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IMAGINING JUSTICE – LAW & HUMANITIES
SUMMARY
LEC1 - INTRODUCTION
- The law and narrative are closely connected
- Contesting (one that is formally it is wrong or unfair and you try to have it
changed)/contestable (one that is possible to argue about or try to have changed because it
may be wrong) narratives
- Preambles and constitutions…?
LEC2 – ANTIGONE, TRAGEDY AND DEMOCRACY
- Buried her brother because she wanted justice and referred to divine/natural laws instead of
state/king’s laws
o Even if her uncle and the king Creon made laws and did not allow the burial of
traitors (“An enemy can never be a friend, not even in death”), she did not live by his
laws, but the laws of gods which were there since the beginning of the time and will
stay forever
o One of her brothers was buried properly since he fought for the city of Thebes and
the other one was fighting against it (so he was a traitor) and did not ‘deserve’ to be
buried properly
She argued: “That may be, but Hades still desires equal rights for both
[brothers].”
Her actions are based on a literal interpretation of the law that enjoys burial
- People burry their loved ones because of respect, to remember them, to put them to an
eternal sleep, to save the body from being eaten by animals (because of the fear of
reduction of the human to non-human = acknowledgment of humanity)
o Refusal of burial = denial of humanity, insult to the gods, curse on the
- TRAGEDY
o A tragedy cannot be avoided and it always ends bad
o Expresses sorrow, suffering and reality
o Addresses questions about human condition (What is a human being? What
can/should/must humans do? What is the meaning of life, suffering and death?)
, o A transgression (=ignorance) is committed which is inevitable (fate, necessity,
character) and unforgivable (law offers no purification) and the understanding
(learning through suffering) of it (of the actions/transgression) always comes too late
and the punishment for it is excessive
Reality lacks rationality and justice
o “Zeus, who guides mortals on the path to wisdom, has established as a fixed law:
learning through suffering (pathei mathos).” – Aechylus, Agamemnon
o Aristotle stated: “A tragedy is an imitation of an action that is of stature and
complete, with magnitude, that, by means of sweetened speech is of people acting
and not through report and accomplishes through pity and fear the cleansing
(katharsis) of experiences of this sort.”
There are 4 stages: hamartia (mistake Protagonist enjoys fame and
prosperity, but falls into adversity through a mistake), peripeteia (reversal of
fate), aagnorisis (recognition) and katharsis (purification from pity and fear)
a tragedy is powerful because it is an imitation of an action. Effect: people
overcome their pity and fear and reconcile
- Tragic hero – a protagonist of a tragedy, destined for suffering or defeat or downfall
o In Antigone, that is both Antigone and Creon (“I’ve learned it in my pain”, “Alas for
me … the guilt for all of this is mine. It can never be removed from me or passed to
any other mortal man”) …
o **line 1270, 1318
o **lines 450-455 – important quotes, similar to Neurenberg trials
- Conflicts: family, divine law and tradition vs. city, human law and decree
- The chorus shows the tragic world view (line 332, 376)
o “There are many strange and wonderful things (deina), but none more strangely
wonderful (deinos) than man.”
Promethean humanity
** Prometheus – stole fire from the gods to develop humanity out of
savagery/dependence of the gods → punished by Zeus with Pandora’s box
o Also, Antigone is a pre-Promethean anomaly within the Promethean order of the
Theban polis – is she a monster or a hero?
, - Hegel: in a tragedy a conflict takes place between two people with very strong passions. An
individual pursues a goal with great passion and therefore provokes a contrary passion in
another individual which results in conflict. The tragedy here is that both sides are justified
but they cannot exist together since the success of one passion results with the violation of
the other passion and unavoidable incurring guilt
o The effect is the feeling of reconciliation (eternal justice)
- Nietzsche stated that a tragedy is a balance between Apollonian and Dionysian principles –
the former presents order and the latter presents chaos
o The effect is “Metaphysical consolation” – overcoming nihilism and pessimism
(suffering, death, chaos) through self-affirmation (ecstasy, myth)
o argued that Socrates and Socratic morality, along with dialectic, the satisfaction and
serenity of the theoretical man killed tragedy
- G. Steiner argued that the tragic world is marginalized and destroyed by:
o A) Monotheism – final redemption, forgiveness and reward – justice and rationality
prevail
“Tragedy is irreparable. It cannot lead to just and material compensation for
past suffering. Job gets back double the number of she-asses; so, he should,
for God has enacted upon him a parable of justice. Oedipus does not get
back his eyes or his scepter over Thebes.”
o B) Modern science and technology: claim to reveal the rationality of reality and to
produce the just order
“The metaphysics of Christianity and Marxism are anti-tragic. That, in
essence, is the dilemma of modern tragedy.”
o The idea of redemption through science and technology is anti-tragic which is a main
dilemma of modern tragedy
- M. Horkheimer and T. Adorno, in Dialectic of Enlightenment
o “What human beings seek to learn from nature is how to use it to dominate wholly
both it and human beings. Ruthless toward itself, the Enlightenment has eradicated
the last remnant of its own self-awareness. Only thought which does violence to
itself is hard enough to shatter myths.”
o “Human beings have always had to choose between their subjugation to nature and
its subjugation to the self. With the spread of the bourgeois commodity economy
the dark horizon of myth is illuminated by the sun of calculating reason, beneath
whose icy rays the seeds of the new barbarism are germinating.”
- J. de Mul stated that Tragedy reveals the deinos (awesome, awful, terrible) character of
politics and public administration
o “In spite of, or rather as a consequence of his technological power and
administrative skills, man plunges himself into the abyss time and again.”
- Tragedy & democracy in Athens
o Freedom of rule and law:
Autonomia – “self-government”, independence, freedom, equality
Isonomia – equality, “popular government”
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