s tragic his circumstances. Moral evil diminishes the spiritual value of personality.Because Antigone and Creon are trying to do what they feel is right at heart, their conflict has much stronger implications than the conflicts in MacBeth, since MacBeth was a murderer who wanted to ascend to the throne. Which is not to say that MacBeth isn't a tragedy, because it is much more than just a conflict between good and evil.Hegel believes that ethical or universal ends and justice have nothing to do with catastrophe. A tragic action is a self-division, or internal conflict, and the catastrophe is the annulment of this division, but this is only half of Hegel's ideas.A catastrophe has two aspects, negative and affirmative. It is a power which is irresistible and inescapable, and negates anything incompatible with it. But if a catastrophe were only such an unintelligent, characterless force, it would invoke feelings of horror, with is not a feeling associated with tragedy (like pity and fear). It is also the source of our feelings of reconciliation. The catastrophe is the violent restitution of the divided spiritual unity, and some sort of projection of the division in the hero. So that there is some sort of paradoxical feeling in the inevitable death of the hero, when we die with him, yet exult or feel that his death means nothing. The hero escapes the power which killed him.Of the three critics and theorists, I relate to Hegel the most. He knows that Antigone and Creon are flawed beings, though they do what they feel is morally right. He realizes that they take their morality and let it become their personalities and define their actions, instead of just influencing them. And therefore, though worthy of sympathy, they are the masters of their fates, and choose their respective dooms.Hegel believed that the tragedy of Antigone lies in the conflict between the rules of the state and the rules of man. It is unfortunate that these two forces must...
