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Sophocles

Soul versus State
Today, morality and patriotism have been carelessly tossed into the melting pot of American nationalism. They are now melding together into an ambiguous form, something completely different then their original purpose. We find ourselves confused at the crossroads, unsure of whether to follow our own ideology or that of our government. This perplexity of personal authority has plagued the world for ages, and has become a major theme of mankind's existence. Sophocles explored the internal battle between individual ethics and submission to the government through Antigone, in which he revered human principles and condemned the government mandates that hinder them.
Greece was quite possibly the cradle of organized government as we know it. Sophocles' time was a momentous one. Revolutionaries such as Solon and Cleisthenes hammered through constitutions that would not only shape Greece but greatly influence the world. Yet as the governmental flower was blossoming, a new seedling was gaining nutrients in the soil of Athens. Philosophy began to fissure the foundations of mythology and other traditional beliefs, and replaced them with a fledgling known as reason. These two massive social genres were the tools that shaped the sculpture of Ancient Greece, yet they were constantly at ends with each other in terms of ideology.

Philosophy began to investigate the world with a normative eye. Philosophers such as Socrates reacted against the sophists merely teaching rhetoric to the wealthy and focused on a search for moral self-enlightenment. This movement caught fire in the populous of Athens, and broke the champagne bottle atop the maiden voyage of Reason. In Sophocles' era, we begin to see individuals dying for not only war, but for principles. Antigone is the embodiment of this movement, and possibly symbolized the heart of philosophy, and more importantly, democracy.
The idea of human nature in Ancient Greece is known as physis, along...