Supplemental Thoughts #3 - Public vs Private Narcissism, Group Narcissism

It may seem somewhat odd to talk about "group narcissism," or it may be that there's another, more specific term that would fit the ideas (e.g., tribalism, ethnocentrism) I'm discussing here. However, we'll stick to narcissism for the time being in reconsidering two works on our list: The Oedipus and the Apology of Socrates. In each of these, intellectual power is the point of focus. In the Oedipus, the main character self-identifies as the most intelligent person in the community. His intellectual arrogance is powerful enough to turn his opinion of anyone who challenges him into raw hatred (especially Tiresias and Creon). His intellectual challengers always seem to suggest one thing, basically -- to have a healthy dose of skepticism, not to be absolutely sure that your opinions are, in fact, knowledge. The action of the play is how Oedipus' intellectual arrogance turns back upon itself, revealing him as not only the most poisonous man in Thebes, but also one of the least perceptive. It is no accident that his eyes become his enemies, because his eyes fail him: he should have evaluated visual evidence more intelligently than he did. It is important to remember that it is the Athenian public of 425BCE who are watching the Oedipus drama unfold -- the public which has endorsed an aggressive, imperialistic war which has no end in sight. The Athenian public of 399BCE is the intended audience of the Apology (althought the Apology itself may have been written by Plato several decades later). Twenty-six years is not a long time; many of the same people who were in the audience for Sophocles' play could certainly have been there sitting in judgment of Socrates (of course, many males would have died in the Peloponnesian War and the subsequent civil unrest). In the case of the Apology, the audience/jury decides that it has the intellectual upper hand on Socrates: they will shame him and force him to admit that he is a common nuisance, and that his public influence has been for the detriment of Athens. Socrates inverts this intellectual power play in saying that neither he, nor anyone in the audience, knows anything at all to be definitely true (although logic can prove certain things to be definitely false, because contradictory). Indeed, Socrates says that only "the God" really knows what is best for mortals, and perhaps he intended to shame the Athenians for bringing him to court on a charge of impiety. Socrates' ultimate revenge on Athens is simply to be its best citizen ever: to obey the laws of Athens, and to continue to love them, even when they have convicted him of a capital crime (as we see in the Crito). However it is worth asking: is Socrates a narcissist? In other words, in claiming that he knows one thing that the Atneians don't (namely, that no one is "wiser" than anyone else), he has the upper edge on them. Sophocles' Oedipus has a similar role to play in Thebes: he knows "one thing" (the solution to the Riddle of the Sphinx), which no one else knew; and in the end, it is only Oedipus who convicts himself to a life of blind wandering (no one else passes this judgment upon him). The ultimate distinction between Oedipus and Socrates is that Socrates, having lived a pious and honest life, can embrace his death, whether it means the annihilation of the soul, or an afterlife together with those who have already died (indeed, he seems to welcome the notion), while Oedipus is condemned to fear death forever, because he will be marked in the afterlife with the unspeakable crimes he has committed.