The Oedipus Plays of Sophocles

This series belongs in the literary humanist tradition and holds that ‘...major literary texts productively and originally address philosophical problems of value and commitment precisely through their form, diction, imagery, and development...’ (viii). Contributions are invited from philosophers and literary scholars, where the former predominates in this volume on Sophocles's plays: Oedipus Tyrannus (OT) and Oedipus at Colonus (OC). In most chapters these plays are approached with a philosophical thesis already in mind. Other volumes in the series examine Hedda Gabler, Hamlet, The Trial and Emma. Noel Carroll returns to the debate over whether there is cognitive value in literature when he counters four sceptical challenges, (i-ii) empirical and (iii-iv) philosophical: Carroll's literary cognitivism makes clarification part of that well known ingredient of tragedy: catharsis. Carroll's success is to be judged on whether scepticism is thwarted rather than re-deployed. In the second chapter C. D. C. Reeve asks whether Oedipus was justified in doing what he did. Reeve argues that the eponymous hero tends towards direct secular evidence over indirect religious evidence but not in any systematic way and his judgement is regularly affected by his personality type. Even his solving the riddle of the sphinx, often held to be a model of rationality over force, is influenced by the circumstances Oedipus finds himself in (59-60).

Art · Catharsis · Epistemology · HERO · Humanism · Judgement · Literature · Pity · Rationality · Skepticism · Theology · Value (mathematics) · Classical Philosophy and Thought · Philosophy

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