Thursday, September 29, 2016
Incest is not the best?
In Oedipus the King, incest is presented as taboo. Tiresias looks down on Oedipus for sleeping with his mother. However, the Greek gods commit incest all the time. The two rulers, Zeus and Hera, and married and are brother and city. If the Athenians looked up to and worshipped the gods, why wouldn't they be ok with incest? It seems rather hypocritical to me. The incest also reminds me of The Unbearable Lightness of Being. In Latin America, incest was perfectly acceptable. This is an example of how the modern world has strayed from Athenian and Greek influence.
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I think this is an interesting way in which the gods differ from human beings. Unlike our modern view of God as omnipotent and omniscient, the Greeks viewed their gods as much more wise and powerful than themselves, but not infinitely so. The gods were allowed to do things like incest because actions like that were seen as "within their limits", while these actions were beyond human limits. Incest was frowned upon not because of divine law, but because it was seen as an act of hubris. People who committed incest were considered trying to exceed human limits.
Source: http://faculty.gvsu.edu/websterm/gods&men.htm
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