‘No Longer and Not Yet’: From Doxa to Judgment

In The Human Condition, Hannah Arendt quotes from Antigone: “But great words, counteracting the great blows of the overproud, teach understanding in old age.” She quotes Sophocles to exemplify the original, pre-philosophical and even pre-polis belonging together of words and deeds. She then cautions: “The content of these lines is so puzzling to modern understanding that one rarely finds a translator who dares to give the bare sense.”