Heidegger’s own interpretation of Oedipus’ self-inflicted punishment cannot be accepted as valid, since a syncretism is applied to the subject-matter in the Introduction to Metaphysics when Oedipus is understood as having blinded himself moved by an experience of ontological tension between “seeming (concealment and distortion)… and unconcealment (Being)”. By exposing himself to the “unveiling of Being”, Oedipus, according to Heidegger’s interpretation, cannot withstand the light and the brilliance of Being in its truth, aletheia, the nakedness of Being, and must resort to hiding within “the veil of night”, in blindness. This does not address the specific circumstances that drive the Oedipean narrative logic, a point to which we will return. On the other hand, and of much deeper significance, Heidegger adds that Oedipus must be seen as an example of “Greek Dasein”, insistently pursuing “knowledge and science”, and, we may surmise, aletheia itself, and Oedipus is reinterpreted as a prototypical Greek and representative of Greek philosophical “passion”.

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