Education toward Moral Decision-Making Maturity: Antigone and the Hermeneutic Conflict of Interpretation

general courses

If wisdom is the ultimate expression of happiness, then searching for understanding and achieving wisdom perfectly describes our intinerarium ad beatitudinem (path to the happiness), which is the itinerarium ad veritatem (path to the truth). Marcus Aurelius is known for saying that “the happiness of your life depends on the quality of your thoughts.” (Meditations) The tension between our reasoning ability and well-being is particularly productive in the realm of wise reasoning (φρόνησῐς). As the existenta hermeneutica, understanding is the mode of Being in the world. A happy life is the life of exploring and experiencing wise reasoning.

In the final stanza of Antigone, the chorus representing the people of Thebes (most probably the old men as the young have died in the battle) praises wisdom on the way to happiness: “There is no happiness where there is no wisdom: πολλώ το φρονείν ευδαιμονίας πρώτον υπάρχει. In the pursuit of wisdom, a human being is questioning the capacity of reasoning and experiences different conflicts, particularly at a time of crisis (Karl Jaspers’ Grenzsituationen in his Psychologie der Weltanschauungen). Our hermeneutic reading of Sophocles’ Antigone addresses a series of accounts of social and religious conflicts (the Athenian culture clash between the laws of the state and their religious convictions) without falling victim to the moralistic interpretation of Antigone as the ultimate figure of ethical resistance. By considering the perspectives of people involved in the conflict, we recognize not only uncertainty and the limits of knowledge, but the importance of wise judgment and personal integrity. Despite the differences in understanding the continuity between life and after-death, the question of personal identity and the general transmutation presents the real task for thinking. Understanding the moral imperative of facing tragic conflicts of goods and values cannot be separated from the existential question of the (in)capability of love and the fragility of goodness.

Judith Butler, Antigone’s Claim: Kinship between Life and Death (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000).

Charles Freeland, Antigone in Her Unbearable Splendor: New Essays on Jacques Lacan’s The Ethics of Psychoanalysis (Albany, N.Y.: SUNY Press, 2013)

Martha Nussbaum, The Fragility of Goodness: Luck and Ethics in Greek Literature and Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001).

Sophocles, Oedipus the King, Oedipus at Colonus, Antigone, trans. David Grene (Chicago: University of Chicago Publishers, 1991).

Jonathan Strauss, Private Lives, Public Deaths: Antigone and the Invention of Individuality (New York: Fordham University Press, 2013).

Andrzej Wierciński, Existentia Hermeneutica: Understanding as the Mode of Being in the World (Zurich: LIT, 2019).

Andrzej Wierciński, Hermeneutics of Education: Exploring and Experiencing the Unpredictability of Education (Zurich: LIT, 2019).

Slavoj Žižek, Antigone (New York: Bloomsbury, 2016).

Knowledge:

o student is familiar with new literature on the literature as indicated in bibliography

o is familiar with the hermeneutics of education

o knows the state of research in the hermeneutics of education and is able to design an innovative research project

Skills:

o can identify philosophical aspects of education

o can address the importance of feelings (curiosity, patience, courage, uncertainty, self-esteem) and validates them in the process of learning

o has skills in presenting aspects of philosophical hermeneutics in discussing issues in contemporary education in an international setting

o can effectively communicate with other scholars in hermeneutic philosophy and education

o as a creative and insightful student shows depth in thinking and elaborating of original and novel ideas

Social competences:

o appreciates the need to learn to understand one’s life

o can set measurable, achievable, realistic, and timely goals and ways to achieve them in the context of academic, professional, and social activity

o sees the need of dialogue between different academic disciplines and schools of thought

Assessment criteria

Students must attend classes, actively participate in discussions, and write a research paper of ca. 2500 words. The grade will be based on the paper 50%. Students should clear their topic with the instructor before writing. Final revised paper due Friday, May 29, 2021. Attendance/ Active in-class participation (50%). Along with the final paper students are required to submit a detailed report about their attendance and self-evaluation of their activity in the class.