From pericles@temple.edu Sun Feb 17 02:08:17 2002 Received: from mailscan2.cac.washington.edu (mailscan2.cac.washington.edu [140.142.33.16]) by lists.u.washington.edu (8.12.1+UW01.12/8.12.1+UW02.01) with SMTP id g1HA8F5S051302 for ; Sun, 17 Feb 2002 02:08:15 -0800 Received: FROM mxu3.u.washington.edu BY mailscan2.cac.washington.edu ; Sun Feb 17 02:08:14 2002 -0800 Received: from smtp.comcast.net (smtp.comcast.net [24.153.64.2]) by mxu3.u.washington.edu (8.12.1+UW01.12/8.12.1+UW02.01) with ESMTP id g1HA8E4u000887 for ; Sun, 17 Feb 2002 02:08:14 -0800 Received: from temple.edu ([68.44.128.201]) by mtaout01.icomcast.net (iPlanet Messaging Server 5.1 (built Sep 5 2001)) with ESMTP id <0GRO00EKV9HO2U@mtaout01.icomcast.net> for classics@u.washington.edu; Sun, 17 Feb 2002 05:08:13 -0500 (EST) Date: Sun, 17 Feb 2002 05:09:26 -0500 From: Dan Tompkins Subject: Re: Seth Bernadete -- from today's NYTimes To: classics@u.washington.edu Reply-to: pericles@temple.edu Message-id: <3C6F8156.FE2F8924@temple.edu> MIME-version: 1.0 X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.7 (Macintosh; U; PPC) Content-type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; x-mac-type=54455854; x-mac-creator=4D4F5353 Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT X-Accept-Language: en References: <018201c1b703$2599b5e0$3d05a5d8@computer> Interesting and intriguing. "This view does not seem far from Benardete's. Oedipus, again, is a political leader who mistakenly believes that justice can be attained and suffering relieved by the narrow application of reason and will alone. " Does Oedipus seek justice, or is this a reading that fits him into the mold of some 20th century political view? He certainly seeks to end the plague, and succeeds, against much resistance and at great cost to himself. He relies on a powerful rationalism that does indeed exclude certain alternative scenarios (e.g. as several people have said, that the answer to the sphinx is not "man" but "me") but remains salvific for the city. One could do worse in looking for models of political leadership. The sad thing is that one participant in discussions of this sort is no longer with us. I'd heard about Seth Benardete from the early 60s--the most vivid quote I recall was an outburst about Eric Havelock--but never met him, and he sounds like someone one should have met. Dan Tompkins .