Agreeing that truth is powerful, Oidipous sets up a distinction between that given expression by Teiresias, Delphi, and the gods and another truth—the one apparent to him. From the audience’s perspective, however, Oidipous’s notion of the truth is already in complete error. There are not two truths dependent upon perspective, but truth and error. Thus as Oidipous observes Teiresias to be without the use of “ears, mind, and eyes,” the audience will judge for itself that Oidipous is the one who seems deaf, ignorant, and blind, for he cannot hear what is being said to him, cannot realize either what he has done or what is currently happening to him, cannot judge his own actions, cannot see the efforts that the god has been making to communicate with him, and so cannot even see with whom he is living. This interpretation of Oidipous’s comment has profound philosophical implications because it puts forward the supposition that the working of the senses is dependent upon the working of the mind. [Mpea] There is nothing physically wrong with Oidipous’s hearing or vision; the problem is that he cannot make sense of what he hears and sees because his mind is not working properly. Thus, while he hears the truth as Teiresias speaks it, he rejects it. He kills his father because he fails to identify him. He has sex with his mother because he does not know her. The implication, then, that the audience hears in the words coming from Oidipous’s own lips is that, just as his mind is “insensate” to the truth now, so it was when he heard the truth about his parents from the Oracle. The audience, by contrast, is developing its own ability to hear and understand the complex and far-reaching implications in Oidipous’s speech. It has become hypersensitive to the same truth that escapes Oidipous’s notice even as he speaks it. The audience is not insensate; it has the capacity to hear a divine utterance and to receive it with an attitude that will permit successful communication. [Md] [Dnc] [Mw]