“Oedipus, Fate, and God’s Causality” — President McLean’s Remarks from the 2015 Summer Seminars

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Note: Dr. Michael F. McLean, president of Thomas Aquinas College, delivered the following remarks at 2015 Summer Seminar Weekends, the theme of which was “Choice and Moral Responsibility.” Participants in the seminars examined Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex, Aristotle’s treatment of human choice and voluntary action in the Nicomachean Ethics, and St. Thomas Aquinas’s commentary on grace and human action in the Summa Contra Gentiles. 

Oedipus, Fate, and God’s Causality

By Michael F. McLean

In one of his masterworks, The Poetics, Aristotle says that the two principal types of poetic imitation with which he was familiar, epic poetry and tragedy, “are alike insofar as both imitate serious matters in grand meter and language … [but] whoever understands good and bad tragedy also understands good and bad epic poetry, for the parts of epic poetry are present in tragedy, but not all the parts of tragedy are present in epic poetry …” For this reason, although there is some discussion of epic poetry in the Poetics, the focus of the work is clearly on tragedy.

Oedipus Rex, Aristotle says, is among the finest tragedies because its plot depicts a “change from good fortune to misfortune, not because of wickedness but because of some grave error … committed by a man who does not differ from us in virtue and in justice.” Such a plot “arouses pity and fear” in the audience (or reader) which “is the proper function of tragic imitation … pity being aroused by the misfortune of one who does not deserve it and fear by the misfortune of one who is like us…”

Now Aristotle spends much of the Poetics discussing the techniques by which the poet effects these emotions in his audience, but I won’t go into that this evening. I mention the tragic emotions, or the tragic effect, to remind you of what I trust you experienced upon reading the play and to point out that, to the extent that you experienced these emotions in the proper way, you have witnessed or read the work of a master playwright. Sophocles is, indeed, a master playwright.

Part of a playwright’s greatness consists in the thematic content of his works — the questions or issues posed by the characters’ words and deeds. In short, what the playwright gets you to think about, not ignoring, of course, the emotional movement which is his principal purpose.

In the case of Oedipus Rex, we wonder, among other things, about whether Oedipus is culpable for killing his father and marrying his mother, having done so ignorant of the fact that it is actually his father he is killing and his mother he is marrying. We also wonder what Sophocles is suggesting about the role of the gods in the events of the play in light of the repeated references to “oracles” and to “fate” — “I was fated to lie with my mother,” says Oedipus, “and I was doomed to be murderer of the father that begot me.”

We don’t necessarily look to the poet or the playwright for the truth about these matters, as grateful as we are to them for the pleasure we have experienced and for the fact that they have been the source of our wonder. For clarity and for truth we turn to the philosophers and theologians.

Our selection from Aristotle’s Nichomachean Ethics is the locus classicus for the treatment of the voluntary, the involuntary, and the chosen. Not only do Aristotle’s distinctions shed light on the particular case of Oedipus, but they also lie at the root of our criminal justice system and the judgments we make about rewards and punishments. His discussion is especially important with the advent of modern psychology and its tendency to see most behavior as rigidly determined by upbringing, environment, and psychological and physical factors within the agent.

Regarding Oedipus, we take our start from the Poetics, where Aristotle implied that Oedipus’ plight elicits our pity because his misfortune arises from a grave error and is undeserved. In one respect, at least, Oedipus acted out of ignorance when he killed his father and married his mother. In both cases he was ignorant of relevant circumstances. On the other hand, the killing of the man at the crossroads, and the marriage to the woman who turned out to be his mother, were his acts and proceeded from principles within himself. He says, for example, of the killing that “I became angry and struck the coachman who was pushing me … [a case, perhaps, of ancient Greek road-rage and rashness] … and then I killed them all,” Arguably, a prudent or circumspect man, under the threat of oracles as Oedipus was, would make it a point not to kill anyone or marry anyone much older than himself; a pious man might have beseeched the gods for guidance. From one point of view, Oedipus’ acts seem to be involuntary, according to Aristotle, but from another point of view seem to possess elements of the voluntary. All the more poignant is Oedipus’ own judgment that “I have done things deserving worse punishment than hanging.”

The prevalence of oracles and the preoccupation with fate in the play contribute to our sense that Oedipus has acted under some kind of divine compulsion. His, Laius’s, and Jocasta’s unsuccessful efforts to thwart the divine decrees lend an air of inevitability to the course of events, suggesting, perhaps, that the gods are united against Oedipus in pursuit of some greater purpose. Along these lines, a case can be made that Oedipus becomes a better man, and a better servant of the common good, through his suffering — a case which finds some support in Oedipus Rex and more support in the sequel, Oedipus at Colonus.

We look to the theologian, in this case St. Thomas Aquinas, to clarify that the divine presence in human action need not be compulsory and that there is more to human-divine interaction than struggle, force, and malevolence. St. Thomas explains, with greater or lesser clarity and greater or lesser ease (depending on your point of view), how any human effect depends at once on the power of God and the power of man. Moreover, he explains that God’s causality is always exercised on us “according to our measure,” as he says, “which means that we act voluntarily and not as forced.” Finally, he explains that, while God can produce all natural effects by Himself, His use of secondary causes speaks to the immensity of His goodness.

While God’s causality, the dispensing of His grace, and His role in our lives will always be mysterious, we should nevertheless be consoled by our reading of St. Thomas, reassured that God is always and intimately present to us, that He loves us eternally, that He intends our good, and that he offers all of the help we need to attain our supernatural end — perfect enjoyment, not of some created good, but of Himself. If these are your takeaways from our seminars, your weekend has been very successful.