My latest draft article, Love And Solipsism: Lawful And Arbitrary Rule in Classical Drama is now available to download from SSRN. In it, I look at The Oresteia, Richard III, and the Antigones of Sophocles and Jean Anouilh to see what they have to say about law and tyranny. I argue that in the Oresteia, we see lawful rule as the domestication of force; the submission of coercion to rationality and public deliberation—to a willing cooperation in mutual enterprise. In this, law really is like love. In Richard III, by contrast, we see that the tyrant is a kind of solipsist, who seeks to force the world to comply with his will—he is a kind of rapist, trying compel the citizen into the act of union. In Antigone, by contrast, we see the dissident as she who clings to truth, refusing to collaborate in the fiction the tyrant demands. I especially reject the view that Sophocles’ Antigone has a “tragic flaw” of willfulness, and I look at the way Anouilh's Antigone is deprived of her ability to be honest, thanks to the pervasive totalitarian state.
This is just a draft, and I am eager for suggestions and comments, so please let me know if you have any thoughts.
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