Antigone's Flaw.

• Author: Lines, Patricia M.

Some theorists define politics as who gets what, when and how. Alasdair MacIntyre defines it as "civil war carried on by other means." I prefer a more hopeful definition, and lean toward Michael Oakeshott's definition as "attending to arrangements." Or, Claes Ryn's definition--"the peaceful settlement of disputes"--especially since Ryn correlates politics at its best with community Such an emphasis would require the student of politics to examine not just who gets what, but how individuals arrange things, and how each takes into consideration the others who are trying to do the same.

At the very least, the peaceful conduct of affairs would require some sort of agreement on the rules. To get that agreement without actual violence, participants might still use threats based on superior power (natural or supernatural), although eventually a challenge may require executing the threat. Peaceful arrangements could also depend on deceit, bribes, persuasion and an endless variety of human tricks. The goal is to obtain sufficient agreement among enough of the individuals subject to the arrangements to give the rules stability. This is true even for political regimes based on some principle other than consent of the governed. Failure leads to chaos, rebellion, war or permanent and physical separation of contending factions.

Deliberation, compromise central to good politics.

How to attend to these arrangements and rearrangements? One choice is simply to vote, but the time-honored distrust of the tyranny of the majority would require something more. Ideally, the political community follows the advice of the wisest. But who is wisest? Who decides who is wisest? Which decisions the wisest are to decide, which are for individuals, which should be left to habit or custom? The difficulty in answering such questions has led many thinkers to identify deliberation as essential to the political process. Political deliberation requires listening and persuading, engaging and being engaged. Success depends, above all, on compromise. That is, it requires yielding here and there to the opposition, and winning some concession here and there in return.

Hubris greatest obstacle to deliberation.

The greatest obstacle to this kind of deliberation is hubris. It should be no surprise that the first to become aware of politics and identify it as a discipline--the Greeks--were also the first to worry about hubris. As Hannah Arendt reminds us, hubris has a corresponding virtue: the old virtue of moderation, of keeping within bounds, is indeed one of the political virtues par excellence, just as the political temptation par excellence is indeed hubris (as the Greeks, fully experienced in the potentialities of action, knew so well) and not the will to power, as we are inclined to believe.

Implicit in Arendt's analysis, and in that of the Greeks, is the notion that politics is the peaceful tending to arrangements. For those who prefer to take a cynical view, the will to power is both the chief political virtue and the chief political vice. Those who take such a view need not worry about the qualities that allow one to engage in deliberation with others. For those who take the view adopted here, there is still much to be learned from the Greeks.

Politics transcends government.

Just as no one among the Greeks stated the case for moderation better than Aristotle, no one stated the case against hubris better than Sophocles. One might object that Sophocles did not have politics in mind, and that he presented only legendary familiar relationships. This would be selling Sophocles short, and it fails to understand how pervasive politics can be. Within the family and the clan much human action may appear to lie outside politics. This is because such communities enjoy close and implicit agreement on basic premises and how they apply to most of the community's routine. The basic arrangements are often invisible to the outsider. For the most part, tradition and habit prescribe the action the community should take. But even families and clans engage in politics. New circumstances can challenge even the most insular and tradition-bound peoples. External threats may require new or modified arrangements; new decisions must be taken. Factions spring up, discussion takes place, and politics emerge s, albeit on a small scale. Even so-called primitive tribes have tribal councils and engage in extended and serious political discourse when faced with a new problem. In larger democratic communities--those harboring individuals who differ in their fundamental approaches to living together--political discourse becomes yet more necessary, as well as more complex and more difficult.

Sophocles addresses political vice of hubris.

Sophocles, as I have said, was concerned with the political vice of hubris. Oedipus Rex provides the most familiar example. Upon hearing the Delphic prophecy of patricide and incest, the well-intentioned Oedipus took radical steps to thwart fate--fleeing his parents and his home in Corinth. He did well on his own in the world. Strong and cunning, he proved himself many times, most of all when he solved the riddle of the Sphinx and saved Thebes. After Oedipus became King of Thebes, Delphi spoke again, suggesting that the only way to end a severe blight plaguing Thebes was to avenge the murder of the former king, Laius. With god-like certainty Oedipus set out to find the murderer and mete out justice.

The question of who murdered Laius fades to insignificance as Oedipus's search for truth unearths a history he never suspected, and would never want to know. The audience and all the other characters in the play, even the blind Teiresias, see the appalling truth long before the proud and cunning Oedipus. Creon exclaims, "I can see you are blind to truth." His mother-wife Jocasta cries, "My poor child! Those are the only words I shall ever have for you." No one has mastered dramatic irony better than Sophocles.

Two frightened servants at last yield the pieces of the puzzle to Oedipus. The former Theban king, Laius, and his queen, Jocasta, also hoping to avoid the Delphic prophecy, had abandoned their infant to die. A shepherd had...