Law and Justice - Antigone and the Defense of Tradition - 6.7 Debate: Political vs. Religious Duty

History of Law
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8 Video Views·Dec 24, 2024
Let's think further about what Antigone says about the nature of law and justice. Imagine
not only that a democratic body, through a fair and open debate, decides to prohibit
the burial of this traitor Polyneices, but imagine you are in a society that is coming
out of a brutal civil war, a gruesome civil war, like ancient Thebes, in which one of
the brothers, Polyneices, was a traitor. He'd committed treason. He'd attacked his own country
with a body of Argives. So imagine that, I don't know, that Jeb Bush is jealous of his
brother and raises an army of Canadians and lays siege to Washington, D.C. That's what
happened in Thebes. This had been a bloody war. And in the aftermath, the body of the
democratic rulers of this city ban the burial of the traitor because of his act of treason.
And they do it in order to prevent future traitors. In other words, they do it in order
to prevent other people from raising an army and causing civil war and civil strife again.
So now the question of justice is, is Antigone just in burying this, let's call him a terrorist,
and preventing him from causing future mayhem? Or does she still have the power to obey what
she believes are her religious duties, in the name of Zeus, to bury this terrorist?
How do we weigh the just action in this situation?
