One of the most telling rhetorical blunders of Oedipus is to mock Teiresias’ blindness. The chorus hails Teiresias as “the only human in whom aletheia (non-elusiveness) is born.” In many contexts Aletheia is translated as truth but it has a more complex set of meanings going beyond the negative of lethe (forgetfulness or oblivion). These include the association with the word aletheis, “having wandered” which then in turn defines Aletheia as “divine wandering” because of the division of the word theia, “divine” and ale, “wandering”. The relationship between Aletheia and aloun, “to be blind” also compounds the meaning in ways that resonant through the play. The name Oedipus or in Greek Oidipous derives from the root oid, “know” and pou, “where” or “somewhere” or pous meaning “foot.” In the play an unnamed Corthinian arrives and offers an etymology of his name as “swollen foot” which switches the oid, “know” with oide, “swell”. This shift in etymology resonates through the core of the play for Oedipus is both defined and ruined by his feet because he answered the riddle of the Sphinx in regard to the question of which creature goes first of four feet, then two feet and finally three feet.
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The figure of Teiresias, the blind soothsayer, who has a form of second sight, stands in dialectical contrast with Oedipus, Teiresias as the servant of Apollo and Oedipus who compares his powers to Apollo. When Teiresias makes his entrance he is introduced as the one who refuses to speak, and for this Oedipus calls him pitiless. Rainer Nagele says that “he is the figure of the inexpressive that cuts, as the caesura, into the stream of expression and brings it to truth.” The overall drama is a trial of the rationality of the hero in relationship to divine justice and this demonstrates that there is heterogeneity between divine law and human law. Apollo, as the god of light and pure science functions by adding distance to things in order that measure and relation stands in their pure form. In effect he stands as the arbiter of distanced vision which secures the harmony and beauty of the world, carrying in turn emotional disengagement as a virtue of this. Even though Oedipus constantly evokes the full light of the Apollonian function, the implication is that this light should fall on Oedipus himself, thus borrowing the sacred resource of Apollo for his own ends. Oedipus overcomes the Sphinx through the clear light of his intelligence, desires to through full light over the king’s murder by rational investigation but finally this light falls on him, in effect self-knowledge becomes his downfall. It is possible to read the play as a rejection of the new concepts of the fifth-century philosophers in order to reaffirm the sacred conception of a divinely ordered universe.

¶ 4:52 AM