Against the Robots

Antigone did not come to life at dusk. Antigone is born with the dawn. It is at daybreak that Antigone becomes "anti ," meaning facing , not against . With the retreat of the Argive army, Antigone emerges from the shadows where she could have remained all her life, not to solve the riddle of the Sphinx like her father, not to solve the riddle of life's stages, but to fill the space between each one. Oedipus tore at his skin, his nails, his fingers. Twilight describes a state of uncertainty, both morning and evening. Antigone emerges with the day, with the dawn, when freedom takes on life, and therefore form.

“My blood, my sister, my darling.” Antigone isn’t trying to appease Ismene; she’s giving her heart. She’s reviving memories. Even though the translation of “blood” is imprecise in French, and a more faithful translation would have preferred “siblings,” “my blood” refers to the blood of the brothers, “my blood,” you Ismene and Eteocles and Polynices, all equally brothers and for this reason all sharing the same blood that flows in each of their veins. “My blood, you are my blood, and you, my sister, my blood too, my darling sister.” Antigone isn’t appeasing anyone; she’s seething. Her blood is boiling in her veins. “You know all the misfortunes that Oedipus bequeathed to his family.” “Antigone comes to save memory; she comes to say what is known, or should be known, but may have been forgotten, buried, relegated to the past… In this introductory dialogue, Antigone wants to strengthen the bonds, even if she doesn't believe it's necessary in the sense that it's so obvious, so certain… but her blood boils, because everything that constitutes her, everything that makes her Antigone, daughter of Oedipus, trembles at the ongoing violation, Creon's decree. 'You know all the misfortunes Oedipus bequeathed to his family. But do you know a single one that Zeus doesn't intend to consummate here in our lifetime?' Antigone throws her decision in Ismene's face, and it seems quite certain that she doesn't understand the incredulity etched on her sister's face. It seems that Ismene doesn't yet know about Creon's decree. She certainly looks like it.” And it would be intolerable to begin the tragedy with a trial of intent. Ismene was unaware of the decree forbidding funeral honors for Polynices. Antigone informs her of it. Ismene knows nothing of it. Did she hear nothing? Did she refuse to hear anything? It's all the same to her; she is only too aware of her family's misfortunes and has no need of Antigone to remind her of them. But Antigone has planned her effect; she snatched Ismene from the first light of dawn in the palace of Thebes, she took her almost by force, she reminded her of what bound them together and should therefore also unite them, to finally deliver Creon's decree to her, this new shame for Oedipus's family, this insult, this slander, this outrage. Antigone's blood boils, for outrage on earth resounds among the gods. “You know all the misfortunes Oedipus bequeathed to his family. But do you know of a single one that Zeus doesn't intend to inflict here and now, even in our lifetime?” Zeus and the ancient gods appear in the second line. Antigone confronts Ismene as the bearer of thunderbolts. No word, no adjective is strong enough to show her sister how outraged the gods are by this decree and that it must therefore be fought relentlessly. “For Polynices, this poor dead man, it seems, citizens are forbidden to give his corpse either a tomb or lamentation: they will leave there, without tears or burial, a magnificent prey offered to hungry birds in search of game.” In ancient Greece, there already existed, in the form of eternal rest if not a paradisiacal place, the marvelous and soothing idea of ​​a place after death, which is not yet a consolation; an idea from which our modern world is sorely lacking. Antigone emphasizes this consolation in every line of her verse; this idea will give her the strength to fight the new king tooth and nail without the slightest fear. Antigone longs to find the same boldness, the same audacity, in her sister's eyes when she has finished explaining the situation. "And this, I am told, is what the noble Creon has forbidden us, you and me—I say, me! He will even come in person to expressly proclaim his prohibition here, for those who are still unaware. Ah! He doesn't take this lightly: to rebels he promises death, stoning in the city! You know the facts: you will, I think, show us without delay whether you are worthy of your blood, or whether, daughter of brave men, you have only the heart of a coward." Antigone's words to her sister are intended to be definitive; they will find only relativism in response; envy in its modern form.

The tragedy of Antigone teaches us about the qualities and flaws that humanity constantly relives, often experiencing them as if they were new. Thus, it would be wrong to take sides, to dismiss the shortcomings of others, or to consider ourselves superior for even a moment. Hierarchical societies had as their primary objective to prevent this; through all sorts of complex mechanisms, they built and reinforced the bulwark against envy. Between Antigone and Ismene, it is not a question of choosing. Moreover, Sophocles excels at using mirrors that reflect each other, and each character who crosses paths finds a kind of double before them, reminding them of themselves and making them feel the breath of what they are, what they could have been, what they will become—and the reader is not spared this exercise. Cornered by her sister, Ismene initially plunges body and soul into denial. We cannot know whether it is justified or not, but let us assume it is. Ismene knows nothing; she is almost like the three little monkeys. And the more Antigone presses her, the more she recants. Just because something is expected of her with all her will doesn't mean its fulfillment is surprising. Far from it. Once again, it is a trick, a blasphemy. Intellectual comfort proves to be the most hideous of comforts, for the mind that ceases to grapple with itself becomes complacent with its achievements and so much so that it becomes complacent, that is to say, it becomes soothing; a kind of ideology. Ismene, until that precise moment when Antigone takes her by the hand and draws her away from the ears of the palace, lived in intellectual comfort. She had sought refuge within the city walls at the first sounds of fighting. She had known, she had been told, people had sneered, that her two brothers were fighting, one with the army of Argos, the other in the name of Thebes. For power. Ismene claims not to know what Antigone is talking about when the latter questions her about Creon's edict. She displays a sadness that could not be feigned. She weeps for her brothers, but she weeps for them inwardly. In the private sphere ,  which is merely an emanation of individualism. Ismene is gentle; she weeps for her brothers inwardly; she does not want to show her sorrow outwardly. She does not want to suffer the vileness of others. She reminds Antigone: "But no!" "Of those we love, I have heard nothing, Antigone, nothing to soothe or deepen my grief, since the hour when we both lost our brothers, killed in a single day by a double blow." Ismene feigns surprise, or perhaps feigns surprise, and curls up like a hermit crab. Antigone reveals Creon's law to her and concludes with this undisguised threat: "You know the facts: you will, I think, show us without delay whether you are worthy of your blood, or whether, daughter of brave men, you are nothing but a coward's heart." Antigone believes she leaves her sister no escape. Antigone refuses all compromise; she thunders, for the urgency of the situation calls. But she has distanced herself from her sister. Ismene does not feel the pain as Antigone does. Ismene experiences pain as an additional ache, hoping it will end, that it will be enough. Ismene dreams of perfect calm, where nothing will ever again rustle the wind, stir the branches of the trees, or ripple the surface of the water. Ismene believes that life is an illness and that its cure is comfort. Ismene is not a coward, or at least not in the way Antigone insists. Fear is not the primary driving force behind her way of life, perhaps the secondary one. What motivates her—this search for peace at any cost, this desire to avoid conflict, to silence the noise and the odious nature of her life and her name—is resolved in her feeling of powerlessness. Ismene even retraces the thread of their history, denouncing all the crimes suffered by their family. She invokes all the forces that stand between her and the act: she lacks the strength to confront the king; her family has already suffered so much disgrace that she must consider forgetting everything, even burying it all, for it is the father's actions that have led us to where we are… “For my part, I beg the dead beneath the earth to be merciful, since in fact I am yielding to force; but I intend to obey the established powers. Vain gestures are foolish.” It also takes courage to confront Antigone. Ismene confesses her philosophy: she yields to force and incurs the wrath of Antigone, who recognizes no force but that of the gods. It is at this moment that Antigone introduces the idea of ​​life after death into her speech: Ismene is thinking of the terrible death, the stoning, Creon's punishment; she doesn't want to add insult to injury for anything in the world, she wants to nip it in the bud; Antigone, on the other hand, is already thinking of the afterlife, of eternal rest: "Should I not please those below longer than those here, since it is there that I will rest forever? Act as you please, and continue to despise all that is valued by the gods." Ismene then confesses that she feels incapable of acting and defying her city, only to be told that she is hiding behind this pretext . For Antigone, Ismene is afraid; she no longer wants to converse with someone who is afraid, because Antigone overcame her fear long ago and sweeps away anything resembling it, however remotely. Antigone stands apart from fear, which she never again allows to show, because she uses her fear to fuel her actions; her fear is absorbed into the act itself, it is the driving force, perhaps even the fuel.

Fear is everywhere. It inaugurates speech, thought, action… It decides what kind of robot we will be molded from. We constantly stiffen, look sideways, react; we act only a fraction of a second per day, per month, per year, per lifetime… Reaction imprisons us and guides our steps toward the scaffold of freedom. What a waste! Because fear enlists us under the sway of inspired action, we no longer see how imprisoned we are, and we have lost the desire to go against the current to find the causes. Antigone expresses this desire, the desire not to lose the desire for transmission so as not to live between a present resembling a perpetual daily routine and a future tinged with a halo of magic, governed by technology, therefore, always striving to be more promising. We must confront fear. We must frighten it. For fear is afraid. Fear displays itself as a hologram of evil; Confronting it is like facing it, looking it in the eye, and ordering it to return to its place in the amusement park. Our minds represent evil, becoming accustomed to its presence and rendering it, in our thoughts, vulnerable, comfortable, and harmless. Evil, in turn, projects its trump card, its hologram: fear. There's no need to be strong, intelligent, or rich; there's only one way to defy fear, and that way is rooted in self-awareness. Identity plunges into the heart of fear; must we roll the dice to make it positive or negative? This mirror that Sophocles holds up to each of his characters allows him to never judge a person, whether they rise or fall, because everyone can rise or fall, everyone can reveal themselves, and at the most unexpected moment, this mirror also reveals the slightest flaws, the smallest scars, the slightest weakness… everything is scrutinized, sifted through the sieve of events, and it is thus that the one who is led by events while believing he is controlling them, the reactionary, may possess invaluable qualities that he will squander… no insurance offers any guarantee against fear. Because fear is also seductive. A fanatic will defy fear and even laugh in its face. He will taunt it. The fanatic will find every expedient to brave fear. Worse, he will revel in it. That is how he is recognizable; he is possessed. No one laughs at fear except the fanatic, who participates in fear. He who relies on his self-knowledge confronts fear because he must, not because he desires or is excited by it. He defies fear and the abyss that opens in its wake because he is driven by an unbridled passion, an intoxicating essence, a duty to serve and defend what he believes to be right: freedom. This quality, which will never disappear from humanity's radar, this ever-outdated, ever-useless quality, worthless in the modern sense of yielding no profit, this quality upon which the history of humanity is nevertheless founded. The fanatic tramples freedom underfoot, and this gesture is also recognizable. He who acts guided by self-awareness knows that freedom is the best and only way to commune with the divine. At last. Once again.

The two sisters confront each other with their gazes, reflected on either side of the double-sided mirror. Antigone sees her brother's body being devoured by wild beasts. Ismene sees herself stoned by Creon. How can one express the wrong? How can one accuse? The comparison with the tree reveals a crucial difference: for humans, being rooted is not the same as being planted. Humans move. Whereas the tree knows its territory from the beginning and will not leave it, humans constantly explore and transgress its boundaries. Ismene is planted, because she has planted herself! She has found a precarious balance and refuses to move. She accepts this refusal to move; she rejects risk. Yet, this is not about defying life for the sake of risk or for adrenaline; that would be just another form of misery. Ismene has been tossed about. Perhaps she suffered the most within her family? Who knows? Following these hardships, Ismene dug in, blended into the background, and now desires nothing more than anonymity; to become a kind of ghost. Isn't there something admirable about becoming a ghost while still alive? Mastering the art of dissimulation to become invisible. The person who is no longer a creature, emancipated from their creator, searches for words, stammering out definitions of their condition that form so many prisons. Ismene experiences happiness intimately when she experiences anonymity, calm, and rest. Ismene fought in her daily life to achieve the life that is hers. Ismene is not simply a coward. Fear plays its part and constitutes an exemplary factor through the loss of property. The loss of status or social standing is even more powerful. Ismene has grown accustomed to her social standing; she fought to achieve it, she cannot separate herself from it, she cannot renounce everything. The dialogue between Ismene and Antigone boils down to a quarrel between being and having; a quarrel repeated so many times with a similar result each time. Ismene believes she can distance herself from her family and the breed it represents, as if it were a trunk she could open, but above all, keep closed at will. Antigone asserts that she is one with her family, that she cannot pick and choose what suits her and discard what does not.

Antigone embodies rebellion. The rebel stands up against comfort and tyrants. "He cannot not," according to Pierre Boutang's beautiful phrase.  Nothing is impossible for humankind, and this is what constitutes its wonder, as the chorus will say during the tragedy. Antigone stands up against what tries to stifle her. Knowing the human heart, the infinity of its condition (which is not knowing the infinity of its capabilities, but rather considering the depths it can reach), compels us to always rise up and defend it. Forgetting the possibility of humankind allows us to remain motionless and seated, witnessing the massacre as if it were a spectacle, while reveling in the private sphere of not being in the arena. To offer an explanation of the world without allowing for the unexpected and the irrational, not to mention the spiritual, is to give power the leading role, the principal role. The rebel detests above all else "theories that aim to provide a logical and flawless explanation of the world."^¹ Antigone, by standing up to Creon and whipping Ismene, finds herself alone, an abyss beneath her feet; this abyss, this precipice, this chasm, foreshadows freedom. "A rebel, therefore, is anyone who is brought by the law of their nature into contact with freedom, a relationship that leads them, in time, to a revolt against automatism and to a refusal to admit its ethical consequence: fatalism."^² While the rebel may thus have one or two companions, their act isolates and cuts them off. Antigone isolates herself by standing up; she becomes a recluse, in which case no punishment from Creon can frighten or worry her. Ismene, armored by her comfort and her fear, cannot understand her sister's approach, neither when she refuses it nor, later, when she tries to cling to it, understanding nonetheless that something essential is at play there, which restores the heart of man by drawing from it an unsuspected strength to change the face of the world.

What explanation can be given for Ismene's fear? Ismene forbids Antigone from burying their brother, thus defying Creon's order, for fear of the reprisals this new ruler would exact in return. Is it fear that governs her, driven by the dread of punishment, or is it the fear of losing the intellectual comfort Ismene enjoys? We must be wary and not believe that only the wealthy feel the loss of material or cultural possessions. What we build, what we assemble, what we have fought for, even modestly, is etched within us as the result of titanic struggles won in defiance of danger. At every level of society, the loss of hard-won comfort causes upheaval for which no one is prepared. The gilded destiny that awaits us under the guise of technology cannot withstand any affront. The modern project would have us believe that what is acquired is acquired, even though we live in a world ruled by the ephemeral. The opening dialogue of Antigone between the two sisters recounts Antigone's genesis, as she also confronts her sister's anomie, and shows an Ismene whose yes will never be a yes and whose no will never be a no ^. Ismene never allows herself to be Ismene; she is constantly wavering, or at least chasing after an image of herself, tossed about by events like a raft on the ocean. Ismene enumerates her family's misfortunes to hold Antigone's hand, demonstrating ahead of time that the same argument can have two causes and announcing the advent of relativism: "Ah! Think, my sister, and consider our father." He ended up odious, infamous: the first to denounce his crimes, he himself, with his own hand, tore out both his eyes… Futile gestures are foolish.” Ismene spares herself no detail. And she continues, asserting to Antigone, “I will gain nothing from this.” Ismene’s observation is correct: there is nothing to gain. It’s not about gaining anything. It’s about not losing, not continuing to lose, not losing everything. Antigone understands this well. It’s about knowing who you are. It is true that after this entire enumeration of the crimes of each member of the Labdacid family, it seems legitimate to ask: what’s the point of continuing? What’s the point of persevering? This, in short, is what Ismene expresses when she says she will gain nothing from it. Indeed, it is legitimate to ask the question if one weighs things up, if one compares… popular belief used to remind us that comparison is not proof . It seized upon real-life examples to say this, because it warded off the urge to remain silent, to fade away. Throughout history, heroes and saints, and the popular sayings associated with them, have compelled envy to fall into line for the common good. Ismene thrives on comparisons. Ismene revels in what she says, because there is something irrefutable in her words, so she clings to them like a shipwrecked sailor to his wooden plank. The saying, " comparison is not proof ," obliterates this: this irresistible power of envy that drives the one who possesses it to reveal, through their words, a sure, certain, and obvious truth. For Ismene, after all her family has endured, secrecy, discretion, and near-disappearance are paramount. Everyone has heard far too much about them. It is urgent to extinguish the fire as soon as it flares up again, and it always, relentlessly, threatens to flare up. These two brothers who have rekindled the flames are of no help to Ismene, but she straightens up, brushing them aside. If she mourns her brothers, that is a private matter; no one must think that she sees herself as part of her family's legacy, or if she does, it will be to express a different kind of legacy, an understanding of her horrific lineage: she thus distances herself from her brothers, from her father. And now from her sister. Her sister, who will stir up the crowds and renew the slander. Ismene can't take it anymore. Enough is enough. Any means of escaping gossip and rumors proves useful. Ismene constantly balances her scales, she counts, she inaugurates statistics, what is useful, what serves a purpose, what can be measured, estimated… a verb whose meaning has indeed been altered. Self-esteem exists only through others; self-esteem has become the esteem of others. The idea of ​​oneself, the idea of ​​who one is, where one comes from, no longer means anything…

The confrontation between Ismene and Antigone represents two opposing philosophies. And by philosophy, we mean a way of life, or even more: a way of living better. And since any means is justified to escape the jeers of others, everything is acceptable from this perspective. Ismene is in full possession of her faculties when she confronts Antigone. She even seems more sensible, calmer, less agitated… she projects an image of propriety while her sister appears possessed. Yet Ismene is prey to a mania called envy; afflicted by this virus, she compares the incomparable. Everything in her discourse is dressed in the garb of respectability, yet this discourse resonates with the terrible virus that reduces all new speech to the level of comfort, and comfort alone. When the pursuit of comfort intoxicates and demands ever more compromises. Antigone argues that the pain of losing her brothers cannot be further compounded by Creon, who, king though he is, cannot condemn Polynices' soul to wander for a thousand years along the Styx. Ismene turns a blind eye to Creon's decree, believing her brother acted wrongly in attacking the city. She garners support by saying this. She skillfully applies what we would now call a double , a form of injustice—but not just any injustice, not the daily injustice that plunges into misery those who could not defend themselves against the power deployed to harm them, but rather the comparative injustice that exacerbates covetousness, bitterness, and disharmony. Ismene announces the breach of common sense, firstly: by getting too close to the sins of others, it could rebound upon oneself; this fear is the true fear of the other, especially when that other is oneself, as in this case, one's family; secondly: everything is equal, and those who boast of doing better sin just as much as everyone else. No one can claim to possess what is truly good since, in the end, everyone will have acted wrongly at one time or another. The gravity of the acts plays only a very minor role, as it would force a hierarchy; the important thing is to absolve everyone of guilt: since everyone has sinned, everyone is guilty, therefore everyone is innocent. Who are we to judge the weight of each other's sins since we have all sinned? Envy is staggering. Sin, the grave act, the amartia in the tragedy of Antigone, becomes an inarticulate, impalpable, and anonymous object. It applies to everyone without exception, which is true, but it no longer possesses any particular quality, which makes it flawed. Saint Augustine already foretold: “By dint of seeing everything, one ends up enduring everything… By dint of enduring everything, one ends up tolerating everything… By dint of tolerating everything, one ends up accepting everything… By dint of accepting everything, one ends up approving everything!” Ismene approves of everything: the death of her brothers for the sins of her father (for whom she finds no mitigating circumstances and of whom she sees only the negative) and Creon’s law, which is justified by everything that has just been listed. Relativism stems from envy through the practice of constant comparison, that is to say, constant leveling. Relativism always presents itself as cozy, welcoming, comfortable; it smooths over rough edges, avoids conflict, and makes people happy, dazed, and uncertain. Relativism breeds anomie, the gradual erosion of the structures that bind the inhabitants of a country together and to which they can cling if the need arises. Antigone establishes a hierarchy where Ismene levels. Nothing is worth more than the transcendent laws of the gods. Nothing is worth more than her brother, and she will proclaim it. Nothing is worth more than her family. Nothing is worth more than love. And nothing is worth more than respect for the dead and life after death. "I will bury Polynices and be proud to die acting in this way. That is how I rested beside him, dear to those who are dear to me, a holy criminal. Should I not please those below longer than those here, since it is there that I will never rest? Act as you please, and continue to despise all that is valued by the gods." Ismene is nothing but a pretext in Antigone's eyes. Ismene becomes even more of a prisoner of the persona she herself did not create by accepting and legitimizing this intolerable law. Antigone's liberation is never-ending, for one must be free, or have been free, to fight for freedom. Antigone represents the active, chosen, liberated minority. "All comfort comes at a price. The condition of a domestic animal leads to that of a slaughterhouse animal." ^Antigone rebels because she refuses to be afraid and rejects this automatic response, so closely linked to fear, which is its driving force. Fear leads only to flight, whether mental or physical, or both. There is one place where freedom can be protected: the human heart, which prefers danger to servitude. Antigone wished to gain some strength by acting with Ismene; the latter's refusal will have strengthened her just as much, albeit in a different way. Antigone invents nothing; she gathers up from the ground the freedom trampled underfoot by Creon, by Ismene, and by so many others. Antigone gathers up freedom because she was initiated into it by her father, who, in his grief, never disowned her, but also because she knows from her own actions that freedom must be won anew at every moment, that it knows no end, and that, year in, year out, one must grapple with it, take it on to give it life and to give oneself life; to stay alive, too. Antigone turns to the forests, and her forest contains her innermost being, the one who converses with the gods and the dead, the one who is not afraid of the living; the living count for so little and for such a short time. Ismene sails on the ship and, from the upper deck, in plush comfort, continues to describe the icebergs without believing for a second that they have a submerged part.

Envy, this metaphysical cancer, gnaws away at the very bone what remains of humanity in man, bringing him closer to the beast by robbing him of all hope of freedom. Envy forces him to turn inward, imprisoned and resigned by the force of attraction and the will to power it unleashes. Relativism embodies envy by mimicking its end. Relativism convinces itself it is doing the right thing, for it dons the guise of medicine while concealing a deeper illness. It appears to be a virtue. Relativism has existed in every era, sporting new clothes that allow humanity to advance or regress. Relativism is evident in Ismene from her very first response to Antigone: "But, wretched woman, if that's the way it is, what can I do? I may try all I want, but I won't gain anything." Everything is summed up there: I can do nothing , I will gain nothing . These two expressions erect barriers to do nothing, to do absolutely nothing. To remain hidden there, to do nothing, to avoid making waves—the world has heard enough about my family, and always in a bad light, that's enough … Who is Ismene? No one knows anymore. She herself has no idea, or perhaps only a vague one: I am the daughter of Oedipus, whose entire lineage is damned, and from whom I wish to be separated, from whom I desire to be unknown . Does she even know what she feels anymore? Her two brothers are dead, but she has already buried the very idea of ​​their deaths, for she only recalls the infamy that scars her family. Ismene wants to be like everyone else, to stop people constantly talking about her father who blinded himself, who slept with her mother, about her power-hungry brothers who turned on each other, about their impurity… Ismene's attitude smacks of communalism. She rejects her Labdacid lineage, and by this act, by this desire to distance herself from her race, she enters another group which, even if vaguely defined, exists in opposition to her family. Ismene doesn't realize it, but she is a reactionary. By rejecting her family, by burying them, Ismene plunges into envy and declares: “Ah! Think about it, my sister, and consider our father. He ended up odious, infamous…” She reels off a litany of grievances, seeing nothing positive in her family's actions, in her father's actions. It's difficult to hate Ismene, because what she says makes sense. She possesses virtues. But virtues gone mad, as Chesterton would have said, because they are detached from one another. Ismene claims a certain freedom; she disrupts family and therefore individual thought, because both are imbued with and cannot exonerate themselves by asserting that she can do nothing if Creon, the State, has decided it and that she will gain nothing from it. These two ideas become one and will become cogito, ergo sum, more than 1000 years later. This cogito that mistakes itself for cognosco , this cogito that forgets being, that reduces when it believes it is opening up the field of thought. Reducing, mechanizing, aborting—all these actions have always been very successful in philosophy, especially when, accompanied by envy, they pretended to reach new, previously unknown shores. All that glitters is not gold. Perpetual novelty attracts humankind, which would not be a flaw in itself if we gave ourselves the means to return to the source and rediscover the infinite fields of our thought; but no, novelty is not enough for us, we constantly strive to erase our memory, to erase the path that led us there, to novelty, thus believing we are making everything new.

Are we to understand that man hates freedom? Centrifugal and centripetal forces clash; man can be made for freedom and yet be indifferent to it, the task at hand seeming too difficult or too long… To choose is to be free, but how can one choose without knowing or even being aware of the truth? Relativism has transformed truth into illusion; the pernicious mechanism would continue its mad dash and transform freedom into a gilded cage. Ismene will want to stand by Antigone's side when the latter is detained by Creon after breaking the law. She will come to her side and strive to show a certain determination to be guilty. But Antigone will not allow it. Antigone will refuse to let Ismene admit guilt, as she herself does, because Ismene will present herself no more at this moment than at the beginning of the play as a free woman, and Antigone reasons only in terms of freedom. Nothing else interests her. Antigone will rebuke her sister. Antigone acts from within, in accordance with her conscience, for the gauntlet of outrage must be picked up, because she cannot live accepting that her beloved is thrown to the wild beasts and that the law of a tyrant can violate unwritten laws. Ismene stands beside her sister, knowing no more about her action: she didn't know why she refused to act, and she doesn't know why she's doing it now; perhaps out of sentimentality… Which, in Antigone's eyes, can only inspire profound disgust.

“Become who you are,” Gabriel Marcel liked to repeat, ^{five years} after Pindar , which implies a profound humility and a pronounced taste for transmission. Nowadays, 2,500 years after Antigone, we would rather say: “become what you want,” as if everything were measured by the yardstick of will, and will alone. Relativism has wiped the slate clean; the individual is poised to conquer the world. He cares nothing for what holds him back from living his life. God, master, the past—all dismissed. He relies on the illusion that everything is equal, that the great works of the past stemmed as much from luck as from work as from will, that he can do as well, or even better, by reinventing them. If relativism, in its early stages, could feign to mark the end of envy, it has become nothing more than an extraction of it. The man who loses sight of the divine distances himself from his creaturely condition to imagine his own offspring. Believing oneself capable of anything has nothing to do with freedom, but everything to do with alienation. When Antigone hears Creon's edict, she decides to act; she asks no questions. Why? Because she is aware of who she is. In the Odyssey, Odysseus is violently brought back to himself during libations. "Now while the glorious bard sang, Odysseus, taking his great purple scarf in his strong hands, drew it over his head and covered his handsome face, fearing that tears might fall from his eyes. But each time the divine bard paused, he wiped away his tears, removed the scarf from his head, and from his double-bottomed cup, made the offering to the gods; Then, when the bard resumed his singing and the other princes, charmed by his tale, urged him to sing again, Odysseus would pull the scarf back around himself and sob. Demodocus, the bard invited by Alcinous to sing, recounts the legend of Odysseus without knowing him, and while facing him directly. Odysseus, the one who had seen everything, could not be seen and was taken aback by the bard's invitation to sing of his wonders. Thus, we see Odysseus brought back to himself, caught in the web of intense emotion. If he is a legend, if he is spoken of in the third person, it is because he is dead. The Odyssey opens the way to self-awareness. Odysseus, before Demodocus, is the experience of the "non-coincidence of self with self." ^What an ordeal! To be like another, but dead. Nothing better to awaken the human being slumbering within the robot we have become. To become who we truly are, we must be alive, and what constitutes life in the West lies in this phrase of Socrates: “It would be easy to understand that, out of spite at so many falsehoods, someone might come to embrace and despise all discourse on being for the rest of their life. But in this way, they would deprive themselves of the truth of being and suffer great harm.” What a prophecy! The loss of the capacity for wonder, the loss of questioning under the pretext of errors—before arriving at this statement, Phaedo's book contained a great many erroneous theses—under the pretext of false leads, of dead ends taken, we must deprive ourselves of thinking? Is that it? If we look at the path traveled by the West since Antigone, such a figure is practically impossible today. The freedom Antigone grants herself contains almost everything the West rejects. The thought of God, a theology learned and lived, takes precedence over unjust laws that rely on no authority other than that of the leader who institutes them. The modern project rests on these precise points: no longer seeking this self-fulfillment, reveling in ancient errors, in order to show that the Ancients do not deserve the respect they are accorded. The lever of envy is high. Envy looms over all thought and imprisons modern man in a horizontal and sclerotic mode of thinking. I will gain nothing from it . Ismene will gain nothing by accompanying Antigone to her funeral rites because the dead are the dead and the living are the living, because it won't bring Polynices back, because Polynices brought it on himself, because Creon is the king and whatever I think of him, I can't change that, because I'm afraid of punishment, because down here it's not Zeus who rules… Ismene lounges on a mattress of convenient excuses. No argument can touch her anymore: the honor of the dead? The timeless unwritten laws? The unmasked tyrant? Nothing works. Ismene doesn't realize she has allowed herself to be imprisoned: she admits to not acting because her self-interest is limited and because she fears the sentence. By accepting the atrophy of thought, and even elevating it to a rule of conduct, the modern project has enhanced Socrates' fear and rendered the great damage irreversible. The obligation to relativize is a new philosophy that hinders and rejects freedom: since religion has made mistakes and acted wrongly throughout its history, it does not deserve my respect; since France has behaved badly at certain points in its past, it does not deserve my respect, and so on. Envy, perched atop relativism, rejects any idea that recounts an intelligent past that builds us up and allows us to know and build ourselves. Relativism is a threat to freedom, to all forms of freedom; it is the religion of secularized society, patiently waiting for the magic that has taken on the guise of technology to fill all the gaps and, as if by enchantment, offer eternal happiness, stripped of the trappings of the past. No more need to be courageous, the dilemma will be taken from us; no more need for medical care, illnesses will cease to exist; no more need to fight for freedom, technology liberates us; no more need to tend to the dead, death will disappear… You will be like gods!

Relativism appears as a form of complacency when freedom is a necessity. “To say, for example, that at a certain level of poverty and exploitation, religion risks being used by exploiters as an additional means of control is to acknowledge a fact of which, unfortunately, examples abound; but on the other hand, it is radically illegitimate to draw a conclusion about the very essence of religion from such facts.” ⁵ There is no comfort in being oneself; there is an ambition, a deep-seated yearning to discover oneself constantly in order to become ever closer to oneself. “The sublime freedom that man receives to do good and to be rewarded for it.” ⁸ Freedom and truth—or at least the pursuit of it—go hand in hand. Saint John thus affirms, “The truth will set you free.” Jesus Christ will say, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” Thus, for Christianity, the free man is the saint. Contrary to what is often said or believed, freedom never conflicts with the authority that crowns and protects it, paving the way for its flourishing. Antigone recognizes only one authority concerning the dead: the gods. She therefore prefers to act in accordance with the gods rather than with a tyrant. If it were not about the dead and the afterlife, and therefore the consolation of death, if it were about the closing hours of a shop, if it were even about justice towards someone, and even justice towards a family member, but as long as the tyrant did not enter into the field of intimacy, by transgressing self-awareness, the connection with the gods, that is to say by entering into contradiction with the unwritten laws, that is to say with dogma, that is to say with spiritual authority, for it is indeed this confrontation between the spiritual and the temporal that is at stake, then Antigone would not intervene. Not that she wouldn't care at all, but she would surely consider that her freedom, in other words her life, wasn't at stake. Being oneself requires taking up the challenge of fear, accepting to walk alongside it by allowing oneself to let go, which Antigone does very well by entrusting her actions to the gods. Antigone demonstrates self-control as soon as she leaves Ismene; as soon as she appears before Creon, she overwhelms him with her calm and composure: Antigone's freedom is revealed to Creon, who is first surprised, then frightened, and will have no other option than to call her mad. Through her self-control, a true showcase of freedom, a self-control that can only occur on the condition of self-knowledge, Antigone rises up against Creon, whose power falters.

Nothing can make Antigone stray from who she is. “Become who you are” sounds like a formula invented for Antigone, but it also applies to any person who successfully undergoes their metamorphosis and doesn't fall asleep forever in their chrysalis. Saint Augustine uses the magnificent phrase *intimior intimo meo* , in the intimacy of intimacy, or in the innermost depths of intimacy… intimacy already etymologically means that which is most inside. Saint Augustine is therefore speaking of that which is inside that which is most inside. In the deepest, most intimate part of my heart. In the Gospels, we often hear that Mary, the mother of Jesus, keeps events in her heart. It is in one's heart, in the deepest part of one's heart—so as not to confuse intimacy with emotion—that one keeps what is truly dear to us. This action is only possible for people who know themselves, who know within themselves both good and evil, who are capable of identifying them and learning from them. This intensity is frightening, for it seems like solitude to the person freed from God. Those who follow their innermost being, without influence, without obsession, far from ideologies, cannot be reactionary! Socrates, before Saint Augustine, called this inner realm his daimonion ; no other counsel held such qualities for him. The inner self must supplant emotion; it takes precedence. In Antigone, the inner self supplants doubt and the suffering to come when they restrain Ismene! Doubt and suffering fuel relativism. "It is important that anyone who undertakes a difficult task form a precise idea of ​​themselves." ^A self-concept to escape the dictates of fear, to test oneself in this task, to deepen and accept one's freedom. Fear becomes a remedy for apathy; an antidote to the habit that swallows all our humanity into a black hole. Drawing from within oneself means rising above, moving away from individualism to allow for individuation, which is nothing other than communion with oneself; identity, at last.

It is impossible to write Antigone without touching upon freedom; it would seem logical, therefore, that Sophocles must have known freedom through experience. He who has never known freedom cannot experience it on his own; he must be initiated into it, perhaps through suffering and fear, as Aristotle, in Politics and Poetics, defines tragedy and the catharsis it provokes in the spectators through the edification of terror and pity. Human beings constantly oscillate between creation and destruction, and it should not be assumed that the poet experiences his human condition any differently. Sophocles invented a language for Antigone, like a sculptor who sculpted the material of words to create concepts. Greek allows for this sculpting. Thus, Antigone's language became specific and is shaped around the word αυτος (autos), which, as Pierre Chantraine reminds us, "is attested from Homer throughout the history of Greek." “Same” or “the same,” αυτος, expresses identity, the coincidence of self with self. In Sophocles’ writing, it signifies coincidence with oneself as much as with the other, for there can be no encounter with another without self-awareness and self-knowledge. Likewise, with each plunge into the intimior intimo meo , we witness a perpetual encounter with the other within ourselves. However, the encounter with one’s opposite does not necessarily lead to a true encounter, as Creon and Antigone clearly demonstrate. Each remains entrenched in their character. Sophocles, like Jean Racine later, shapes language so that it says more than it should, so that it touches upon that truth which can only be experienced. It is the encounter that chisels it, in one direction or another. Creon's character crystallizes through his interactions with Antigone, but also with Haemon and Tiresias, not to mention the chorus, which struggles to conceal its astonishment. It also appears that Sophocles, in shaping his language, seeks to define meaning once and for all. This is more than a signature; it represents a desire to engrave, to render indelible, an intimate meaning. "He is my blood, from one mother and one father," proclaims the apocalyptic dimension of the Labdacid family. Creon, too, is touched by this autos, but he never draws upon his inner self; he remains firmly entrenched in his role, declaiming the laws—his laws.

The dialogue between Antigone and Ismene is reminiscent of another famous dialogue, this time between Jesus and Peter. “Do you love me?” Christ asks, using the verb agape . Peter is still far from the total love that Christ demands, the love that will nevertheless found his Church upon this rock that still resembles sand. He is both far and close. But he doesn't know when he is close and when he is far. Jesus sees the potential. He sees through people. Jesus will have to lower his initial requirement and use the word philia to express the love that unites them. Vital love, total love, agape , will only come on the roads of Rome, in response to “Quo vadis, domine?” Antigone, having learned of Creon's law, decides on her course of action. She decides it by coincidence with her innermost being, which she shares with the gods. She knows, she has seen who she is, and she affirms it. She knows she is walking towards death, but in her heart of hearts, she does not waver and carries out her act, burying her brother, and defies Creon, not as an anarchist, this role suits Creon drunk with his power, but as someone who acts against a State that confuses authority and power.