Oedipus Rex

Recently, I read Oedipus Rex by Sophocles for the third time. My first reading, back in my teenage years, was based on reproducing Freud’s analysis of the book: "The drama of the man who kills his father!" In the end, since I couldn’t find much connection between the work and my reality, the book became more of a mythical object than a source of rational knowledge.

Years later, when reading The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera, the story of King Oedipus caught my attention again. In Kundera’s novel, the character Tomáš analyzes the trial of supporters of the communist dictatorship in Czechoslovakia. He argues that Oedipus punished himself even without knowing he had killed his own father, and that it would be unjust not to punish those who supported a dictatorial regime simply because they did not know what they were doing. Only after reading The Unbearable Lightness of Being did I see Oedipus Rex through the lens of just judgment.

Finally, in this most recent reading, the theme of just judgment merges with the drama of myth and coherence. It is true that Oedipus fulfilled his promise to punish the parricide and punished himself upon discovering he had killed his own father, but how can there be justice without mitigating circumstances? Of course, Oedipus should have been condemned for the crime of murder, but was a conviction for parricide truly proportional? Should unconsciousness have no mitigating value?

As Carpeaux explains, the Greeks were discovering themselves as a civilization, trying to understand how things must have happened before embarking on the pursuit of reason. The problem is that more than two millennia have passed, and we are still far from solving the question: What is a just judgment, considering all the ambiguities of our earthly life? Perhaps in a fourth reading...