'I suffered my deeds more than I acted them': Hegel on Sophocles' Oedipus plays'

I reconfigure Hegel’s distinction between Tat (deed) and Handlung (action) to illuminate Oedipus’ enigmatic formula: ‘I suffered my deeds more than I acted them’. Most interpreters hold that Oedipus mistook his Tat for a Handlung and wrongly took responsibility for parricide and incest. I argue against the merely causal reading of Tat presupposed by this view that the tragic Tat also has an intentional structure. On the Restrictive Intentionalism about Action (RIA) which underlies Handlung, what counts as my action is only the realisation of a conscious intention, accomplished with reasonable knowledge of the relevant circumstances and foreseeable consequences of realising my intention. On RIA, Oedipus killed the charioteer and married Iocasta: parricide and incest happened to him. By contrast, on the Inclusive Intentionalism about Action (IIA) which underlies the tragic Tat, what counts as my action is everything I bring about in realising a conscious intention, regardless of reasonable expectations about knowledge of the circumstances or foreseeable consequences of realising my intention. On IIA, parricide and incest are part of the ‘whole compass’ of Oedipus’ deeds. I argue that Oedipus is right to take responsibility for his deeds and draw on Tony Honoré’s conception of ‘outcome responsibility’ to characterise the responsibility at stake as blameless liability. Where Oedipus errs is in taking ethical responsibility for his deeds. I show that in Oedipus at Colonus the older Oedipus reverses his position and holds, somewhat surprisingly, that he is innocent and ‘did nothing’. I argue that this reversal presupposes an implicit shift from IIA to RIA, and that this shift helps to finally make sense of Oedipus’ enigmatic formula: Oedipus suffered his deeds (on RIA) more than he acted them (on IIA). I conclude by widening the perspective beyond ancient Greece and engage with Bernard Williams’ interpretation of the same formula

Two puzzles in the Early Christian Constitution of the Self: Reflections on Agency in Foucault’s interpretation of Cassian

I tease out two early Christian puzzles about agency: (a) Agential Control: how can agents selfconstitute if their primary experience of themselves is not one of control, as in Greek antiquity, but of relative powerlessness? And (b): Ethical Expertise: how can agents constitute themselves as ethical agents if they cannot trust themselves to recognise, and act in the light of, the good? I argue, first, that Foucault saw the importance of these puzzles and focused on extreme obedience as affording a possible resolution; second, that he failed to resolve the puzzles because of his reliance on an overly voluntarist and reflective understanding of obedience as an exercise of will; and finally, that turning to Cassian’s own thoughts on the relation between extreme obedience and humility as kenosis affords us a way out of the puzzles

Is Hope a Secular Virtue? Hope as the Virtue of the Possible

While hope is one of the three theological virtues within the Christian tradition, alongside faith and love, its position as a virtue outside that tradition is more contested. Indeed, doubts about the value of hope have been raised from Hesiod onwards, through to Byron’s claim that it is ‘nothing but the paint on the face of existence’, and Nietzsche’s denunciation of hope as ‘the worst of all evils, because it prolongs the torments of man’. While not completely critical, both Plato and Aristotle seem to have shared these reservations, Plato worrying that hope can make us gullible, while Aristotle refrained from listing it among the virtues, though he did explore its relation to courage and megalopsychia. In this paper, we examine in more detail the case against hope as a secular virtue, focusing on three main criteria of what makes something a virtue: namely, it is good for its possessor; stands between two vices; and can be cultivated. The status of hope as a virtue can be questioned on each of these counts, but we aim to rebut these doubts, arguing that hope can and should be accorded this status after all. We will begin by briefly explaining what we take a virtue to be and so what it might mean to conceive of hope as a virtue, and then we will attempt to show how hope can meet each of the criteria of virtue outlined above, thereby defending this way of conceiving of hope as a virtue. Just as patience helps us to navigate the temporal, hope helps us to navigate the possible, and to flourish in situations of uncertainty