of character as playwrights had hitherto conceived of it was completely
false. People change their minds, act irrationally and behave incon-
sistently; strictly speaking, then, there’s really no such thing as‘char-
acter’. If that’s your view, then it will certainly change your notion of
which universals might be on display.^29 There’s a big difference between
the communication of some universal truth and the confirmation of a
particular prejudice or social attitude.
Even if one were agreed on what counts as a ‘universal truth’,we
should be concerned with the second question–namely, how are such
things communicated on the stage? Just what is universal aboutOedipus?
For one thing (as we saw in the previous chapter), we should avoid the
temptation to equate what’s universal (‘what would happen’) with‘what
happens most often’or‘what happens every day’.Oedipus Tyrannusdoes
not, thankfully, depict an everyday event, nor does it depict that event in
a way that makes it look like an everyday event. Discovering that you’ve
murdered your father and married your mother is hardly typical in that
sense–and there don’t seem to be any universal rules for how people
behave in such conditions. Indeed, part of the fascination with the play
lies exactly in the fact that the audience gets to watch the spectacularly
unusual and horrifying event unfold before their eyes. But Aristotle
obviously thinks that certain elements of that play may be universalised.
Perhaps the play depicts a universal claim about how a person like
Oedipus would probably or necessarily behave in such circumstances:
someone concerned with his own status, who identifies himself with the
prosperity of Thebes under his guidance, whose pride derives from his
ability to solve problems, who would hunt relentlessly for whoever had
polluted the city. Perhaps we could accept that such a person with such a
history might tend to act in the ways that he does. Hence, in this sense,
the play might offer the kind of thing that would happen.^30
The trouble is that the more we include the specific details of the story
(Oedipus’character, the riddle, the swollen foot), the less we end up with
something that looks like a universal–like something that presents a
kindof person or a type of situation. If the play just tells us what Oedipus
himselfwould do in his particular circumstances, then we’re left with very
little that’s universal. On the other hand, the more we try to generalise
(the play shows us that‘a good man, acting in accordance with his best
judgement, acts in a way that leads, unforeseeably though with astonish-
ing ease, to his own destruction’.^31 ), the more we end with ineffective
slogans and platitudes that fail to capture the subtleties of the play and,
often enough, happen to be non-universal or even false.
Furthermore, once we generalise away from the specifics of the story,
we face the problem of different and perhaps inconsistent universals.
DoesOedipus Tyrannustell us the story of a proud man, or of a relentless
Truth and illusion 53