Publication |
2011.
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Summary/Abstract |
"If we wish to do justice to the conflicts that surround us and lead to one tragedy
after another, we can do no better than to keep the example of Antigone
constantly in mind," says James Tully in Strange Multiplicity.
2
But it is not
Sophocles' lamenting title character that draws Tully, nor is it the playwright's
tragic message. It is Haemon, the "exemplary citizen of the intercultural common ground" (23), who sees the justice of Antigone's claim and pleads with his
father, Creon, for restraint.
3
Sophocles' play is unmentioned in the two volumes
of Public Philosophy in a New Key but, like Haemon, Tully here positions
himself between the worlds of dissidence and governance, speaking to the
powerful in soft reasonable tones on behalf of subaltern subjects, and arguing
that we can break out of seemingly tragic impasses if we take instruction from
the "rough ground" of politics and the pacific ways of nature
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