[504W-{50-1/51} Opera and Drama: PW Vol. II, p. 186]
[P. 186] {FEUER} “The crafty Creon now surveyed these incidents in their conjunction, and recognised therein the essence of Public Opinion; seeing its kernel to be nothing but Wont, Care, and dislike of Innovation. The ethical view (sittliche Anschauung) of the nature of Society – which had still been so strong in the great-hearted Oedipus that, from loathing at his own unconscious outrage on it, he had annulled himself – lost its power in exact degree as the Purely-human, which inspired it, came into conflict with the strongest social interest, that of absolute Wont, i.e. of joint self-seeking. Wherever this ethical conscience fell into conflict with the practice of society, it severed from the latter and established itself apart, as Religion; whereas practical society shaped itself into the State. Morality (Sittlichkeit), which in Society had heretofore been something warm and living, in Religion remained merely something thought, something wished, but no longer able to be carried out. In the State, on the contrary, folk acted according to the practical judgments of Utility … .” [504W-{50-1/51} Opera and Drama: PW Vol. II, p. 186]
[505W-{50-1/51} Opera and Drama: PW Vol. II, p. 187-188]
[P. 187] {FEUER} “Quiet and order, even at the cost of the most despicable outrage on human nature and the wonted morality itself, -- at the cost of a conscious, deliberate murder of a child [Oedipus] [P. 188] by its own father [Laius] , prompted by the most unfatherly self-regard, -- this Quiet and Order were at any rate more worth considering than the most natural of human sentiments, which bids a father sacrifice himself to his children, not them to him. What, then, had this Society become, whose natural moral-sense had been its very basis? The diametrical opposite of this its own foundation: the representative of immorality and hypocrisy. The poison which had palsied it, however, was – use-and-wont. The passion for use-and-wont, for unconditional quiet, betrayed it into stamping down the fount from which it might have ever kept itself in health and freshness; and this fount was the free, the self-determining Individual. Moreover, in its utmost palsy, Society has only had morality brought back to it, i.e. the truly human morality, by the Individual; by the Individual who, of the instinctive thrust of Nature’s necessity, has lifted up his hand against and morally annulled it.” [505W-{50-1/51} Opera and Drama: PW Vol. II, p. 187-188]
[506W-{50-1/51} Opera and Drama: PW Vol. II, p. 188-189]
[P. 188] “In this State there was but one sorrowing heart, in [P. 189] which the feeling of Humanity had sought a shelter: -- it was the heart of a sweet maiden, from whose soul there sprang into all-puissant beauty the flower of Love. Antigone knew nothing of Politics: -- she loved.” [506W-{50-1/51} Opera and Drama: PW Vol. II, p. 188-189]
[507W-{50-1/51} Opera and Drama: PW Vol. II, p. 189]
[P. 189] “And lo! – the love-curse of Antigone annulled the State!” [507W-{50-1/51} Opera and Drama: PW Vol. II, p. 189]
