For the nineteenth-century idealist German philosopher Hegel, Antig-
one is “one of the most sublime, and in every respect most consum-
mate, work[s] of art human effort ever produced. Not a detail in this
tragedy but is of consequence.” ¹ Hegel's dazzling accolade is typical of
the high esteem for the play in the early nineteenth century. ² For
Hegel, Antigone plays a major role in the evolution of European con-
sciousness, one of whose early stages is exemplified by Antigone's con-
flict between State and individual, or more accurately between “the
public law of the State and the instinctive family-love and duty towards
a brother.” This division in turn is an aspect of a larger conflict between
Nature and Spirit and so a step toward the emergence of Spirit (Geist).
The individual bearer of such consciousness is essentially tragic be-
cause he or she enters into the division between the divine law, em-
bodied in the polis or state, and the human law, embodied in the
family, and in entering into that division is destroyed. And yet “it is
precisely this destruction,” as George Steiner explains Hegel's view,
“which constitutes man's eminent worth and which allows his pro-
gression towards the unification of consciousness and of Spirit on ‘the
other side of history.’” ³ In terms of Hegel's emphasis on action and his
conception of fate in Greek tragedy, Antigone, rather than Kreon, is
the full bearer of the tragic because she self-consciously decides to act
and therefore chooses the path of her destiny. ⁴ The “classical” perfec-
tion of Antigone lies not only in the clarity and purity with which it
develops this conflict but also in its representation of divinity, which

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