Course Section 1: Law, Disobedience and Morality
Week 1 - Antigone
❖ How is the law made? → about authority
❖ Where does it come from?
❖ What is at stake / why does it matter?
❖ When is law legitimate?
❖ Is there a right / obligation to disobey the law?
What is justice?
For whom?
And when do we get to break or evade the law?
What is it to break the law?
1. Antigone (Sophocles)
- Study on the validity of law
- On the one side primary law laid down by the ruler (totalitarian aspect) and divine law “holiest
laws of heaven” (obligations of gods before man made law)
- What makes law valid? According to the characters
(1) Is it how law is made?
→ according to Antigone: not valid because of how law is made, since it is not man-made
→ Creon: valid because law is made by the ruler which should be obeyed
(2) Valid because it is just?
→ Antigone:
Attitudes of the characters: about their approach to complexity of governing a community and
their approach to conflict
→ Antigone:
- obeying law of the gods, she knows what the god’s will
- Position of natural law
- Kings laws as state laws but law of gods is higher, should be respected first
- She tries to work out the hierarchy which law to follow
- 2 different legal rules
- She recognise him as king (but not vice versa)
- not dishonoring them in that sense disloyal to the kings laws;
- “it was not Zeus that had published me that edict;”
- She puts family above the state; the relationship by blood “he has no right to keep me from my
own”; justifies disobedience of the state law
, → she would not have done it for her husband
→ state should not interfere in family business
- She accepts consequences
- Early feminist standing up for what she believes in
- Passionate about liberal ideas that willing to die for
- Fundamentalist; martyr
- Heavily in grief
⇒ recent idea of
⇒ valid and main point: law was equal for everyone
→ Ismene:
- obeying laws of the state
→ Creon:
- He is the law (given by the god)
- Personal manifestation
- He believes by following the natural law he acts in the will of the gods because of the divine
rights of law
- Authority is personal and absolute
- because Creon makes the law, he also decides who breaks it
- He does not consider other opinions
- He is state
- Failure of enforcing the law
- Loyalty to state above loyalty to family
- Authority can only be male
- “country is the ship that bears us safe”;
- state can only function with a guide (ruler) and only then can emerge greatness,
- Conflicts should be solved with kings laws
- Governing a community in the state which is as a ship that bears them safe
- everything should be obeyed when it comes to the rulers will and fixed laws
- “if any one transgresses, and does violence to the laws, or thinks to dictate to his rulers, such an
one can win no praise from me”
- “disobedience is the worst of evils”
→ Haemon:
- “Father, I am thine; and thou, in thy wisdom, tracest for me rules which I shall follow. No
marriage shall be deemed by me a greater gain than thy good guidance.”; loyal to the ruler and
laws
- Presents the democratic approach and includes the people
- Creon should listen to the people
- “That is no city which belongs to one man.”
- Also refers to honoring the gods as important, if not its respectless
- Acknowledges ruler and power to make laws
, - Complexity, law is flexible
- Society has to agree with it
- Not that people determine natural law
- He doesn't care whether antigone is right
- Whether people agree to Creon's order
⇒ Chorus unreliable: presents majority
Question of gender: change of perception of actions because the Antigone and Isemene are female?
● “Now verily I am no man, she is the man, if this victory shall rest with her, and bring no penalty.
No! be she sister's child, or nearer to me in blood than any that worships Zeus at the altar of our
house,-she and her kinsfolk shall not avoid a doom most dire; for indeed I charge that other with a
like share in the plotting of this burial.”
● Creon: “While I live, no woman shall rule me.”
● “No more delay-servants, take them within! Henceforth they must be women, and not
range at large; for verily even the bold seek to fly, when they see Death now closing on
their life”
● Creon: “dethrone thy reason for a woman's sake; knowing that this is a joy that soon grows
cold in clasping arms,-an evil woman to share thy bed and thy home.”
● “Therefore we must support the cause of order, and in no wise suffer a woman to worst us.
Better to fall from power, if we must, by a man's hand; then we should not be called
weaker than a woman.”
● Creon calls his son a woman’s slave
→ clearly, it has an impact on the decision by the ruler that Antigone is female. He puts himself as male
above the other gender
➔ One of the most important statements of the play is that even the best laws, forms of rule and
social models have to be questioned again and again (especially under humanitarian aspects) in
order not to succumb to autocratic presumption in the long run.
2. Letter from Birmingham Jail 1963 - Martin Luther King
● What to do when the law is unjust? Martin Luther King to achieve civil rights
When or ever are we released from our obligation to obey law / do we have a right to disobey the
law?
If the laws we need to obey are unjust.
"How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?"
- “two types of laws: just and unjust.
- I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal but a moral
responsibility to obey just laws.
, - Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St.
Augustine that "an unjust law is no law at all."
- There is an obligation to disobey laws
- Not an anarchist, but unjust laws should not be followed
“I hope you are able to see the distinction I am trying to point out. In no sense do I advocate evading or
defying the law, as would the rabid segregationist. That would lead to anarchy. One who breaks an unjust
law must do so openly, lovingly, and with a willingness to accept the penalty. I submit that an individual
who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of
imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing
the highest respect for law.”
➔ Similar to the character of Antigone
➔ Creon would see MLK as destroying order, terrorist, no “ship” as such
Can there be circumstances when we have a duty to disobey the law? If so, which?
⇒ people have a moral responsibility to break unjust laws and to take direct action rather than waiting
potentially forever for justice to come through the courts.
“How does one determine whether a law is just or unjust?”
- A just law is a man made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God.
- An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. To put it in the terms of St.
Thomas Aquinas: An unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law.
- Any law that uplifts human personality is just.
- Any law that degrades human personality is unjust.
⇒ All segregation statutes are unjust because segregation distorts the soul and damages the
personality. It gives the segregator a false sense of superiority and the segregated a false sense of
inferiority.
- The will of the majority can be unjust
- Reflects Haemon
- Biggest obstacle for ending segregation are people who like order, silent majority
“Let us consider a more concrete example of just and unjust laws. An unjust law is a code that a
numerical or power majority group compels a minority group to obey but does not make binding on itself.
This is difference made legal. By the same token, a just law is a code that a majority compels a minority
to follow and that it is willing to follow itself.”
Law which is manifestly unjust (and what that means) vs law that is not necessarily manifestly
unjust in design but unjust in application
