11/26/19 Nicholas Russo PD1

Nicholas Russo

Period 1

11/26/19

Modern Mythology 2020

    Aim: How does the paradox of blindness illuminate Oedipus’ tragic flaw of hubris?

We began class by choosing between two options written on the board, these options reflected whether we would rather have all truths discovered or using truths as they are beneficial to us. This brought up the topic of morality and ethics, and whether truth should be known in the real world. The class than learned about the premise of paradoxes with visual examples such as:

We then looked at the example of Ignore this text which I learned is a special type of paradox known as a paralipsis, or a lyrical paradox. We learned about paradoxes in order to apply them to how they help reveal how Oedepus is hubris in the tragedy. It is paradoxical considering a man stricken with blindness reveals the truth, yet blindness is lack of sight. The topic of paradoxes applies to greek mythology because it begs the question of whether a prophecy is what makes itself true or whether it was always going to happen. It is impossible to know because if the prophet does not say the prophecy we don't know it so we don't know whether it comes true.