Against the Robots

Part 5: Authority

In ancient Greece, men knew and recognized themselves in the eyes of their family, their loved ones, their community. Women reserved for themselves the mirror, which was the source of beauty, femininity, and seduction. Reflection is everywhere. "There is no place that does not see you," wrote Rilke. Can one exist without a reflection? Can one be conscious without knowing oneself? A man must not see himself in the mirror for fear of being absorbed by his image. This image that manages to make us forget that we are there. If we think what we see, we hear it, it resonates within us, and we dream it too. Our image escapes us as soon as we see it. Thus, the woman adjusts herself in the mirror while the man might lose his very foundations. The dream, the twin of memory, conceals time and numbs it. What did we see, and when? Sight, reflection, and imagination interpenetrate and cannot be separated. For the Greeks, seeing and self-knowledge were one and the same. Seeing, self-knowledge… but not too much, because while man is a marvel, in the sense of an incident, a fascinating fracture, he also harbors his own terror; he exterminates and tortures himself, and he is truly the only “animal” in this respect.

Authority represents this limit, this invisible boundary, this surprising force that prevents man from ceasing to be human, for there is no greater sin for the ancient Greek than to succumb to savagery, to yearn for it, to allow himself to be guided and led by it, to develop a taste for it . amartia would soon become sin, continuing to be the fault, the error, the failing. Knowing oneself, but not too well, constitutes the mask of identity in the time of ancient Greece. One must know oneself, confront oneself, define oneself, and "individuate" oneself in order to exist; but what does it mean to exist? If not to discern, adjust, and harmonize one's nature with one's upbringing. In our age, which judges the past, it has become almost forbidden to speak of the link that binds us to ancient man. Knowing oneself, but not too well—what does that mean? Adjusting nature and culture, balancing the scales between who we are, who we are becoming, and who we were. Why the past? Because we are a concentrated essence, and we are, a priori, less than the elements that constitute us. Too often this equation is omitted these days, or minimized, which amounts to the same thing. The mechanisms specific to our era absolve humankind of its memory; after all, doesn't it have technology, an immeasurable memory? What need does it have for a memory of its own? If the need arises to want to remember, which is equivalent to wanting to know, all it takes is typing into a search engine. Practical, easy, simple, quick; memory and its multiple ramifications cannot compete for a single second, not to mention that our memory is never certain of remembering, or even of what it remembers! I am speaking here of the memory we construct for ourselves, the one that is given to us and filtered through the sieve of our nature, and which accumulates throughout our lives. If I am not armed with my own memory, but only with the memories of others, generously or self-servingly offered on the internet, what meaning can my life have? A borrowed meaning in every sense of the word. Meaning, or the lack thereof, arises from the interpenetration of nature and culture. The two constantly size each other up and coax each other, offering themselves to one another only to better reproach each other for their respective existence. The negation of nature by technology grants modern projects, for the first time in human history, power and authority. Or so it believes.

Creon dominates and controls his role from the moment he is enthroned. Or so he believes. In fact, Creon's power diminishes the instant he becomes king. How many politicians have thus gone astray, believing themselves to have arrived? The power they so desired could begin to devour them. The world is not based on having, but on being. Creon will only discover this at the very end of the play. Antigone knows it from the very first word of the tragedy. It is not enough to have in order to become. It even proves useful not to possess in order to be fully. Possession forces us to pass into another dimension and deprives us of our inner richness. Metamorphosis is not necessarily positive. The modern project, which constantly marvels at technological progress, fails to realize that there is no enchantment there. Thus, man believes he is discovering a secret when he is the secret, and he forgets that he is the secret when he discovers it. Is an explanation for the Delphic formulas being sketched out? Thus, transmission has become an option to check, since my possession cannot be shared. But, miraculously, I can share what I am. There is an astonishing moment in every person's life: the journey that leads us to ourselves. As if we had to pass through a membrane to be ourselves, to get closer to ourselves, to establish intimacy with ourselves; to have a glimmer of an idea of ​​who we are. Our life is another life; like a parallel life. We clearly see how differently we would have had to react to understand for a moment; how much our life has diverged; that everything we cling to has hung by a thread. A membrane separates us from another life, from the other life, from our life. What belongs to us matters less than what we are, and we are wrong to believe, under the wing of envy, that what belongs to us can define what we are. We are always becoming. This is how the son always respects his father, who is greater than he, even though he possesses infinitely less. Becoming demands respect. But becoming also requires dispossession, for it forces a release, it rejects reaction, which is an extraction from society and offers only communitarianism, and it lives its identity by supporting what came before and apprehending what is to come. Becoming is Haemon; here he comes before his father, who condemns his fiancée to death for having buried his outlawed brother. The chorus leader announces him: “Here is Haemon, the youngest of your children. Does he come because he mourns the fate of Antigone, the tender child who was to be his wife, and because he suffers unbearably from being deprived of this marriage?” Haemon arrives by crossing the membrane, that is to say, he takes it upon himself; It is difficult in our time to understand that self-control, taking responsibility for a fault that one does not believe is one's own, but that belongs to another, and which is necessarily also one's own, necessarily because I have already committed this kind of fault, this fault is not unknown to me, this taking responsibility for a fault that even if it is not one's own, could have been, the taking responsibility, therefore, for the possibility of exposing my weakness, a moment of intense and prodigious humility, transgresses my self and forces it out of its comfort zone, this taking responsibility provokes, without me even having to wish for it or seek it, the crossing of the membrane, this metamorphosis that allows me to be a little more than myself. Haemon did not want to flee. He is courageous and fought well for the liberation of the city. He never harbored any bitterness toward his father. It's easy to understand that he's a good boy, an attentive son who has never caused any particular trouble. A son who comes to plead his fiancée's case before his father, whom he respects more than anyone. Creon, enamored with the power he believes he holds in his hands, immediately provokes him. He will never again have a kind interlocutor: "What was to be your wife, surely you're not here to unleash your fury against your father?" And then this astonishing line, revealing Creon caught between two worlds, not quite king, still a father: "You, at least, are not bound to me in all circumstances, whatever I do?" A premeditated line; prescribed by the father to the king: "You, at least, are not bound to me in all circumstances, whatever I do?" A blank check. Creon is constantly on edge; he is from the beginning to the end of the tragedy. He is like that with people distant from him as well as with those close to him. It's the mark of people who are afraid, who have traded freedom for power; they are constantly afraid of their own shadow, and they think they can forge bonds, create intimacy with the first person they meet or the closest relative, shamelessly, because they are powerless. Creon reveals himself to be terribly fragile. Haemon arrives, the Chorus Leader, the kind organizer, announces him cautiously, and Creon begins to defend himself, that is to say, to attack. The reaction is omnipresent. We are robots, not just Creon, not just the Chorus Leader, not just Haemon… We are all robots! We know nothing and we boast of everything! Ah, there is no wonder but men, but what wonder? Who are we? Becoming who we are, passing through the membrane, requires not revolution, but metamorphosis. Passing through the membrane binds the one who passes through. The membrane forces him to accept another self. And this other is entirely different; far removed from the idealized, exotic other. Passing through the membrane confirms the metamorphosis that swells within each man, often without his understanding or acknowledging it.

Haemon arrives, perhaps with ideas in mind. He rails against his father, having been informed of his plot against Antigone, but Haemon refuses to yield to what he's been told. He comes to see his father because confronting him means seeing himself, knowing himself, and understanding himself. He arrives. "Father, I am yours. You have excellent principles that guide me on the path I will follow, for I will have no reason to prefer another marriage, since you are my wise guide." Haemon is the youngest of his siblings, and he immediately demonstrates, from his very first words, his love for his father, his profound respect, and his acceptance of his decision. Creon could then, reassured, speak with his son, lay down his arms, and have a calm discussion. On the contrary, he reveals his true colors, not those of a loving father, but those of a dictator: "Indeed, my son, this is what your heart must be filled with: to follow your father's decision in every respect without question." Creon continues treacherously: "Because of the pleasure you take with a woman, know well that the embrace is cold when a wicked woman shares your bed in your own home. What wound is more grievous than having evil in one's own house?" Creon then evokes another quality, but unintentionally this time: "Throughout the city, she openly disobeyed. I am not going to contradict myself before the city, as if I had lied." Pride chokes Creon. Would he truly lose anything by admitting he was wrong? Couldn't he appear as an intelligent and benevolent king by acknowledging his error? Creon is like a fish that has just tasted the bait; he thrashes about and tears off half his jaw in fear and envy—fear of others' opinions, envy of a king who rules with an iron fist, never listening to anyone. "I'll put her to death. Let her sing a hymn to Zeus, the god of family blood!" Creon dreams of order, an order that has never existed, neither in Thebes nor anywhere else. An order of robots. He ends his diatribe with the place of women in society: "And never, under any circumstances, be inferior to a woman. For it is better, if need be, to fall at the hands of a man than to appear weaker than a woman." Haemon responds to his father, still armed with the deepest respect and unwilling to interfere or take sides. He tries to shift the debate to another level. He wants to give the dialogue a new perspective. He wants to make his father understand that the people disagree, that they would like to see some clemency from their king, that the family laws to which Antigone responded are also valid and worthy of consideration, and above all, he tells his father that one cannot govern alone: ​​“Don’t cling to a single idea: that nothing is right except what you say, the way you say it. Anyone who thinks they alone are reasonable, or that they possess a language or a sensitivity no one else has, when you open them up, you see they are empty.” Haemon seeks to offer his father an alternative by letting him hear the voices of the people. His people. He does so with elegance and restraint. Creon has become too intoxicated by his anger, and Haemon tells him so: “Give your anger space, let it overflow!” Even the Chorus Leader begins to side with Haemon and opens up to Creon about the opportunity before him, urging him to seize it. But as Creon remains stubborn, the ensuing dialogue with his son becomes tumultuous. Haemon flies into a rage at his father's hardening stance. Creon becomes even more stubborn. "I could see you ruling an empty country all by yourself." Creon: "This boy is obviously fighting for his wife." Haemon: "If you are the wife, then you are the one I care about first." The dialogue is bold, it varies, but never in intensity; what is at stake here is immense, for it concerns the love of a son for a father he no longer recognizes. "I could see you ruling an empty country all by yourself." Haemon knows very well what he is talking about. The tyrant does not govern the people; the tyrant governs a mob, which he directs from the right or the left, from the left or the right. This mob is equivalent to a void; nothing truly separates them. Creon, through his edict, is already beginning to rule an empty country, devoid of personalities. The people are beginning to cower, murmuring, filled with fear. Creon is a man consumed by anger. Anger is contagious, like a cancer; it spreads everywhere and prevents thought. How could he possibly hear his son's pleas? "Give free rein to your anger, allow it to overturn itself." Haemon echoes the voice of the people, the common folk. "The people of this Thebes, who make up the city, hold a contrary opinion." And Creon offers this revealing response: "So the city will tell me what order I should give?" Creon's city responds to Haemon's people, who want to bring Creon back down to earth, to reconnect him with the people. Without listening to these people, these ordinary folk, this populace, he explains to his father that he will cut himself off from those he is supposed to guide. Haemon has walked the streets and alleys of Thebes, reflecting and ruminating on the best way to confront his father: he would have to present himself before him, meet him and speak to him with infinite respect. For this, Haemon should not force himself, for he loves his father, or at least nothing indicates the contrary. But Haemon would also have to stand up to his father, to rise up and take a stand, to anchor himself in what he knows: he is a loving son, the people of Thebes pity Antigone's fate, wish that the bloodshed would cease… Haemon will take root in his certainties, his own and those he will have gathered while walking the streets of Thebes. Anchored, rooted, Haemon addresses his father, wanting to build a bridge. He begins: "Father, I am yours." Throughout the first part of the dialogue, he doesn't want to appear weak; defending a woman, even if she is his fiancée, would have shown a certain fragility in that era. So Haemon anchors himself, takes root, but he can't help being a little unsteady; he fears that his father will see that his certainties, which he has now made his own, rest on a patchwork, that there is a flaw. And how could his father not see it? Who knows Haemon better than Creon? From where is the child speaking? First and foremost, from his parents. The little child who begins to live by appealing to his parents for everything, or almost everything. Haemon becomes like all children again, a little child facing his father. Like all children, he cannot escape the shadow of authority that looms invisibly behind every parent, compelling the child to a perpetual humility that some may perceive as humiliation. Authority is reinforced and truly exists in the reciprocity between those who submit to it and those who wield it. What distinguishes humility from humiliation? Acceptance, and therefore, docility. Family authority encompasses and concentrates all forms of authority; renouncing it, refusing it, or rebelling against it will lead to a headlong rush whose appetite will never be satisfied. Identity also lies at the heart of authority; the first identity will be revealed in the acceptance or rebellion against authority. All the special and specious mechanisms that we create, borrow, or rent—often from others, from our parents without even remembering it—represent nothing, or would turn out to be entirely different, if, from the outset, we had followed the path of humility rather than that of rebellion. It will still be possible, after reflection, to change our attitude and return to a simpler or more rebellious one, as we choose… the search for one's own identity is akin to a quest that ends with life, for throughout his life, a gentleman will try to find ways to refine his self-expression. Furthermore, can we not broaden our perspective even further? Isn't the history of a family, in a way, a quest for self-expression? Can we not see, through the various branches, that a single lineage unfolds the expression of an identity revealed precisely by its multiple facets? But how difficult it proves to step back, to distance ourselves even for a while from our pastimes, to reach the perspective necessary to recognize our own insignificance? We are too obsessed with certain facets of the kaleidoscope that intoxicates us, yet leaves us idle. Haemon wishes to help his father gain perspective. The son asks his father to suppress the terrible anger that consumes him. Anger forms a crystallization that always represents an obstacle to gaining altitude. "Give your anger space, let it flow!" (In Paul Mazon's translation: "Come now, yield, grant your anger a little appeasement.") Haemon desires his father's consent, for he loves his father and he loves Antigone. Far from the love often tinged with tearful empathy that has become commonplace these days, what is being waged here is a battle over the meaning of his love. Here, no one is willing to yield, for no expression of love is less important than another. The battle between Haemon and Creon unfolds with a bang, centered on the law he has decreed. Haemon emphasizes the stakes to his father, whom he hopes to force to consider his position. His son speaks to him with the same filial respect he has always shown him, but also with the firmness of one who knows he is wielding a matter that determines existence. Creon refuses to budge. He refuses to grant Haemon what his son has come to implore. Haemon's attitude is the same as Antigone's, with that added layer of respect and love that should have swayed Creon, but Antigone has driven him to the brink. He remains furious, and his anger is fueled by pride, a terrible hubris, irrevocably condemned by the gods.

To obey properly, love is paramount. Love forges the bonds within us that allow us to accept doing something we haven't decided on and that we have no objective reason to do other than the goodwill of another . Love, therefore, proves to be the key to authority, since authority relies on obedience like an elderly person on their cane. Let's return to the source: Haemon wanders the streets of Thebes, resisting anger, yet it boils within him. He expects his grievance against his father to find a favorable outcome, and he listens to the good people of Thebes, he hears them and wants to make his father hear them. Haemon is armed with a single force that is divided into two bundles: love for Antigone and love for his father. He wants to unite these two bundles. He believes that love is never in vain and that love remains the best extinguisher of anger. At this moment in the afternoon, everything is decided. If Haemon has doubts, so do the chorus leader and Creon upon his arrival. Haemon respects his father; this is a demonstration of his love, especially in a time like that of ancient Greece, where tenderness and affection were not yet values ​​that men claimed as their own. What Haemon knows well, and this is very evident from the beginning of the dialogue, is his father's temper. Now, anger obstructs transcendent solutions. Anger inhibits by giving the illusion of liberation and blocks the path to reconciliation. When he appears before Creon, this is Haemon's only fear. But it is a mountain. Haemon fears this anger, and his premonition will prove correct. Creon's anger will, as anger often does with great skill, feed on itself. But what Haemon doesn't yet know is that anger will diminish his father's authority over him, as well as its corollaries: love and respect. Sophocles will circumscribe authority by allowing power to emerge, pierce, and blossom.

What concept does Creon wield from the moment he comes to power? Force. Thebes is emerging from a fratricidal war. The city truly believed it had succumbed to the onslaught of Polynices' army. Creon would have been wise to show clemency to restore unity among his subjects, especially since it was his own sons who had fought each other. But no, once in power, Creon thinks only of his own power. He is immediately intoxicated by this force. Creon is intoxicated by power; it is a virus that seizes many men as soon as they sit on a throne. Creon becomes king and establishes his power through a law he has considered, but not thoroughly enough, perhaps one he found without even looking, which seems to him to embody the full force of his office: he decrees that the vanquished will be left to be devoured by wild beasts, without burial. The same gap exists between power and the people as between power and authority; trying to please too much inevitably creates an imbalance. While one must not please, or rather, seek to please no one, one must not make a decision without first examining, without probing hearts. Creon surely considered this. We are talking about a man who has already reigned in the past, who is by no means a stranger to power; he is not discovering it, and therefore knows the traps, the pitfalls that lie on the path to power. He proclaims his law and makes a mistake: he forgets that a king manifests the authority of the gods. Even if Jesus Christ has not yet clearly drawn the line between power and authority, Creon knows that his power is not unlimited. It is terrible to see Creon, the prince, testing his power by confusing it with authority. This feeling never leaves the reader of the tragedy and imposes an aspect of Creon that Sophocles clearly placed there for the reader to see. Creon tests and tests himself. He wants to appear as a king as soon as he wears the crown. His surprise upon learning of Antigone's misdeed knocks him unconscious, for, secretly, inwardly, Creon hoped to establish an iron grip on Thebes. Creon provokes and creates an imbalance between the forces represented by power and authority. Creon surrenders to the power of force and forgets to consult the higher, transcendent forces, the gods. Not that the gods would have answered him, but the search for a solution higher than himself, independence from power, and therefore from force, is lacking in Creon's rule.

Authority must come from a higher order, for it rests on acquiescence, reciprocity, and, through respectful dialogue, the definition of a common course of action between the order and the obedient. Authority, the will to accept authority, also rests on an aspiration to become more than one is, whether through the example of the ancients, the mistakes of the past, the long term, and a broader perspective; one must live this past, not look down upon it. Creon does not choose this path; he decides to adhere solely to his own feeling, which compels him to immediately relinquish his power in order to derive an authority recognized by all. From his law will emerge Antigone to remind him that one is always dependent on someone, that transcendent laws exist, which he has pretended to forget. Here, the notion of balance is highlighted by Sophocles; this age-old notion continues to govern the world. The concept of balance is evident everywhere and in every era, and this concept is never better exemplified than by Christianity, for the only true will to balance things rests on the will to define and circumscribe envy within a zone where it proves ineffective. Eradicating envy amounts to preventing humanity from destroying itself under the pretext of being human, as the 20th century, the century of envy if ever there was one, has shown and attested. Creon is not guilty of not listening to the people, or else he should have held a referendum to ascertain the opinion of his population. Creon is testing, for he imposes his law and seems to be waiting for a reaction to crush it and demonstrate his power, but we are not certain of this, for he displays great surprise when the guard comes to report the disobedience to his order: “I will tell you.” Someone very recently buried the dead man, sprinkled the body with dry earth, and then left after performing the customary rites.” A new facet of Creon’s character is revealed after the guard’s revelations: he develops a paranoia that will subtly simmer within him throughout the play, but without diminishing its intensity. Creon’s rise to power imprisons him and isolates him from himself. While this syndrome is well known to those who come to power, it never ceases to amaze, because it strikes systematically and men encounter it just as frequently. Creon will be offended. He is stung by Antigone’s attitude. He feels disrespected. In any case, he attributes Antigone’s conduct to disrespect, even though it is true that Antigone disobeys and is irreverent towards her king; She expresses a defense that must be heard. Creon only hears it when forced. For him, disrespect takes precedence. For Antigone, Creon's law had to be broken, for it rested on a fallacious premise. Antigone experiences the coincidence of self with self when Creon separates himself from Creon by ascending the throne. Creon separates himself from himself and renounces the coincidence of self with self by donning the robes of king. He becomes a character, he forgets himself and believes he is becoming something more than himself, whereas to increase oneself, one must learn to obey, and Creon thinks that as king, he will only have to command. From then on, he uses force. Creon is transformed into a tyrant. He becomes what he imagines he must be. This is the enantiodromos, this moment and this place for the Greeks, which reveals the true nature of a man when, at the crossroads, he must confront the choice of which path to follow. The enantiodromos is the fork from which the one who becomes is born… Like an upstart taking possession of Zeus's thunderbolt, Creon lacks the education and understanding of his power, which can only be given to him by authority. Creon thinks in terms of law when he should first think in terms of duty. Being oneself is never a habit; identity is a search and an affirmation, a permanent enantiodromos, like a state of siege. Who am I? Where am I going? One must constantly question oneself and explore the mystery of life, but armored by what one knows of oneself and one's harmony with the world—that is to say, by the existence of some certainties—there cannot be nothing, otherwise there is no Antigone… Creon's first words express his dismay at Antigone's crime: "And you dared to defy such a law?" Creon cannot understand why his order has been defied; he must strike down without mercy whoever has acted against him, that is, against the king. Pride plays a crucial role in Creon's character; he is vexed, unable to bear being disobeyed, his edict flouted in full view of the entire population of Thebes. Subsequently, Creon refuses to recant, fearing he will appear mad or immature in the eyes of his people. His reflection is more important to him than his actions, for they are clouded, "narcissized." Creon divides his interlocutors into two camps: those who are with him and those who are against him. He no longer negotiates and threatens those who oppose him. Force controls him, when force should only ever be used for protection, and this is always the case for those who surrender body and soul to the will to power. To wield force as power is to believe that fear is the driving force of power and establishes authority, when in reality it is more akin to a parent's caress on a child's cheek after a misdeed. If power reigns , it must always be tempered with authority, or it will believe itself to be self-sufficient. Creon no longer knows where he is speaking from, or at least he speaks of an imaginary place he has just arrived in, a place that did not exist before his arrival and that he created for himself. As if, being king, Creon were no longer composed of the same elements of flesh, bone, and genetics as the day before his coronation. Creon clings to and appropriates a kingly identity that forgets where he comes from and what he owes to his past, which is erased by his rise to power. If identity is a quest and, to some extent, a construct built upon one's tastes and choices, a whole foundation of identity exists, even pre-exists, within us before we even exist. Too many identities are written about us today, crystallizing upon this foundation or solely upon the quest itself, when balance is paramount in identity formation. The constant return to the concept of nature versus culture is both obsessive and repulsive. There is a agonizing force in "identifying," because the risk of reaction exists, the risk of becoming rigid and stifling life within us. Identity is divided, on the one hand, into a foundation that is within us without us—our nature and the education we have received—and, on the other hand, a movement that is constitutive of our lives, discovering elements not cataloged by our nature or our education, but which must be interpreted in light of our nature and our education. A good part of this process unfolds without us even having to think about it. And yet, it is essential, fundamental, and compels us to constantly revise our understanding of nature and our upbringing, just as it compels us to constantly revise these new elements. Balance, here again, proves paramount. It is not a question of forgetting, or worse, being unaware of our nature, of forgetting, or worse, of not having received our education, when approaching the shores of novelty, or else we will be nothing but a tattered flag in the wind, we will have no criteria for judging novelty, and we risk seeing in this novelty only novelty, and liking it only for that. What a pity! A novelty could be created endlessly by deceitful or manipulative individuals to constantly replace what exists with a new form of law or regulation, and we would no longer even be the pennant in the wind, but the dead leaf, never knowing where it will land, because it no longer has any self-awareness, because it is dead. Creon acts as if he no longer wants to hear about Creon, but only about the king; in this instance, he forgets that the king is nothing without Creon. The agony of identity consists of grappling with oneself, of constantly seeking self-conformity, of questioning authority to admire its arm, which unfolds without violence, without boisterous force, and which aids my efforts and guides my conscience, allowing it to reach a higher level. Memories should help us avoid committing what we have condemned in the past or what has shocked us. But Creon forgets himself when he comes to power; he will thus push this amnesia to a point of no return.

Creon begins by summoning the city's elders. He wishes to assert himself among them as the new leader. Very quickly, his speech reveals a desire to wipe the slate clean of the past war and usher in a new era. This is where his mastery and lust for power originate. Any man who comes to power adorned with the trappings of a providential figure, come to improve, even to correct or rectify what came before, positions himself as both judge and jury and rejects the humility that should always protect him. Creon reminds them, only to conveniently forget its foundation, that he is king because he is the closest relative of the dead. Of the two dead: Polynices and Eteocles. But Creon forgets Oedipus. Deliberately. Creon erases Oedipus, even though he is his last descendant. Thus, Creon's rise to power is no accident. He can draw upon a rich tradition, from Laius to Oedipus, which deserves our attention and study in order to draw inspiration from it. Creon will commit his first misdeed, from which all others will continually spring and spread, by looking down on this tradition, placing himself above it, towering over it, judging it with arrogance, and convinced he can do better. Here is the mechanism of envy in action, a cyclical pattern that takes shape and unfolds its consequences without anyone being able to change anything, without this process being reversible, for the essential reason that its source has been forgotten. As soon as the source of an action is forgotten, as soon as experience is forgotten and the ontological void is acquired, all actions become mere ripples. The law is anchored in experience, or it does not exist, or it sinks into the will to power. Creon, having shown contempt for Oedipus, ascends the throne and seeks to rid himself of experience—Oedipus's experience, that of his sons… He issues a decree that commands respect through its force and its singularity. He denies Polynices burial because the latter attacked his city (in fact, his brother, Eteocles, king of the city he was obligated to share). When envy enters the picture, everything falls apart. Envy consumes everything. Envy is born of judgment. As soon as Creon compares, in his mind, what he wants to do and what he wants to avoid, as soon as he uses Oedipus and his sons as a bogeyman, the mechanism of envy is set in motion. Disharmony gives birth to Evil. Envy provokes disharmony between thought and action; it disorganizes the individual by making them doubt. Doubt is the devil. “Let your yes be a yes, let your no be a no.” Disharmony is everything else. One must have a good sense of self, but not too much… knowing oneself, succeeding in approaching this coincidence of self with self, represents the challenge that every person, whatever their responsibilities, must take and win… But the separation between experience and its ally, humility, which stems from it, is built on the will to power, which forces one to forget experience, to place oneself above, over, and ultimately beyond, without faith or law. At the source of this separation lies a minute choice; I mean that the fork in the road that compels one to move from one state to the other is not even noted, not even noticed, but irrevocably changes every being who takes it.

The story of Narcissus illustrates the failings caused by a lack of humility . That day, Narcissus went out early. Narcissus loved to hunt when night and day embraced melancholically and the chiaroscuro drowned the shadows of men. The young man was the son of a stream and a river. Liriope was his mother, and when she asked Tiresias what her child's destiny would be, the seer replied, "If he does not know himself." Narcissus was so handsome that he attracted the desire of everyone. Even the nymphs longed for the young man to gaze upon them for a moment. But no, Narcissus reserved his ardent beauty, his hands with their sinuous and sensual lines, the fire in his eyes for the deer of the forest. Echo was a beautiful nymph. Her destiny changed the day she met Narcissus's gaze. She was never the same again. She dreamed of uniting with Narcissus, of wedding his beauty and making it her own. Hera had punished Echo, the most eloquent of the nymphs. She had taken away her gift of speech, and now the beautiful nymph could only repeat the last words she heard. One day, Echo followed Narcissus. She longed to meet his gaze, the memory of which continued to haunt her. She hid behind a tree when Narcissus found himself alone in the middle of the forest. He called to his hunting companions, who had wandered off. Only Echo answered. Narcissus thought they were his companions. Echo believed that Narcissus was drawing her in completely. She approached him and embraced him. Narcissus pushed her away. Echo fled. The young nymph would never recover from this affront. The eyes of the one she loved, those eyes she so longed to see again, struck her down this time, banishing her. She let herself die. Withered as a stone, all that would remain of her was a voice, a lingering dream of hearing. Nemesis, the goddess of justice, proved paramount in governing the relationships between men and gods. She heard the cries of the nymphs, friends of Echo, and of many young men callously rejected by the proud Narcissus. One could not scorn the laws of love, believe oneself above them and the men around him, without offending the gods' sensibilities. Narcissus, one day after a long hunt, was quenching his thirst at a spring. He leaned over the water and stopped abruptly. He plunged his hand into the water, but could not grasp what stirred his emotion. Facing him, for the first time, Narcissus met eyes that held him captive despite himself, eyes he didn't want to despise, eyes he longed to cherish. Narcissus was bewitched by his gaze. He fell in love with it until nothing else existed around him.
What did he see? He didn't know; but what he saw consumed him; the same illusion that deceived his eyes excited them.
Captivated by his gaze, Narcissus could no longer sleep or eat. He had only one desire: to possess what he saw. To possess the object of this possession. Unable to grasp or touch what he was, since he didn't know himself, since he no longer recognized himself, he died from contemplation. Narcissus did not survive his passion. He fell to earth from the heights of his gaze, prioritizing having over being, fading away without having received the assent of his own image, of his own being, having forgotten it. Narcissus cannot save himself since he is unaware of having fallen in love with his own image. Narcissus does not know himself because he does not encounter himself. Tiresias's vision is rudimentary, as his predictions often are, but one can also consider that if Narcissus had encountered and recognized himself, he might then have begun to prioritize being over having, realizing what he truly was. Proximity and closeness can be opposites, and Narcissus experiences both approaches, but allows his pride to interfere and provoke the repulsion of that which could have liberated him. The surest and most accessible path to approaching the divine is through the discovery and understanding of humanity. Oedipus understood this well when he solved the riddle of the Sphinx: it is necessary to go through man to approach the gods, because man represents the choir of the divine.

Creon's syndrome corroborates Ovid's phrase: "No one holds their own secret." Creon suffers from the well-known affliction of Narcissus . In a single glance, he loses himself and swoons over his own image, that which he represents. What should one do? Know oneself or remain ignorant of oneself? The ancient gods offered no answer, or only after provoking the fall, destruction, or, ultimately, amnesia. Does Narcissus contradict Delphi? Is he the only ancient being who is not meant to know himself and must progress along this path? The obscurity of the prophecies weaves a permanent trap for humankind, as if the gods constantly want humanity to stumble and appear foolish. Could we not, should we not, draw a connection between this prophecy: "if he does not know himself" and Pindar's "become who you are"? Why haven't we fully grasped the phrase "Where are you speaking from?" which inaugurates time and space and defines the individual? Sophocles' genius lies in stating what time will confirm: human afflictions are timeless. The most illuminating example concerning human nature is found in the New Testament when Peter and Jesus Christ speak together, and Peter insists to his master that he believe his devotion to be entirely sincere. Thus, Jesus tells him that the sun will not rise until he has denied it three times. The first place from which every person speaks is this: their own weakness. Acknowledging each person's limitations, not always to resign oneself to them, but also to overcome them, compels us to reason from what we are, not from what we believe ourselves to be. Any man who is unaware of his weaknesses, who forgets them, who doesn't take them into account, is, as we've come to say these days, out of touch with reality. Out of touch means being fed by a pasture that isn't our own, rejecting our own pasture to find some other, better one. Out of touch is also used to describe someone who is exotic, in the way Victor Segalen described them. Out of touch also means that the ideas we hear could be obtained anywhere else without any problem, these ideas being rootless, translatable into any language, and exportable like a framework or a shared library in computing. The term "out of touch" prevents us from answering the question "Where are you coming from?" and the former likes to mock the latter as identity-based or "far-right." By trying so hard to evade this question, we have destroyed it. In the future, it will no longer be possible to ask from where one speaks, for we will have reached such a level of abstraction and uprooting that this question will no longer even have meaning. Creon embodies this notion of power. He has uprooted within himself all ancestry; he creates something new, he embodies the new, the new power, but also the only authorized one; he embodies right and duty; he embodies everything. In the question "from where does one speak?", time and space, past and present, attempt to be circumscribed and narrated, because one must take into account the totality of a person at the moment they speak, and if totality exists in their words, these same words express the totality of their being. How can one speak without being oneself? By mistaking oneself for another. Creon suffers from the Narcissus syndrome; the one who falls in love with his own image without knowing that it is his own, without knowing that it is himself. “Become who you are” is not the same as “become yourself” or “become what you are worth.” We don't count good or bad actions to capitalize on our accomplishments. “Become who you are” means immersing oneself in silence, one's own silence, in the company of who one has always been, and who one must help to develop through one's actions. “Become who you are” defines vocation by highlighting the education necessary for understanding one's calling.

Narcissism, a disease of our time, characteristic of and contributing to communitarianism, heralds the decline of society . When everyone in their own circle begins to gaze at themselves in a mirror that can only be shimmering, all critical thinking is diluted. This complacency is triggered by the loss of bearings, the blurring of one's origins and all forms of transmission, but above all, everyone begins to look at their own reflection and the brilliance of their neighbor in a society that has forgotten all forms of authority. Recognition is obtained by comparing one's image with that of one's neighbor. Recognition, no longer immediate as it was within communities, now rests on envy and envy alone. Certain media, such as television, have become its primary instrument. This fragmentation rests on and flourishes in the fertile ground of forgetfulness and relativism, where nothing has meaning anymore, yet everything can potentially have meaning. The age-old confusion between power and authority, a confusion so wonderfully embodied by Creon in Sophocles' play, allows for a horizontal, immanent, and monotonous vision. The mirror, a tool denied to men in Antiquity so that they would not be lulled by their own image, finds in modern times an additional dimension in what must be considered a perversion. Whereas Narcissus fell in love with his image without knowing it was him ("if he does not know himself"), modern man takes a photograph of himself, retouches it, and knows this image perfectly, with its truth and its falsehood, and displays it to others so that they, in turn, may love it. People applaud each other and take turns almost immediately to endlessly embody the ephemeral nature of this reflection of glory.

Everyone dreams of their moment of glory, the ultimate form of recognition, in an era where the ephemeral reigns supreme, this unsettling immediacy that forbids contemplation, intimacy, and inner life, replacing them with stifling clamor, the accusing crowd, and perverse indecency . Creon becomes king, he seizes a mirror and loves what he sees. His hubris, his pride, strangles his soul and leads him to forget its very existence. For it is the soul that balances the person, constantly torn between their nature and their culture, between spirit and flesh, in a certain way. Creon, enamored with the image of himself as king, begins to imagine not what the king should do, but what he, as king, should do. And as the allure of this image, with its mad magnificence, permeates, intoxicates, and overwhelms him, Creon imagines in his unbridled mind the wildest, most extraordinary actions, for nothing is too beautiful for this magnificent king who dwells within him. Creon no longer knows where he is speaking from. He cannot know; he is now detached from reality, that is to say, he is no longer telling us a story, a memory—his own and that of his city—he is barely even telling us a moment, for the law against the burial of Polynices proves to be an ignominy and a law beyond the king's power. "To imagine, in the Christian city, a criminal whom temporal power would punish by depriving him of eternal salvation, by casting him into eternal hell. " Sophocles, through the character of Creon, illustrates the impermanence of this flaw in humankind, a flaw dictated and enslaved by pride, the prince of sin in Antiquity as in Christianity, aided by its faithful accomplice, envy. Narcissus and Creon fail to understand that envy is strangling them, leading them to cherish and worship an image, an idol. It is envy, coupled with power, that drives Creon to enact an impossible law that transgresses his authority by usurping it. "Don't hold onto a single idea in your head: that nothing is right except what you say, the way you say it! Anyone who thinks they alone are reasonable, or that they possess a language or a sensibility that no one else has, when you open them up, you see they are empty." Haemon wants his father to open his eyes. He carries with him common sense, he echoes the voice of the people, the common folk. Haemon will state his father's way of governing: "I could see you governing an empty country all by yourself," and his verdict, reminding his father that authority exists: "It is because I see you committing a wrong against justice." And again:
"Is it then that I commit a wrong in exercising my power?"
"It is that you do not exercise it when you trample on the honors due to the gods."
The dialogue between Creon and his son ends in a fit of mad violence. Creon, furious that the image of him as king is not liked as he desires it, orders the guards to bring Antigone immediately to be executed before Haemon. What terror! Creon becomes savage. Haemon flees to escape the ignominy of the scene that is about to unfold. “If he does not know himself,” the soothsayer had predicted concerning Narcissus. Was it a cause or a consequence? As is often the case with prophecies, they don't serve to tell us something, but rather to encourage the recipient to be vigilant. “If he does not know himself” will be exactly what Creon and Narcissus will do, and they will do it in the same way, by forgetting themselves.

What are the consequences of confusing power with authority? What is the hell of this confusion? Tyranny, which, contrary to popular belief, can manifest itself in various ways and is not always a product of totalitarianism. Tyranny creates confusion because it is born of confusion; it thus perpetuates its own roots. The tyrant becomes a deviation from himself. No longer "become who you are," but "become who you believe yourself to be." We continue to ride the arrogant wave of original sin. What characterizes the tyrant: solitude. Envy isolates by desiring to draw closer what one envies. Thus Polynices and Eteocles were subjected to their envy. So too is every man who would want to know himself too well. By wanting to know oneself too well, one understands and resonates, by refusing to be wrong, by no longer accepting the failure of research, the precariousness and fragility of human existence, but rather by believing that the will of man governs the world and that it is sovereign. The unfulfilled longing for God, through dereliction and acedia, drives man to wallow in the will to power. From what forgetfulness does the will to power arise? From a lack of humility. It is the most advanced form of envy in man, for it seems to be exercised against the entire human race. The will to power feeds on itself, like any act of human will; it can lead into a rut, because, as the flip side of the vengeful message it secures, it forgets reality, convincing itself that it is capable of correcting it. Power provokes a splitting of the self, forming a revolution of the self by itself.

“Become who you are” demands a certain docility, because the vocation it implies is defined by a boundary that both compels and elevates . Vocation is not a path strewn with pleasures to which one gives in without ever thinking of yesterday or tomorrow. Vocation requires tremendous or impossible efforts, or both, before one can grapple with them in order to overcome them. Vocation involves a struggle with daily life, and the latter can weaken us by exposing our inadequacy. Vocation says that this inadequacy is also temporary, that there is no humiliation from which one cannot recover. Envy cannot conceive of failure; it denies it or places it under a bad omen, beneath a thick layer of pretexts and excuses. Envy refuses to accept failure without doing anything to overcome it other than rejecting it. Envy is therefore an obstacle to vocation, because it rejects building something and revels in revenge. Envy can very well promote another while simultaneously hating them, because they are a tool for one's own will to be accomplished. Being oneself and becoming oneself—which means the same thing—both compel obedience, for we are not alone, but rather the sum of our ancestors and the history of our country. He who obeys only his desires does not know how to obey, for true obedience is always directed toward someone else or toward a higher authority.

The hatred of higher law is found in all tyrants. Authority continues to represent a check on power, and the tyrant seeks to annex it . Hannah Arendt catalogs what defines authority for the Romans, the ancients, the founders, and this idea can still be found in the United States of America today. Europe, and France in particular, has lost this idea of ​​authority because they no longer love their past, no longer understand its meaning, and detest its harshness. Forgetting one's past, just as inventing one from scratch, has often preceded massacres. Nowadays, it is common to hear talk of an authority from below, of the people, and those who rely on these pronouncements demand more democracy, thinking that the crux of the problem lies there. But democracy is a power, as its name indicates, not an authority, even if it often believes it is replacing it. Since authority cannot "act" in the world without becoming irrevocably tarnished, it cannot become power. It is a beacon whose light we follow. Antigone understood this well, referring to the unwritten laws, the timeless laws, the laws of God that humans cannot, and should not, even study, but simply apply without question. This authority is not there to enslave, but to help people grow, to lead them to become something more than themselves. The equality so sought after today should stand in contrast to authority, which represents the only true shield against tyranny. Authority could be compared to a council of elders summoned to give their opinion on the state of the world. Creon is not a bad man, but he forgets these eternal laws, or rather, he abandons them, to indulge in the pleasures of power. This kind of decision, made without reference to authority, creates a divide, because nothing unites people around it. Haemon reminds his father of this, telling him that popular rumor is taking Antigone's side for defying the law. Creon can therefore only invoke even more power, ever more power, to bolster his claim. He reacts to everything said to him, to everything that opposes him, and each of these reactions is a step forward in consolidating his power: "Don't hold onto a single idea in your head: that nothing is right except what you say, the way you say it. Anyone who thinks of themselves as reasonable, or that they have a way with words or a sensitivity that no one else possesses, when you open them up, you see they are empty. There is nothing humiliating for a man, even a competent one, in learning a thousand things, and in not drawing the bow too tight." On the banks of a torrent swollen by the storm, you see that all the trees that give way keep their branches, while those that offer resistance are uprooted. But also: "It is because you do not exercise it (your power) when you trample the honors due to the gods." Thus Creon refuses to recant and isolates himself even further, convinced that he will be taken for a madman if he recants, or worse, a weakling. Force has become his only compass. But Creon has forgotten that true force serves to protect, not to alienate.

In the misunderstanding with authority, all the ills of our time, and therefore Creon's own, are crystallized . It will take Tiresias to bring the King of Thebes to heel, but by then it will be too late. Creon will have flouted the gods and authority too much. Our modern era has thus distanced itself from authority, seeing in it a violence that, even if not always practical, "does violence" because it compels. It is a hunt for everything that compels or limits, and therefore, above all, hierarchy, because it is the crux of what prevents us from being ourselves, what we lump together under the confusing term individuation with individualism. Authority confronts Narcissus. The Greek gods themselves yielded to good and evil, refusing to break a spell cast by another god. The kings of France also continued the work of their predecessors without casting aspersions on what preceded them. Taking into account what already exists in order to continue weaving life is inspired by a recognition of the value of what exists and the challenge of engaging with it and shaping a policy that not only extends but also continues to support the whole. Europe still rests on this idea of ​​authority, even though it forbids it any presence in public debate. Antigone's intimacy with the gods, her very approach to the gods, her closeness to Zeus, is revealed to be unique, and it is precisely here that Antigone enlightens us most, if we are willing to look. Antigone reminds us what dogma is, the tool of authority that no one can touch unless they are God. Not that horrible thing that constrains and gags my freedom, but an intimacy with God. Dogma gives me freedom because it compels me to draw from within myself, from the deepest part of myself, that which defines me and makes me so unique. Dogma is a tradition whose royal dignity we can armor ourselves with in times of rough weather.

Creon freezes, stiffens, and crystallizes his actions. Nothing flows through him anymore. Life revolves, gravitating around this puppet king, disoriented. There is no doubt that Creon's true crime is a crime against life. He withholds it, believing himself its possessor. Having believed he could control death by refusing Polynices' burial, his deed is complete. Oedipus has reached his apotheosis, but Creon is mistaken in his assessment. Oedipus has constantly erred by misinterpreting the oracle of the gods. He did not plot against the gods nor harbor enmity with them. He did not defy them. He accepted the unfortunate fate of the Fates. Oedipus has been speaking endlessly since Delphi. His origins explain and narrate his entire life. Creon finds in Antigone an unexpected adversary, and he will never recover from this shock. We know that in a fight, surprise is often a decisive weapon. He denies Antigone all rights because she is a young girl, because she must therefore obey, because she has duties towards him, because she owes him respect and has no say in matters of state. Creon's historical amnesia leads him to confuse power and authority! Authority and power must be intertwined, even if authority reigns where power presides. Saint Paul summed this up with his knack for the magic formula: "Omni potestas a Deo" (all power comes from God), which means that if someone uses power while forgetting God, that power is worthless! This is where the problem lies, in this tiny opening, this mouse hole from a human perspective, where Antigone will slip her finger and press until Creon writhes in pain. Discovering this flaw in his discourse, a flaw he hadn't seen, hadn't anticipated, and whose very existence he was unaware of, a flaw revealed to him by a pubescent and ungrateful young girl, therefore terrified, he will falter before the obvious truth laid out at his feet: he has no right to do what he is doing! Good God, what a shock! Creon dreams of making Thebes a perfect city, the perfect city, the one it has never been, the one it will never be, but he doesn't know it yet. Creon, too, is trapped in his dream, which he endlessly replays in his mind, of a great leader at the head of a perfect city whose measurements he has "fixed and whose lines he has stretched across, whose boundaries he has cut out and whose gates and locks he has placed." ^¹ Antigone speaks of the place of Oedipus's death, of the place of Polynices's death; she even speaks from the oracle of Delphi, juxtaposing two generations. Antigone never leaves her father. She could have lived a woman's life, had children with Haemon, but no, she took a different path, and because she maintains a very special intimacy with her father, because she was with him until his last moments, she lives with his memory, and this memory continues to strengthen her. It is difficult to assess the considerable influence of Oedipus on Antigone. The father-daughter relationship is recounted here in the present, in everyday life. Everything Antigone says is grounded in this place and this understanding, for it is as much a place as a relationship. Antigone, equipped with the intimacy she shared with her father, knows that the course of life can shift from good to evil in an instant, in a flash that, though it may appear nonchalant, nonetheless permeates an entire life and sometimes generations… This intimacy also gives her the strength to confront the fate of the gods and to submit to their authoritative decisions, while still refusing to fight, to combat life's events, and to remain vigilant. If there is one quality that sustains Oedipus despite everything, despite himself, it is dignity. Antigone cloaks herself in it when Creon resorts to subterfuge such as seduction. Creon saw nothing edifying in Oedipus; he saw only a man who failed at everything. Creon rejects intimacy in every gesture. He fears it. Nothing frightens him anymore. And when he finally discovers intimacy, it is only to exploit it. Creon uses things, he appropriates them. He doesn't know how to make himself available to them. Antigone, our little Antigone, possesses a treasure. Sophocles doesn't say whether she knows this treasure, whether she is fully aware of it, but what the poet tells us through Antigone's seemingly absolutist behavior is the indissolubility of the father-daughter bond, and therefore of its fruits: dignity, fidelity, justice, respect for authority, and thus for the gods. If one wanted to take this treasure from Antigone, one would have to tear out her heart. Which is what Creon will do, because he will find himself utterly powerless. While everyone else in the play fears Creon, Creon fears Antigone. He is troubled by her certainties. Had he taken the time to read history, he might have made mistakes, but he would have assumed his role as leader in a more humane way. He wouldn't have shut himself away in his own vision. In a gesture of madness and lucidity, one can imagine him kneeling before Antigone and clasping her knees, weeping, after recognizing the treasure this young woman had laid before him, this fabulous treasure that is dogma: the sacred envelope of inner life that bestows nameless, unheard-of, infinite, and pervasive knowledge: the knowledge of the divine.