"Antigone and the Phenomenology of Spirit. Between Literary Source (vv. 925–928) and Philosophical Reading"

This contribution aims at exploring a passage related to the figure of Antigone in Chapter Six of Phenomenology of Spirit, where Hegel attributes the following words to the heroine: “Because we suffer we recognized that we have erred”. Although this reference appears to be a literal quotation, upon closer investigation it clearly departs from the literary source. The paper focuses on the meaning of this passage in the context of the Sophoclean tragedy and in that of the Phenomenology in order to show that the philosophical use that Hegel makes of Antigone (specifically of the verses 925–928 of the tragedy) is not a simple mistranslation. Rather, the philosophical use of the literary source could be seen as an example of the constitutive transformations that any literary figure undergoes whenever it is incorporated into the philosophical discourse.