he will not allow her to suffer from a plague-even if in healing that plague he brings about his own destruction.

With all due respect to Markos, I do not come to the same conclusion about seeing Oedipus in this light. I must admit, there is no denial that Oedipus is a prudent man of action looking ahead to rid this plague from the city. He immediately launched into a pursuit of solving this case (150) and that is further shown in his urgent sending for Tiresias (326–28). Not only that, but Oedipus has the fortitude of a leader in being willing to bear such burdens; however, I do not think Oedipus is merely a classical paragon, though he is certainly a tragic hero in the sense that he has a fatal flaw. Though Markos seems to believe that his downfall is not caused by a fatal flaw and his negative character traits of pride, rashness, and paranoia, I think this scene illustrates exactly those things, and that they do lead to Oedipus’s demise.

In this scene, Oedipus’s hubris (ύϐρις) is manifested, providing an imaginative and dramatic illustration of why a mere mortal man should adhere to the god-breathed words of a prophet. Oedipus is fitting Aristotle’s definition of a tragic hero: having admirable traits, yet also a fatal flaw (άμαρτία) which ultimately leads to his demise by the end of the drama. Reading Oedipus the King the way Markos suggests is much too optimistic, and such a thesis would need to explain away Oedipus’s haughtiness not only in his dialogue with Tiresias, but with Creon and Jocasta as well. When we consider the evidence in these three separate scenes, specifically looking at his dialogue with Tiresias, then we see the tragic hero as that of a man refusing to entertain the possibility that Tiresias is correct, much less adopt the truth for himself. Oedipus is the source of the very curse which he spends the rest of the drama pursuing, yet he remains in an outright denial of this, leading Tiresias to eventually leave the scene.

I believe that there is much to be said about how Oedipus’s conceited ignorance fits as a motif of this scene. First, Oedipus has the audacity to instantly reject Tiresias’s answer and flip the script. When Oedipus is finally revealed to be the killer, his immediate reaction is to turn the blame around on Tiresias, rather than to take the time to assess this accusation and reflect on the events of his life before coming to Thebes. Much like the people Socrates met on the streets, our protagonist often acts as if he knew what he does not, which reveals his fatal flaw through the dramatization of the conflict between intuition and logic. Oedipus responds in three different forms: he denies it (414), attacks the sensibility of Tiresias (423–27), and shifts the blame to his brother in-law, assuming that Tiresias’s prophetic accusation is all a plot to drive him from the throne of Thebes (431–457).

Oedipus’s first response is to live in a sort of ignorant denial. After making a couple of remarks about this being a made-up story (402–3, 406), the protagonist explicitly and directly denies Tiresias by saying “That’s obscenity, twice-by god, you’ll pay” (414). Though Oedipus moves beyond brief denial, this the starting point of his reaction to the situation, which indicates that he carries with him a sort of self-blinding arrogance which surges up when he first hears of himself as the curse, and the cause of dreaded plague of Thebes. But denial is only the initial step that Oedipus takes before he vaults into a deeper rejection of Tiresias’s prophecy.

Beyond denial is the symbolism of Oedipus’s spiritual blindness, which begins with Tiresias’s lines “you and your loved ones live together in infamy, you cannot see how far you’ve gone in guilt” (418–19), which is juxtaposed with Oedipus attack on Tiresias’s literal, physical blindness: “You’ve lost your power, stone-blind, stone-deaf-senses, eyes blind as stone!” (423–24). Robert Kane makes a strong case for Tiresias’s statements revealing that the primary emphasis falls, “not on the enormity of Oedipus’s misdeeds, but on his failure to see them.” Though Tiresias continually brings explicit revelations to light, the failure of Oedipus to react to these charges properly shows that he is steeped in not just a denial, but a true spiritual blindness to his own fault in which he cannot see anything but absurdities in Tiresias’s claims.

Oedipus’s blaming of Creon is “a substitution of reasoning for perception where having drawn an intelligent deduction from what he sees, he is quick to treat this deduction as a manifest fact.” Though Oedipus’s logic is considerably tight within itself, his perception is off. Therefore, his beginning point for the trajectory of his logic is also completely off, skewing the entire line of reasoning. Though Tiresias instantly defers him away from this accusation (432), Oedipus launches directly into a lengthy, poetic speech in which he refers to Creon as “so hungry to overthrow me he sets this wizard on me, this scheming quack, this fortune-teller peddling lies” (438–41). I cannot help but read these lines of dialogues and be reminded of people with narcissistic tendencies when they are caught in a lie, or in one of their manipulative schemes. In true dramatic fashion, Oedipus not only fails to stop and ponder the various possibilities around him, but launches into a rant, as if he is a blameless victim who has done no wrong, and that Creon and Tiresias are conspiring against him. This escalates further when Oedipus brings out the ad-hominem attacks, calling Tiresias a “pious fraud” (443) and attacking his reputation: “when did you ever prove yourself a prophet?” (444). It is in this moment which Oedipus chooses to commit the ad-hominem fallacy, rather than to play Socrates. In all reality, he should begin from a posture of humility, asking probing questions which will lead to the truth, or at least further reveal and confirm claims of falsehoods. Instead, he immediately goes on the offensive.

At the end of these dramatic lines, Oedipus prides himself on being the one who “stopped the Sphinx! With no help from the birds, the flight of my own intelligence hit the mark” (452–53). These lines further reveal the vain qualities that Oedipus is displaying in this section; that after tearing his accuser down, he puffs himself up, priding himself on the vein glory of his accomplishments. Though this could be taken as merely a defense where Oedipus is citing his accomplishments to show his love for the city, I think the context of the preceding lines suggest that Oedipus is not responding in a defensive posture of humility, but rather an offensive attack from his own pride.

In Tiresias’s response, he calls out what I’ve been arguing for, in saying this of Oedipus:

You with your precious eyes, you’re blind to the corruption of your life, to the house you live in, those you live with-who are your parents? Do you know? All unknowing you are the scourge of your own flesh and blood, the dead below the earth and the living here above, and the double lash of your mother and your father’s curse will whip you from this land one day, their footfall treading you down in terror, darkness shrouding your eyes that now can see the light! (470–488)

Notice the lines “you’re blind to the corruption of your life,” this is the very point I have made earlier, in that Oedipus is blind to his own perception, in which he fails to take a posture of humility.

From here, Oedipus and Tiresias have a brief back-and-forth dialogue for a few lines, which ends in Tiresias exhorting Oedipus to “Go in and reflect on that, solve that. And if you find I’ve lied from this day onward call the prophet blind” (524–26). Now obviously, these lines foreshadow the literal blindness that Oedipus puts upon himself in the climactic scene of the drama (1405–14), but I believe there is a dual meaning here: that Tiresias is also referring to Oedipus as being blind to listening to the prophecy regarding his own fate. Furthermore, the remaining plot of the drama unfolds, showing that Oedipus did not learn from Tiresias, as his dialogues with Creon (573–750) and Jocasta (778–997), reveal that he is continually heading down a path of self-destruction, only to find that Tiresias was correct when he foreshadows that “No man will ever be rooted from the earth as brutally as you” (488–89). Oedipus’s hubris is his fatal flaw, which continues to set him on the path of self-destruction where he will go from a king to a blind, lonely exile.

Conclusion

In Oedipus the King, Sophocles uses the prophet Tiresias to show that one should not investigate too far into their own fate, as this is not only knowledge that was not meant for the limited faculties of human reason, and that it also causes a certain kind of self-destruction to occur within one’s soul. The knowledge Tiresias possesses is for him and the gods alone, and Oedipus is not entitled to the answer. In this scene, Oedipus displays a strong lack of intellectual humility. He is swelled up with pride and ignorance as he refuses to accept the revealed knowledge. Though Oedipus was given the opportunity to take time and assess Tiresias’s claim, he makes the wrong choice and remains on the path to his own downfall. I have shown that Oedipus is not a paragon of virtue that we should admire in every way, but rather that he is a true tragic hero with a fatal flaw that leads to his downfall. He is a character with many admirable classical virtues; yet this scene, amongst others, puts his hubris on full display, and that it is something that we should be critical of.