Hunting for Justice: The Cosmology of Dike in Aeschylus’s Oresteia (SUNY series in Contemporary Continental Philosophy)

Synopsis

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.

Copyright:

2025

Book Details

Book Quality:

Publisher Quality

Book Size:

264 Pages

ISBN-13:

9798855801293

Related ISBNs:

9798855801286, 9798855801279

Publisher:

State University of New York Press

Date of Addition:

03/01/25

Copyrighted By:

SUNY

Adult content:

No

Language:

English

Has Image Descriptions:

No

Categories:

History, Nonfiction, Art and Architecture, Literature and Fiction, Social Studies, Drama, Plays and Theater, Language Arts, Philosophy, Politics and Government

Submitted By:

Bookshare Staff

Usage Restrictions:

This is a copyrighted book.