Synergetic Justice

"For our guidance, then, let us make use of the argument which has now revealed itself, declaring that this is the best way to spend one's days: to live and die in the pursuit of justice and other virtues" (Plato, 107). These are the words of Socrates as he debates with Callicles in Plato's Gorgias. As one of the foremost leaders of ancient Greek philosophy, Socrates's declaration that virtue, especially justice, is an ideal for which to "live and die" represents how ancient Greek society held justice in the highest esteem. Even if the Greeks only considered justice on the philosophical level, the meaning and application of justice were nonetheless widespread debates. It is no surprise that the tragedy Antigone by Sophocles, treats the virtue of justice by delineating two opposing perceptions of law and pitting them against one another. The tragic play does not deliver a verdict determining which perception of law is correct, but it does call to question the constitution of justice. The events before the outset of the play action are quintessential to understanding the play. Creon is the new King of Thebes, and Antigone's uncle. Both of Antigone's brothers, Eteocles and Polynices, were killed while fighting each other for the kingship after their father and former king, Oedepis, died. To make an example of Polynices's traitorous actions, Creon decreed that his body shall remain unburied and without burial rights. During the play, Antigone gives her brother burial rites and is condemned to entombment by Creon. The two main characters of the play, Creon and Antigone, embody the opposing perceptions of justice in the sense of justice as the administration of law. To Antigone, the law should correspond with personal morality. Creon's law is the written law of the state. The dictionary (Webster's) leaves the definition of "just" as "morally or legally right" and does not say which is correct. Therefore, the conflict between Antigone's steadfast adherence to her moral law and Creon's unchangeable adherence to written law creates a duality that taken as a whole gives the reader an understanding of justice as a product of opposing ideas.

From her first appearance to her death, Antigone presents herself as a rebel holding staunchly to her moral law. In speaking about her plan to bury Polynices, Antigone says to her sister, Ismene, "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!/ … Do as you like, dishonor the laws the gods hold in honor" (63). Antigone realizes that punishment for her actions may be death. Yet she is not afraid. She imagines her death as glorious like that of a martyr dying for her ideals. Her ideals correspond to "the laws the gods hold in honor". The laws of the gods would not allow a sister to scorn and disrespect her brother by letting his dead body lay in the open air to be fed upon by birds and dogs. With righteousness and superiority, Antigone admonishes Ismene that she is dishonoring the gods. In the midst of her overflowing familial compassion for her brother, Antigone ironically does not sympathize with her sister. Antigone's encasement of ideals cannot be cracked by her sister's reason. In the same way, Antigone repeats her convictions to Creon when they come face to face as the accused and the prosecutor. Antigone vehemently explains to Creon, "Nor did that Justice, dwelling with the gods/ beneath the earth, ordain such laws for men" (82). Again, Antigone declares that the gods decide what is just, and she continues by deflating Creon's power, "Nor did I think your edict had such force/ that you, a mere mortal, could override the gods,/ the great unwritten,/ unshakable traditions...they live forever...and no one knows when they first saw the light" (82). Antigone's logic is clear. Since justice comes from the gods and Creon's decree violates the gods' justice, Creon's decree means nothing to her. The description of Antigone's laws as the "great unwritten, unshakable traditions" directly conflicts with Creon's written decree. Antigone holds to laws coming from higher than the petty day-to-day workings of man in society because they originate from the gods and root themselves in tradition.

Antigone's one-sided perception of moral law directly conflicts with Creon's perception of law. As the king, Creon draws his law from the needs of the state. Creon decrees that Polynices shall be left "unburied, his corpse/ carrion for the birds and dogs to tear,/ an obscenity for the citizens to behold!" (68). Creon's dehumanization of Polynices demonstrates a complete lack of sympathy and compassion because he is blinded to human emotion by what he sees is right. Creon states, "These are my principles. Never at my hands/ will the traitor be honored above the patriot./ But whoever proves his loyalty to the state-/ I'll prize that man in death as well as life" (68). Creon's law represents the best interest of the state by honoring the patriot and punishing the traitor. He wants to protect and maintain the state, at any cost. Creon's adherence to written law is pragmatic for the protection of the state. When Creon and Antigone collide, Creon also holds with an iron fist to his written law. He declares without exception, "Once an enemy, never a friend,/ not even after death" (86). He staunchly upholds his law in its punitive measures too, as he sentences Antigone to death saying, "Death will do it for me-break their marriage off" (90). He refers to the marriage between his son and Antigone, and he destroys that marriage without flinching as he upholds his written law. Creon will not heed to any other emotion or idea other than the law of the state, and he believes any dissenter of that law is unjust as seen with his encounter with the prophet Tiresias. When Tiresias tells Creon that Creon's judgment is wrong, Creon replies, "You lust for injustice!" (114). In the same manner that Antigone holds blindly to her moral law, Creon adheres blindly to his written law.

When taken as a whole, the two interpretations of justice embodied by Antigone and Creon create a more complete definition of justice. The combination of Antigone's moral law and Creon's written law is synergetic because the magnitude and meaning of the sum cannot be anticipated from the examination of each perception of law separately. From Antigone's point of view she is completely just and right, and from Creon's point of view he is completely just and right. Yet, Antigone and Creon both find themselves in agonizing positions because of their adherence to their laws. Upon her death, Antigone cries out, "I am agony!" (104). She desperately declares, "Whom to call/ what comrades now?...Once I suffer I will know that I was wrong./ But if these men are wrong, let them suffer/ nothing worse than they mete out to me-/ these masters of injustice!" (106) As she painfully goes to her death, Antigone is convinced that her moral law embodies justice and Creon is a master of injustice. In parallel, Creon suffers greatly and feels he has no one to turn to. Upon finding his wife, son, and Antigone dead, he wails, "Oh the agony,/ the heartbreaking agonies of our lives...Wailing wreck of a man,/ whom to look to? where to lean for support?" (124-27). The echoes of desperation and agony are reminders of the failure of both laws. Both laws fail because of their blind one-sidedness. Antigone's moral law fails because she does not recognize that she is a member of the state, and as a member of the state she must obey the homogenizing written laws that keep order and justice among the citizens of the state. A state organized under personal moral law codes would deteriorate into anarchy. Creon's written law fails because he does not recognize that the law must contain moralizing content because laws are guidelines for how one man should treat another and this manner should contain compassion and understanding. Hegel wrote, "The meaning of eternal justice is made manifest thus: both attain injustice just because they are one-sided, but both also attain justice...Here both possess their validity, but an equalized validity. Justice only comes forward to oppose one-sidedness" (qtd. in Steiner, 37). Applied to Hegel's dialectic, Antigone's moral law represents a thesis which collides with Creon's written law, the antithesis. True justice is a synthesis of both the thesis and antithesis. Taken together, the reader mentally arrives upon a true definition of justice as the coexistence of these interpretations.

The Sophoclean tragedy Antigone brings forth the question of the origin of justice and how it applies to mankind in the form of laws. In the play, Antigone and Creon embody their personal understanding of what justice is. They heed to no other ideas except what they understand of themselves. Antigone clenches tightly to her moral law that has been handed down by the gods and kept as tradition among men. She does what is right for herself by breaking the written law without any regard to the messages she may be sending about the impertinence of written law. Creon, on the other hand, upholds the written law. His impetus is to treat the state as fairly as possible to ensure order and peace, but he fails to recognize Antigone's capacity for compassion and sympathy. Separate from one another, each set of laws is just. However, they must exist together because humanity and the state coexist, and in coexistence they collide and fail to be just. They fail to be just because they present one and only one perspective. In Hegel's dialectic terms, justice is elucidated as the simultaneous presence of opposing ideas. Thus, Antigone's unbending adherence to her moral law and Creon's steadfast adherence to written law create a duality that taken as a whole define justice as a product of opposing ideas.

Works Cited

Plato. Gorgias. Trans. W.C. Hembold. New York: Macmillan Publishing Company, 1952.

Sophocles. Antigone. Trans. Robert Fagles. New York: Viking Penguin Inc., 1984.

Steiner, George. Antigones. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984.