How Screwed We Are in the Face of Polytheism

The following is an excerpt of an email sent from Will to Art on 1 July 2014.

I was probably too liberal with my use of the term "ancient Greeks."

Obviously, if it weren't for the Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, Paul never would have been able to say, "You know that unnamed God above all gods you built that statue for?  I know Him!" and we wouldn't be having this conversation today.

I'm mainly picking on the ancient art, and not even that, really, since I love it. It's polytheism. Sophocles is amazing in his articulation of how screwed we are in the face of polytheism, and how beautifully heroic and tragic a person can be in the face of that being screwed. Sophocles is not far from Heaven in his understanding of the irrational and the idea that part of existence is to be at war against the whole world (paraphrasing Chesterton's The Man Who Was Thursday). But he doesn't have Christianity to help with his answers.

Antigone leading Oedipus out of Thebes

You're right about the pinned feet and the swaddled existence--in a way, they point to a primordial understanding of Christ as the Logos. In the religious festival, you have a man who is sacrificed so that others may live. To me, that's the highest value of the traditional tragic hero: that his fall can prevent the falls of others, and it takes a sort of greatness to rise to such heights of failure and bear that fall. The first shall be last! Still, Oedipus wouldn't voluntarily choose that fall, and he still has a type of pride in his fall, running around Thebes saying how he is the greatest of sinners, the most accurst, etc.

The heart of my view, really, is that the story of existence--as I believe Catholics correctly see it--is comic. I have no problem with the idea that you see the Deus ex Machina as a crappy plot device in human art; I'm completely fine with the idea that we make better tragedies than comedies. I still believe reality as God has sculpted it for us is comic in nature, and I take no issue with His art. His plot is infinitely superior to any we can create.

I agree with your assessment that Christ is not an easy answer: it's the "mystery of our faith," not the philosophy of our faith. One of the most challenging concepts of describing Christianity to non-Christians (or even Christians, for that matter) is that the Truth is a person, not a set of doctrines! Yikes! It's that idea that we are called into a relationship with God, not adherence to a rule book, that continuously baffles us. In that regard, Homer was onto something with Odysseus, although I'm grasping at straws here. He's just more about a relationship with Olympus than he is about personal virtue or true humility, which I think is too Christian of a concept for Odysseus' world, anyway.

I also see the hamartia as being the source of the hero's greatness. I just believe it's a false, b.s. greatness: a big lie that needs to be stripped away, either voluntarily in small doses, which seems to me the preferable way, or in one fell swoop, as is the fate of most tragic heroes. In tragedy of the Christian era, the stripping away is an act of mercy that reunites the hero with Truth not of the hero's own making (I think Willy Loman and Macbeth are exceptions: both are too hardened to see reality before they die). I differ from Aristotle in that I view the hamartia as a vice. I understand it and marvel at it and sympathize with it and see the beauty in it even if it is toxic, but sorry...I'm German. I'm also far more prideful than you are, so probably far more afraid of pride.

I see the tragic hero as someone who views himself as a self-made man but who really is in his own way. In a sense, this makes him a very foolish or comic figure. He senses his own weakness and compensates with self-aggrandizement. He senses his own lack of wisdom and doubles down on a bad plan, compensating with confidence. He simultaneously is everything the secular world trains us to be and a walking billboard for the dangers of defense mechanisms. Why is he foolish? He's basically missing the point of his existence: to be an object of God's love and a reflector of God's light. Basically, he tries to be God. That is charming up to a point. I think we disagree on where that point is. As you say, my view doesn't fit perfectly with classical tragedy, although it's not completely incompatible.

Also, I think the American Dream is like crack to the tragic hero. And yes, the story of a Willy Loman who works in construction, teaches his boys good values, treats his wife really well, pays his bills on time, doesn't cheat at cards, takes help when he needs it and gives help when others need it, and takes the family to church on Sundays would make for crappy art, but that's still the guy I wish Willy could be. If I didn't, the tragedy would fail.

So, my words still stink, but hopefully they are a little more clear, even if the views still evince a simpleton's understanding of tragedy. I'm not trying to convert you to my view; I just want you to understand mine, and I'm my own worst enemy in that department.

Why even waste time and effort on clarifying it? It's a pretty central concept to my view of Will.