Sophocles' Antigone and the History of the Concept of Natural Law

Abstract

This paper focuses on two related questions. The first of these is a general question. Where are the origins of the concept of natural law to be located in the history of political thought? The second is more specific. Sophocles puts into the mouth of the eponymous heroine of his Antigone an argument justifying her disobedience to an edict of her uncle Creon, who forbade her to bury her brother Polyneices. Does this argument involve an appeal to the concept of natural law? The paper takes issue with the claim, first made by Aristotle in his Rhetoric, that Sophocles' Antigone is indeed an early example of the application of the concept of natural law in political argument and debate. This interpretation of the political message of the Antigone is inconsistent with what we know about Sophocles' attitude towards the fundamental questions of Athenian politics in the classical era of Periclean democracy during the fifth century BC.

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