Literature as Political Philosophy: "The Oresteia"

ogólnouniwersyteckie
seminaria monograficzne

Komunikatywna znajomość j. angielskiego, znajomość podstaw teorii politycznej oraz etyki, zdolność analitycznego myślenia.

w sali

This seminar series will demonstrate the power of great literature to serve as political philosophy. All major themes of ancient and modern political philosophy will be touched upon. Standard readings in political philosophy will be made use of on an ad-hoc basis (e.g., Aristotle, Plato, Thomas Aquinas, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Locke, Tocqueville, Marx, Mill, et al.) However, the chief work used for the seminar series shall be Aeschylus’ The Oresteia, in English translation. It contains more than enough political philosophy for reflection, and anticipates much of what follows in the political thought of the ancient Greeks and those whom they influenced.

In a series of English-language seminars you will be exposed to tragedy, which may be one of the most abused words in modern language. Almost any bad event can be called “tragic”, and this locution frequently occurs in every-day speech. However, the contemporary usage of the word has obscured the richer, original senses of the tragic. It is not simply about bad things happening to someone. It involves the competition of two (or more) good things, one of which must prevail. As in the film Sophie’s Choice, the tragedy is not that one of her children must die, it is that she is forced to choose which of them is to live and, thus by necessity, which of them is to be killed. Duty to society weighed against duty to family; divine command against human desires; honour versus virtue: these and other competing goods are the preconditions of tragedy. As they play against one another, terrible things often happen, and wretched things are done.

The ancient Greeks were masters at imagining such circumstances. Around 2500 years ago, they captured hundreds of tragic stories in thousands of poetical plays. In Athens, these plays were performed in the annual theatrical competition. Unfortunately, not many of the thousands of plays survive for us to read. What has survived is not only considered as the beginning of Western theatre but it is also – along with Homer and the extant Greek comedies – the beginning of the Western literary tradition. Moreover, the literature of this period provides insight into the proto-legal philosophy and proto-moral philosophy that was to flower fully a few generations later in the life and works of inter alia Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle.

In this series of lectures and seminars, we shall read The Oresteia, the most famous cycle of tragedies in history – and perhaps the most influential – with an eye towards what it can reveal about Athenian understandings of personhood, law and the social function of poetical literature in the political community. Before the series terminates, we should understand something of the ancient Greek’s notions of those topics. It is also a goal of the series to ask and attempt to answer what relation these early understandings have to our contemporary ideas about the same topics. During the series of seminars, time will be taken to deal with the question in a contemporary context.

Example seminars topics:

Seminar nr. 1 – Agamemnon, pt. 1 of The Oresteia.

Theme: Greek theatre and the performative aspects of personhood

This seminar will introduce the world that Aeschylus presents in The Oresteia. The text as a piece of literature, which was originally experienced as a dramatic performance, will be connected to the concept of the person. Persons, too, have a performative and representational aspect. The performative aspect involves all that the person can say or do privately or publicly. The representational aspect involves the ways in which human persons can be constructed or recognized socially, legally, philosophically, religiously and culturally. Agamemnon will serve as the person par excellence in this study.

Seminar nr. 2 – The Libation Bearers, pt. 2 of The Oresteia.

Theme: Determinism & personal moral responsibility

This seminar will take seriously the deterministic character of Orestes’ predicament. He, like many modern humans, would seem to find himself in a place without the possibility realistically to do otherwise than to kill his mother. However, in the world of the Greeks matricide should result in the death penalty, being one of the most morally reprehensible and legally pursuable deeds in antiquity. Part of the freedom of persons, morally and legally, is not being inevitably bound by necessity. Is personhood possibly where some forms of determinism reign? Can we speak about gradations of personhood in the way we may speak about gradations of moral responsibility? Or is ‘person’ an either/or concept (i.e. either a person or a thing)? Are there different ways we may answer those questions when speaking about legal persons, philosophical persons, our own personhood, or regarding characters in literature (fictitious persons)? Orestes will serve as the ‘person in question’ for this philosophical enquiry.

Seminar nr. 3 – The Kindly Ones, pt. 3 of The Oresteia. Shame and Necessity.

Theme: Public legality and private morality

Contemporary ideas of a ‘right to privacy’ follow after a long train of conceptual development of the rights and duties of persons. There is an assumption that our public and private existence are divisible into spheres of life and action: in public the law is sovereign; in private the individual person is sovereign. Such an assumption was not shared by the ancients, although some intimations of that assumption do emerge during the trial of Orestes in the third play of The Oresteia. The broad division of public law and private law, and both of them from any necessary connection to private moral considerations, is hinted at in the outcome of Orestes’ case. He killed his mother ‘not without justice’ – a puzzling phrase in the context in which it is presented. The question becomes: Whose justice is relevant? And why? The Oresteia provides us with one solution to competing visions of justice – the Athenian settlement of the Areopagus and publicly-promulgated law, a jury system, all bearing some deference to the gods. What other possibilities may there be to reconcile the seemingly conflicting demands of justice that this play presents us with?

Aeschylus, The Oresteia

Hugh Lloyd-Jones (translator), University of California Press. ISBN: 978-0520083288; or:

Gerald Duckworth & Co. ISBN: 978-0715616833.

Knowledge:

After a course student has knowledge about:

- the philosophical methods and their relations to tragedy

- basic theoretical and philosophical problems in the field of Greek understandings of personhood, law and the social function of poetical literature in the political community

- basic categories of political, legal end ethical discourse, their relations to determinism & personal moral responsibility

Abilities:

After the course student:

- can find political elements in great literature

- indicate historical conditions for contemporary ideas such as for instance of a ‘right to privacy’

- analyze the theoretical, normative and historical dimension of the tragedy using the concepts of political philosophy

- recognize the philosophical dimension of ancient competing visions of justice

- analyses arguments about the subject of tragedy;

- prepares argumentation on the relevant subject and is able to defend his/her own perspective;

- creatively uses his philosophical and methodological knowledge by formulating hypotheses and creating critical arguments;

- formulate and re-construct arguments taken from different philosophical perspectives being aware of the differences and similarities between these perspectives;

Social competence:

After the course student:

- has more open attitude towards various options and opinions within ethics, political philosophy and literature

- has a critical distance to the problems and the way they are formulated in literary texts

- takes and initiates research activities,

- is reliable, considerate and engaged in planning and proceeding in research activities;

- has deeper understanding and sensitivity for different tragical components of cultural phenomena;

- is fully aware of the value and philosophical importance of tragedy.

The final grade consists of:

activity (including attendance, preparation and participation in class discussions) - 50%

preparation of materials and conducting a group discussion (workshop) on a selected problem in the subject matter of the classes) - 20%

sending a report from the workshop - 30%