Honig, Antigone Interrupted, chapter 6

Honig, Bonnie- Antigone Interrupted- intro and Chapt. 6- OCRDownload

Reading Questions on Honig’s “Antigone’s Laments, Creo’s Grief”

This, as I said in class, is perhaps the most difficult and complex reading we’ll do this semester. It is formidably academic, with lots of references to names and concepts (like “structuralism”) that you may not understand. That’s fine. In other words, I don’t expect you to understand it all, though maybe someday, you will re-read it and more will make sense. The main goal, rather, is that you understand the basics of Honig’s reading of the play and how she uses this reading to develop a theoretical orientation toward politics. For her, the play partly illustrates the ways in which aspects of human life can never wholly fit within any political order: Homeric/aristocratic and democratic practices of mourning are incomplete, or so she argues. And this fact propels us, as the audience of this play, into political life and struggle.

At any rate, I’ve developed some reading questions that I hope will help you understand the play a bit better.

• Focus for a moment on Honig’s epigraph. What does the epigraph mean? In what sense is it true?
• What is Honig’s thesis? More specifically, what does she think “Antigone” is about?
• One way to get at this reading is to focus on how Honig interprets some of the main characters: what does the character Antigone represent? What does Creon represent?
• One of Honig’s more fascinating claims is that the play is not really about burying Polynices, but is instead about the question of how one should grieve in general (p. 7). Why does she emphasize this point?
• Honig also offers a critique of “dissident” politics (p. 8). What is her critique? You should think of this in two ways: first, you need to be able to explain why dissident politics does not adequately comprehend what is at stake in the play, and second, you need to think about what is possibly wrong with the idea of dissidence in general. Honig’s critique moves on both levels.
• How does Honig defend her idea that Creon actually represents democracy? Pay attention, first, to pp. 9-10, but also look to the other evidence she points out throughout the article.
• The first body section of Honig’s article contains a brief overview of traditional burial practices and some of the efforts to reform them. Try not to get too bogged down in details (though you might want to look up “goos” and “threnos”; Honig defines them, but google is also your friend here). What are some of the main features of the traditional burial rituals? What are some of the reforms that were being instituted during the time Sophocles was writing?
• In her second body section (starting on p. 13), Honig begins to make her case that the play is really about the clash between democratic and “Homeric” (or more specifically, aristocratic) burial practices. What is some of the evidence she presents?
• What is Honig’s interpretation of the Antigone’s use of the phrase “son of my mother” to describe Polynices (p. 15)?
• What is Honig’s interpretation of Antigone’s famous speech, wherein she declares that she would not have defied Creon’s orders for a son or a husband, because they would be, unlike her brother, replaceable (see pp. 16ff)
• Honig points out that Antigone’s reasoning about the irreplaceablity of her brother also cites another story from Herodotus, the story of Intaphrenes’ wife (see pp. 18-19). What is this story and how is it similar and different from Creon and Antigone’s interactions? What conclusion does Honig draw from her comparison of the two stories (p. 19, last two paragraphs, primarily)?
• What are some of the critiques of democracy embedded in the play, according to Honig?
• What are some of the democratic critiques of aristocracy that are embedded in the play, according to Honig?
• How does Honig interpret Eurydice’s death (pp. 22-24)?
• What is Honig’s conclusion about the play’s perspective on the rival positions it explores? Pay attention in particular to pp. 25ff.
• If the play is about mourning, then how does Creon mourn? Is his mourning more “democratic” or “aristocratic”?
• What does Creon’s grief ultimately have to tell us about human mourning and emotion, and their relations to politics?

Readings for Next Week (Sept. 17-21): Thucydides “Pericles’ Funeral Oration,” “The Plague of Athens,” and “The Melian Dialogue”

In our next set of readings, we are moving from tragic plays to the history writing. Specifically, we are reading excerpts of Thucydides “History of the Peloponnesian War.” Thucydides was an Athenian, and he served as a general during that war. In his major engagement, he unsuccessfully attempted to keep the city of Amphipolis from being conquered by the Spartans. For this, he was exiled, and he spent the rest of the war writing his history. Thucydides’ history is the first we know of that attempted to do what we might call “rational” or scientific history. He does not make any reference to supernatural or fantastical events (such as the gods). Rather, he gathers evidence and attempts to reason from cause to effect.

So before reading these texts, you should know a few issues. First, after the Athenians defeated the Persians at the battle of Salamis (480 BCE), Athens became the head of a collection of alliances known as the Delian League. Over time, this set of alliances effectively became an Athenian empire, with Athens forcing alliance members to pay tribute to Athens for protection. The result was that Athens and her allies/subjects started to come into a rivalry with the other major power int he region, Sparta. Eventually, in 431 BCE, Sparta and Athens went to war. This is known as the Peloponnesian War, and it lasted until 404 BCE, when Athens was finally defeated.

The readings we are looking at are Thucydides’ account of a few early events in the war. In the first, “The Funeral Oration,” Thucydides recounts a speech that the Athenian leader, Pericles, gave after the first year of the war. When reading the speech, focus on two things: Pericles’ account of Athenian virtues, and how his discussion of mourning might compare to the conflicts about mourning that occur in “Antigone.” Finally, since Lincoln’s “Gettysburg Address” used Pericles’ “Funeral Oration” as its model, I’m also going to recommend you read Lincoln too. You can find the “Gettysburg Address” here.

The second reading, “The Plague of Athens,” is Thucydides’ depiction of a  key event from the second year of the war. In 429 BCE, with people from the countryside taking refuge in the city of Athens, a plague breaks out and kills an enormous number of people, including Pericles. Pay attention, then, to how Thucydides juxtaposes Pericles’ statement about Athenian virtues to how the Athenians react to the plague.

And finally, there is the “Melian Dialogue,” which we will discuss on Wednesday of next week. This dialogue is set in 416 BCE. Melos was an island city-state, and since Athens was a naval power, they believed that Melos should join the Athenian empire. However, the Melians were related to Sparta (it had started originally as a Spartan colony), and so they wanted to remain neutral. The dialogue, then, represents the discussion of why Athens did not think that Melos could retain its neutrality.

Welcome Students for Fall of 2018 (and some reading questions about Oedipus)

Welcome to the new students for the course, “The Ancient Greeks,” taught at the Eastman School of Music in the fall of 2018. Throughout the semester, I will try to develop reading questions on the day’s reading. There is no assignment associated with these questions. They are only designed to get you to think about the kinds of issues you should be thinking about as you do the reading. Since our first reading is Sophocles’ play, “Oedipus the King,” here are the questions I’d like you to consider:

• Here’s the general question you should be grappling with throughout your reading of the play. If a tragic narrative depicts a kind of inevitable disaster, then what is the source of the “inevitability” in this play?  Or another way of coming at this same question is this: Oedipus is a tragic hero who is finally undone by forces that are much greater than he is.  What are these forces?  What do they represent?  A quick set of issues about this question: there is no “right” answer, but some are better than others; second, it is useful to try to start with specifics.  What is the precise nature of the problem Oedipus faces?
• What is Oedipus like? List out some characteristics he appears to have; use specific examples from the text to illustrate the characteristics you identify.
• One of the peculiarities of Sophocles’ play is that he depicts the “tragic” decisions Oedipus makes as having already happened; the fateful events of Oedipus’ life have already occurred at the time the action of the play takes place. What are the effects of this way of telling Oedipus’ story?
• What is Creon like? What are his characteristics?
• What are some of the ironies of Oedipus’ life?Explain in detail.
• What are some of the ironies in Oedipus’ search for the truth? Please note that Oedipus searches for truth on several different occasions; he searches for Laius’ murderer; he searches for his own origins, and so on.  What is the result of these searches?
• Consider the metaphor of “sight” in this play, especially in the interaction between (seeing) Oedipus and (blind) Tiresius. What does “seeing” mean in their interaction? What ironies are there in this meaning?  And what is the significance of Oedipus’ decision to stab out his own eyes once he learns (“sees”) the truth?
• One common interpretation of tragedy is that the tragic hero has a “flaw” that brings about his demise. Does Oedipus have a tragic flaw?  If so, what is it?  If not, what is “responsible” for bringing about his demise? What effects do we produce when we think that Oedipus’ tragic flaw is the reason he is destroyed?

Reading Questions for the Republic, Book I

Let me start with some background information about the setting of this dialogue. The Republic occurs in the port town of Piraeus. This was the port for the city of Athens, and it had a whole slew of cultural connotations. First, like many port cities, Piraeus was a bustling and disorderly place. It had a high concentration of non-citizens (resident aliens), criminals, and so forth. Second, after the defeat of Athens in the Peloponnesian War (in 404), Sparta installed a government known as the “Thirty Tyrants.” During this time, Piraeus became a hotbed of democratic resistance to this government. If we keep in mind that Socrates will, later in the Republic, designate democracy as the second worst type of regime, we might try to think about what Plato is doing in setting this dialogue in this location.

Next, the Republic takes place in around 422; this is during the so-called Peace of Nicias (a brief suspension of hostilities during the Peloponnesian War). Plato wrote the dialogue around 375 (so about 50 years later). Most of the characters in the dialogue were historical figures. Cephalus, the first participant in the dialogue with Socrates, was a wealthy businessman. Later on, the Thirty Tyrants confiscated his wealth, and they also executed his son, Polemarchus (Socrates’ second interlocutor). Thrasymachus, Socrates’ main opponent in Book 1, was also a historical figure. He was a well-known sophist (alas, his writings have been lost). Adiemantus and Glaucon—the main figures after Book 1 ends—were Plato’s brothers. This provides another set of questions for you to consider: do Cephalus’ and Polemarchus’ fates shed light on their respective definitions of justice?

OK, now onto the proper discussion questions:

• Note the first encounter between Socrates and those who wish him to stay in Piraeus for the evening’s festival: What language do Socrates and his friends use when discussing whether he will stay?
• What is Cephalus’ definition of justice? What is wrong with this definition?
• What is Cephalus like as a character? What are his limitations?
• Polemarchus soon steps in to take over his father’s argument. What is Polemarchus’ definition?
• Is Polemarchus’ definition a genuine definition in the Socratic sense? A more general question: what is the difference between a Socratic definition and a dictionary defintion?
• How does Socrates go about refuting Polemarchus’ definition (he offers three critiques)? Now, generalize for a moment: what is the overall lesson that one can learn from Socrates’ refutation?
• What is Thrasymachus like as a character?
• What is Thrasymachus’ first definition of justice? In what ways does it differ from the other accounts we have seen so far? In what sense is Thrasymachus’ definition of justice challenging to Socrates’ method of philosophy? (Hint: to my mind, it is a profound challenge to Socratic philosophy; if Thrasymachus is right, then Socrates’ whole method is flawed from the start).
• How does Socrates first criticize Thrasymachus’ definition? How does Thrasymachus modify his definition to meet the critique?
• How does Socrates’ refute Thrasymachus’ modification?
• After this second set of criticisms, Thrasymachus launches into a new speech where he compares a politician to a shepherd. What is the significance of Thrasymachus’ analogy?
• With this new speech, the dialogue takes an unexpected turn. We now no longer are talking about the definition of justice (here I think Thrasymachus and Socrates have reached a stalemate), but instead the question of whether a just life or an unjust life is happier and more profitable. What is Thrasymachus’ position on this question?
• How does Socrates try to refute Thrasymachus’ claims about whether justice or injustice is more profitable? Again Socrates has two responses. Be ready to identify both of them.
• What are the flaws with Socrates’ refutations of Thrasymachus’ position? What general lessons can we learn from this discussion so far?

At the risk of running afoul of British authorities…

One curious difficulty that emerges when teaching Plato’s “Apology” is that students often have a difficult time understanding how Socrates could be put on trial for things like corrupting the youth and impiety. At least according to the social studies textbooks students read in 8th grade, the U.S. (and “western societies” in general) have realized that freedom of speech is an essential value, and we have declared that religious worship is an individual matter. The government should not coerce speech, nor should it dictate which God or gods one worships (or does not worship, as the case may be). So Socrates’ trial seems to be an anachronism, perhaps an historical curiosity, but also one with rather few contemporary implications.

In class, I tried to refute this assumption by presenting Socrates’ position in different terms. Socrates isn’t interested in what we call freedom of speech or freedom of religion; he is, I argued, offering a meditation on the fraught relation between politics and philosophy, or between the appearances that sway public opinion, and the philosopher’s orientation toward a truth that transcends such appearances and opinions.

However, I leave this aside for now so as to focus on this contemporary concern about impiety and corruption of the youth. The British government has now published its final version of what it calls the “Prevent” program, which is a counter-terrorism policy designed to prevent youths from being drawn into terrorist networks. The premise of this program is that people are first drawn into “extremist” networks by being exposed to:

vocal or active opposition to fundamental British values, including democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty and the mutual tolerance of different faiths and beliefs. We also include in our definition of extremism calls for the death of members of the armed forces.

To prevent exposure to such extremist beliefs, “All relevant curriculum areas will need to be engaged, with a single contact point for delivery of Prevent-related activity.” So here we have a call for a curriculum review to prevent students from being exposed to anti-democratic ideas or ideas that challenge individual liberties, and compliance with these principles will be “monitored centrally via the Home Office and through appropriate inspection regimes in each sector.”

I hope the themes of the “Apology” are apparent here. The Prevent guidelines are more or less explicitly concerned with the corruption of the youth, and they have set up certain values (“democracy,” “individual liberty,” and so on) have effectively been set up as gods, such that any challenging of those attitudes becomes an act of impiety.

It is not too much of a stretch to say that these guidelines, if taken literally, would mean the end of political philosophy. Historically speaking, almost no philosophers defend democracy or individual liberty (Plato, as we’ll see, detested such ideas). Even those who defend some notion of democracy often have bad things to say about it. But of course, not to worry: It seems quite unlikely that the overseers of the Prevent guidelines will use them to prevent the teaching of Plato. Rather, it seems much more likely that these guidelines will be used (and abused) to target other groups. I’ll leave it to you all to figure out who these other groups might be….

Reading questions for Plato’s Euthyphro

Platonic dialogues are peculiar things. Situated somewhere between what we traditionally call “literature” and philosophy, we have to evaluate them on both levels. That is, we need to examine both the text’s literary devices and the philosophical arguments presented in them. And we also need to be thinking about why Plato might have chosen to write this way: why present a philosophical position via the mechanism of a dialogue? Why not instead present it as a traditional argumentative essay?

 

• What is the subject of this dialogue?
• What is the setting? Include the two characters, their traits, why they are talking, and so on.
• What is Euthyphro doing when he encounters Socrates? What traits does Euthyphro display?
• Do you think Euthyphro’s efforts to bring charges against his father are just? What do you think Socrates thinks about that question?
• Most of the dialogue is structured around three basic definitions that Euthyphro offers; he offers his first definition on p. 46; the second appears on p. 48 (with a modification on p. 52); and the third appears on p. 57.
  1. List each definition; it is useful to write it out.
  2. How does Socrates go about refuting each definition?
• The most famous portion of the dialogue concerns Socrates’ refutation of Euthyphro’s second definition of piety (pp. 52-54). It is also a somewhat weird refutation; what is Socrates getting at in his argument?
• What do you think Socrates’ conception of the pious is? Are there any hints of it in this dialogue?
• What do you think is the general social purpose of piety? Are pious actions done to please God (or the gods), or do they serve some other purpose? Given this general purpose, are Euthyphro’s actions pious?
• What do you suppose Socrates aims to show Euthyphro?

Reading Questions for Elshtain’s “Antigone’s Daughters”

Jean Elshtain is one of the better known political philosophers of her generation (she was also the main advisor to my own advisor in grad school, so she’s kind of my academic grandmother, if we wish to stick with family metaphors). Throughout most of her career, she has focused on issues in feminist theory, particularly regarding questions of gender roles as they relate to questions in political ethics. This, of course, is the central issue in this essay too. She is concerned about and critical of a particular strand in feminist theory that holds that the central task for feminist politics is to have women become fully assimilated into the practices and logics of the “public sphere,” particularly the state. Instead, she suggests that the character Antigone might model a more valuable form of political activity. So that is the central question for your reading: what kind of political engagement does Elshtain think Antigone models? Why does she think it is superior to the alternative conceptions of feminist politics that she analyzes?

• Elshtain begins her essay with a collection of worries about the state. What are her concerns? List a few of them.
• In the first section of the body of her piece (starting on p. 47), Elshtain describes a particular model of feminist thought. What are the main features of this model? What does this model think the goal(s) of feminist theory should be?
• In her second section of the body of her essay, Elshtain describes a second model of feminist thought, what she calls “difference feminism” (the term “difference feminism” is fairly standard, by the way). According to Elsthain, what are the main features of difference feminism? What do theorists in this tradition think the goals of feminist action should be?
• Elsthain calls her own model “social feminism” (not to be confused with “socialist feminism,” which is a whole other kettle of fish), and she uses Antigone as the model actor for this sort of feminist thinking. What are the features of social feminism? How does it differ from the other models? Given that its difference from the first model should be fairly apparent, how specifically does it differ from difference feminism?
• To develop her conception of social feminism, Elshtain focuses on specific aspects of the play, “Antigone”? What parts does she focus on? What parts does she ignore? Are the parts of the play that would contradict the point she is trying to make?
• And here’s the big question: if there are parts of the play that contradict Elshtain’s point, what does that do for her argument on behalf of social feminism? If she gets “Antigone” wrong (or that she misses crucial parts of the play) suggest that something is also wrong with her notion of social feminism?
• Elshtain insists that social feminism (and “maternal thinking,” p. 58) offer a genuine alternative to the bureaucratic rationalism she associates with the state. What is her reasoning for this claim? How are the two forms of thinking different from one another, and how would a society oriented more toward maternal thinking be differently organized?

Readings for Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War

Next week we are reading excerpts from Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War. You can find the “Funeral Oration” here, and the “Account of the Plague in Athens” here. We will be reading them for Tuesday. For those feeling ambitious, you should also read Pericles’ War Speech (This is a PDF; it is Thucydides’ account of the speech Pericles gave to the Athenians before the war started). You can also find the unabridged versions of Tuesday’s readings here and here. The unabridged versions contain interesting context, particularly for those interested in some of the events of the war.

The “Melian Dialogue” (to be discussed on Thursday) is here.

Reading questions for “Antigone”

(1) Once again, here is the general question you should be grappling with throughout your reading of the play. If a tragic narrative depicts a kind of inevitable disaster, then what is the source of the “inevitability” in this play? Or another way of coming at this same question is this: Many characters–Angtigone, perhaps Ismene, Creon, and Eurydice–are all finally undone by forces that are much greater than they are. What are these forces? What do they represent? A quick set of issues about this question: there is no “right” answer, but some are better than others; second, it is useful to try to start with specifics. What is the precise nature of the problem that these characters face?

(2) List out the main characters, particularly Antigone, Ismene, and Creon. What characteristics do they have? Use specific examples from the play to illustrate the ones you identify. Oh, and here’s another interesting question: who is the “tragic hero” in this play? Why?

(3) How many times is Polynices buried? What are the differences between the various burials? What is the significance of each?

(4) How does Creon view Antigone’s actions? What are some of his main concerns about them?

(5) What are some of the ways Antigone explains her own actions?

(6) Following up on question (5), focus in particular on Antigone’s last major speech (lines 960-1020, pp. 104-106), a speech that effectively functions as a “dirge” for herself. There she claims that she would not have defied Creon for a husband or a child, but only for her brother. This speech is perhaps the most controversial in the whole play: Goethe detested it and suggested that it was not actually part of the original, that it was “added in”; others have suggested that it is an expression of an illicit and incestuous desire. What do you think Antigone is trying to say in this speech?

(7) Is Antigone’s defiance of Creon’s order correct? Is she an admirable or likable character? And what of Creon? Was he wrong to refuse to honor a traitorous enemy? Why or why not?