Philosophy and Literature

Hegel thought Sophocles' Antigone was the finest tragedy, and he put drama atop his hierarchy of the arts, Antigone is thus located precisely at the point where his system transitions from aesthetics to the philosophy of religion. I argue that the Antigone owes its place in Hegel's hierarchy to its focus on Antigone's uncanny self-certainty. Antigone's stance of certainty and the accompanying readiness for death render her the supreme uncanny, an identity with the truth in a world whose universal ethical substance provides (like our own) only fragmented normative clarity.