Creon’s Anger during and after the Third Act of Antigone: an Aristotelian Reading of a Tyrant’s Emotion

Abstract

Particularly in Creon’s debate with Haemon, and from then on, Sophocles shows distinct aspects of how anger acts on the tyrant’s ability to judge and how this can be related to inextricable familial and political ties. As every modern reading of the play applies a philosophical conceptualization to understand emotions and thus suffer the consequences of a historical gap between interpretative and original vocabularies, this paper argues that the Aristotelian conceptualization of emotions is a relevant philosophical tool to better contextualize Creon’s anger in Sophocles’ Antigone. The essay discusses Creon’s thymetic responses in the face of Haemon’s admonition and Antigone’s oligoria, and offers two examples of Aristotelian readings of Creon’s thymetic akrasia. One of the possible readings considers the specific role of phantasia in Creon’s understanding of reality. This philosophical explanation of a revengeful tyrant reveals important connections between psychology and politics in the government of the city.