Philoctetes Book

One of the flagship texts to demonstrate Hegelian theory of tragedy.

The Greeks had marooned Philoktetes early on because "his foot / diseased and eaten away with running ulcers" offended them with its malodorous decay, which is of course the dumbest reason ever to shipwreck a guy who was injured in the Trojan War. As it turned out, both P and his heraclean bow were required at Troy (prophecy of Helenus, yo), so Odysseus' object is to re-kidnap P for the war effort.

When O and son of Achilles, Neoptolemus, arrive, P is still as yet injured, however many years later, as evident in the "oozing matter from a sore" that they find. Chorus notes that P has a "maggot-ridden foot," which is suggestive of gangrene; how is P not dead? Surely some sort of miracle.

O wants N to become a tool of deception, whereas N prefers "even to fail with honor / than win by cheating." O's position (for which Dante placed him in the Malebolge) is that "everywhere among the race of men / it is the tongue that wins and not the deed." But, P "will not be persuaded; force will fail" (because heraclean bow). Hence, deception.

P "would rather listen to my worst enemy, / the snake that bit me" than O. But he listens to N's deceptions regarding returning home, and gives up his arms; N immediately repents: "shame shall be ours if we boast and our lies still leave victory unwon," which is a return to the Homeric moral theory that forefronts honor/shame over odyssean pragmatics (i.e., lying'my pet theory about the Odyssey is that it's just Odysseus lying the entire time, or, to be charitable, rehearsing fictive narratives as recompense to his benefactors). N's thesis is more Aristotelian physis, laden with the gustatory: "All is disgust when one leaves his own nature / and does things that misfit it."

N is overcome, triggering the anagnorisis: "I will not hide anything. You must sail to Troy / to the Achaeans, join the army of the Atridae." This revelation is not meant as an altruistic act: "First save you from this torture, then with you / go and lay waste the land of Troy." (On the long dead issue of the Trojan War, I remain a committed Trojan--so this kind of talk is genuinely heartbreaking to me.) N justifies it as "a great necessity compels it," which we should recognize as emblematic of an agambenian SoE: Philoktetes is subject to several proscriptions, both of which appear to be outside of law: arbitrary deportation and capricious repatriation.

When N had first met P in this text, P states Friendliest of tongues, / That I should hear it spoken once again / by such a man in such a place! My boy, / who are you? Who has sent you here? What brought you? / What impulse? What friendliest of winds? Right before they had met, the chorus told N that "we are strangers, and this land is strange." After the anagnorisis, P reverts to the standard Greek opinion as to xenos: "Then I am lost. I am betrayed. Why, stranger, / have you done this to me? Give me back my bow." N is not unmindful, recognizing the dilemma: "What shall I do? I would I had never left / Scyrus, so hateful is what I face now."

N accordingly confronts O, seeking to "undo the wrong." O replies, significantly, "A strange thing to say!" and notes that the deception of P is a matter of democratic consensus: "The whole assembly / of the Greeks." There follows the peripeteia: N: You are a clever man, Odysseus, but this is not a clever saying.
O: In your own case / neither the words nor the acts are clever.
N: Still if they are just, they are better than clever. O then runs off to take it up with the "whole assembly," which sets the stage for a catastrophe wherein everyone dies. Except, of course, we all know that P must get to Troy, N must kill Priam, and O must return home to savagely slaughter his wife's suitors. Resolution therefore comes through one of the classic moments of deus ex machina, wherein Heracles himself is wheeled down to the stage and enjoins P to go to Troy. It's deeply unsatisfying aesthetically, perhaps, but it is pure Hegelianism, the confrontation of right against right, between which equal rights only force decides. It is the impasse that makes tragedy.

Basic classical literacy requires this one, kids.