Hunting for Justice
The Cosmology of Dike in Aeschylus’s Oresteia
Seiten
2025
State University of New York Press (Verlag)
979-8-8558-0128-6 (ISBN)
State University of New York Press (Verlag)
979-8-8558-0128-6 (ISBN)
Utilizes Greek tragedy to investigate the fundamentally arbitrary and violent nature of justice.
A purely political understanding of justice does not convey the cosmological origins of the ancient conception of justice, Dikē, in Aeschylus's Oresteia. Drawing from Walter Burkert's anthropology of the hunt in Homo Necans, which articulates an ancient cosmology and implies a theory of (tragic) seriousness that parallels Aristotle's naturalist interpretation of tragedy, Hunting for Justice argues that justice is rooted in predation as exemplified by the Furies. Although the Oresteia has been read as the passage from the violence of nature to civic justice, Kalliopi Nikolopoulou offers an original interpretation of the trilogy: the ending of the feud is less an instance of political deliberation (as Hegel maintained), and more an instance of nature's necessary halting of its own destructiven'ess for life to resume. Extending to contemporary contexts, she argues that nature's arbitrariness continues to underpin our notions of justice, albeit in a distorted form. In this sense, Hunting for Justice offers a critique of the political infinitization and idealization of justice that permeates our current discourses of activism and social justice.
A purely political understanding of justice does not convey the cosmological origins of the ancient conception of justice, Dikē, in Aeschylus's Oresteia. Drawing from Walter Burkert's anthropology of the hunt in Homo Necans, which articulates an ancient cosmology and implies a theory of (tragic) seriousness that parallels Aristotle's naturalist interpretation of tragedy, Hunting for Justice argues that justice is rooted in predation as exemplified by the Furies. Although the Oresteia has been read as the passage from the violence of nature to civic justice, Kalliopi Nikolopoulou offers an original interpretation of the trilogy: the ending of the feud is less an instance of political deliberation (as Hegel maintained), and more an instance of nature's necessary halting of its own destructiven'ess for life to resume. Extending to contemporary contexts, she argues that nature's arbitrariness continues to underpin our notions of justice, albeit in a distorted form. In this sense, Hunting for Justice offers a critique of the political infinitization and idealization of justice that permeates our current discourses of activism and social justice.
Kalliopi Nikolopoulou is Associate Professor of Comparative Literature at the University at Buffalo, the State University of New York. She is the author of Tragically Speaking: On the Use and Abuse of Theory for Life.
Acknowledgments
1. Cosmos/Phusis, Dikē, Pragmata: An Introduction
2. Tragedy and the Seriousness of Culture: Aristotle and Walter Burkert
3. Like a Dog, or in Artemis's Night: Dikēin Agamemnon
4. Hermes of the Axis Mundi: Gē and Dikē inthe Choephoroi
5. Beyond Justice: Apollo's Youth and Athena's Dikēin the Eumenides
Epilogue A Lying Shepherd and the Limits of Human Dikē
Notes
Works Cited
Index
| Erscheinungsdatum | 15.05.2025 |
|---|---|
| Reihe/Serie | SUNY series in Contemporary Continental Philosophy |
| Verlagsort | Albany, NY |
| Sprache | englisch |
| Maße | 152 x 229 mm |
| Gewicht | 476 g |
| Themenwelt | Geschichte ► Allgemeine Geschichte ► Vor- und Frühgeschichte |
| Geisteswissenschaften ► Geschichte ► Regional- / Ländergeschichte | |
| Geisteswissenschaften ► Philosophie | |
| Geisteswissenschaften ► Sprach- / Literaturwissenschaft ► Anglistik / Amerikanistik | |
| Geisteswissenschaften ► Sprach- / Literaturwissenschaft ► Literaturwissenschaft | |
| ISBN-13 | 979-8-8558-0128-6 / 9798855801286 |
| Zustand | Neuware |
| Informationen gemäß Produktsicherheitsverordnung (GPSR) | |
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