On something...

• Philosophical section: involves knowledge vs. belief vs. ignorance, and how each of the characters were affected by each and could have been saved by another.
  
• Personal story:

One idea we thought of was how emotions affect a person's knowledge and beliefs. Many people attempt to separate the two to maintain the integrity of knowledge, but this is impossible. When you are truly invested in your beliefs or your knowledge, they will become emotionally connected to you. You will care. This could also deal with how important it is to people to be right in an arguement. It may help to understand other people's perspectives, but being forced to acknowledge them while you're angry will just make you angrier. How Creon and Antigone's psyches affect what they know and believe could be very interesting to look at. There is also the idea that both Creon and Antigone knew that they were right. And they didn't simply know, they were positive that if they didn't do what they KNEW was right, it would have very real consequences, whether it was Creon believing Thebes would fall into anarchy or Antigone forseeing a shameful afterlife for her brother.

My personal story will probably center around a disagreement I had with my softball coach last weekend. I get invested in the game, and when I play badly I get angry at myself. I don't yell or throw things, but you can tell that I'm upset. He hates it, says I have a bad attitude and I need to be a team leader and set a good example for the other girls. But I believe that I am setting a good example. It shows I care.

Creon will be unhappy if Thebes falls apart, Antigone will be unhappy if her brother is unhappy in his afterlife. Could they have reached a solution where they were both happy? Maybe. Antigone could have gone to Creon and begged her case. Rather than being an inconsistent leader, Creon could have been the merciful ruler. They both got what they wanted, ther're both happy. But would Antigone have been happy. Her pride and arrogance point to no. She could not have been happy going to Creon and admitting that he had power over her, showing humility. Her emotions clouded her rationale. So there needs to be a balance between emotion and reason.

A common idea is that emotion clouds knowledge and prevents rationale thinking. In effect, many attempt to separate emotions to maintain the integrity of the information. I believe that this is wrong. Emotions will always be twisted together with knowledge and beliefs. Our knowledge and beliefs are based on past expereinces. But our past experiences are determined by emotion. A bad experience made us feel bad, so we change our future actions to avoid the unpleasant feelings.

Then there's the idea that Antigone and Creon are both right, yet opposed. Could there have been an ending that satisfied both? If Antigone had gone to Creon and begged her case, then she would have been able to bury her brother. At the time, Creon would look like a merciful ruler rather than a weak one. But would Antigone have been happy? Logic would say yes. She acheived her objective and should be content. But the play shows a proud and somewhat arrogant Antigone. She could not have been happy begging Creon for mercy, and thus acknowledging that he had power over her. That is why her emotion-based rationale told her that going to Creon would not be an option.

This, in turn, leads to the idea of balance. While emotions will always be a part of logic, there is such a thing as too much. Antigone associated so many negative emotions with the smarter of her two

Emotions will always be twisted together with knowledge and beliefs. A common idea is that emotion clouds knowledge and prevents rational thinking, but I believe that emotions are the basis of human thought. Our emotion provides the foundation for our rationale, which then informs our decisions in life. Our actions in life are based on our rationale, which in turn is formed by our past experiences. But the deciding factor in whether an experience was good or bad is how it made us feel. Human logic is based on emotion. A rational decision is simply justified by past emotions rather than a person's present feelings.

If Thebes falls apart, Creon will lose power and respect, and might even be hated for running the city into the ground. This would make him very unhappy. His emotion-based rationale pushes him to protect the government and the community at any cost. Antigone loves her brother Polyneices deeply, and would be miserable if he had a shameful afterlife. Her logic tells her that she must bury him, there is no choice. Although their viewpoints clash against each other, both are completely justified. This brings the idea that Antigone and Creon are both right, yet opposed. Antigone stands for the importance of family and the home. During scene one between Antigone and Creon, Antigone tells Creon about the unwritten laws which demand for the burial of her brother. To her, she is right. There is no proof or explanation, these unwritten laws simply exist, and she knows it. Creon, on the other hand, stands for the sanctity of the state. He cannot allow Thebes to fall apart, this is as clear to him as the unwritten laws are to Antigone.

Antigone and Creon represent what Hegel would have called thesis (an idea) and antithesis (an opposing idea). Synthesis occurs when aspects of the thesis and antithesis are combined. Can synthesis occur? Can there be an ending that satisfies both? If Antigone had gone to Creon and begged her case, then she would have been able to bury her brother. At the same time, Creon would look like a merciful ruler rather than a weak one. But would Antigone be happy? Logic would say yes. She would have achieved her objective and should be content. But the play shows a proud and somewhat arrogant Antigone. Its possible she could not be happy begging Creon for mercy, and thus acknowledging that he has power over her. That is why her emotion-based rationale told her that going to Creon would not be an option.

This, in turn, leads to the idea of balance. While emotions will always be a part of logic, there is such a thing as too much. Antigone associated so many negative emotions with the wiser choice of cooperating with Creon that she chooses to break the law, an act that she knows will bring her own death. She allowed her emotions to overwhelm and skew her judgment. In a choral number occurring in the next scene, the chorus speaks of Destroyer Love, "A power to sweep across the bounds of what is right". It characterizes love as a wild emotion, strong enough to pervert minds (line 792). Antigone shows the most love throughout the play for her brother, and when she says her nature sides with love during scene one with Creon and Ismene, she is probably referring to the same type of family love. In a line from scene one not included in our version of Antigone, Ismene tells Antigone that she loves the impossible, and this could be an example of her love getting the better of her.

But you don't have to be a character from Greek tragedy to be affected by emotions. A couple of weeks ago, I got into an argument with my softball coach at a weekend tournament. He told me that I had a bad attitude. I seriously disagree. It’s true that I get angry when I play badly, but I don’t take it out on the team or the equipment, and quite frankly, I think that’s a good thing. I know it’s a good thing. Girls who are happy even when they make errors reflect badly on the team. When I get mad it shows I care about the game. My coach must know that emotions are going to get involved. In order to truly think clearly, we need to acknowledge the role emotions play in the thought process in order to balance our thoughts and feelings.

Posted at Jul 16/2007 11:20AM:
Brett: Questions on this reflection! - What's the relationship between emotion and knowledge? Do/Can they work together? - What role does emotion/feeling/psyche play with the characters in Antigone? How does it affect their decisions? - Should the characters have approached their conflicts differently? If so, then in what way? - Could there be an alternate (and still truthful) ending to the Antigone story? - What can this story and our newfound ideas about emotion and knowledge teach us about how to handle things in our own lives?

**thoughts on the format of the reflection** - ways to incorporate the chorus in the presentation (so it's less about one person in the spotlight) - shouldn't interrupt the flow/aesthetic of the play - not keen on the 'oral presentation' way of doing it

Posted at Jul 16/2007 11:29AM:
Brett: more 'traditional' concepts of emotion and knowledge... emotion: an affective state of consciousness in which joy, sorrow, fear, hate, or the like, is experienced, as distinguished from cognitive and volitional states of consciousness. - knowledge: the fact or state of knowing; the perception of fact or truth; clear and certain mental apprehension.(dictionary.com) - it seems as though emotion is treated as a state that inhibits more rational forms of consciousness (i.e. emotion and the rationale are opposed)

Posted at Jul 16/2007 11:40AM:
Brett: from our discussion... contemporary popular belief: emotion clouds judgment. we're saying that this statement is inaccurate. rather, emotion is a part of judgment. judgment is intrisically a personal process that draws upon one's experiences/beliefs/their perspective on the world, which can stem from our emotions

Posted at Jul 16/2007 11:46AM:
Ryan: Our emotion provides the foundation for our rationale, which then informs our decisions in life. You have a bad experience. What makes it a bad experience? It made you feel bad. FEEL bad. Negative emotions affect how you view your personal experiences. How does a bad experience affect your judgement? You don't want to feel bad again, you want to feel good. So, you change your actions to avoid the bad emotions. You rationale is based on your emotions.

Posted at Jul 24/2007 01:50AM:
Jason: Hi Ryan. I think this is coming along. I see some ways in which you can distill it still, but we can talk in class about that.

Meanwhile, tightening up the connection with your personal story is a good next step.

See you tomorrow.