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Philosophy Is Also Individual & Tragic
Indeed, perceiving how things really are is frequently tragic, as classical playwrights themselves perceived. Think of Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex, who does not rest content until he finds out the truth about the cause of the plague troubling Thebes. He does not stop searching for the truth even in the face of a creeping realization that he is the killer of his father and the husband of his mother. And once he finally perceives how things really are, he gouges out his own eyes, as if punishing himself for not being able to see the truth earlier, and exiles himself from the city, into solitude. Reckoning with reality can be a tough business.
https://philosophynow.org/issues/158/What_is_the_Philosophical_Experience
Indeed, perceiving how things really are is frequently tragic, as classical playwrights themselves perceived. Think of Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex, who does not rest content until he finds out the truth about the cause of the plague troubling Thebes. He does not stop searching for the truth even in the face of a creeping realization that he is the killer of his father and the husband of his mother. And once he finally perceives how things really are, he gouges out his own eyes, as if punishing himself for not being able to see the truth earlier, and exiles himself from the city, into solitude. Reckoning with reality can be a tough business.
https://philosophynow.org/issues/158/What_is_the_Philosophical_Experience
