Dangerous Democracies

La description est disponible en anglais seulement.
Prof. Christina Tarnopolsky (Political Science)
Democracies and Danger: Sophocles' Philoctetes and the Post-9/11 Environment

This talk will discuss Sophocles’ Philoctetes and its treatment of the relationship between democracies and danger. The play centers around the whole issue of how much democracies, which are committed to openness, toleration, transparency, and free speech, can allow (or may even require) certain forms of deception or lying in times of danger, especially during times of foreign and civil war, and in the face of the threat of foreign invasion. The play was staged in 409 BC and its backdrop is both the Peloponnesian War and the debates occurring in Athens at the time about whether Athens was losing the war precisely because her democratic and open ways could not withstand an oligarchic enemy like Sparta, which was more committed to secrecy, lies, and deception. The Peloponnesian war was a particularly devastating and new form of war waged between Athens and Sparta, which lasted from 431-404 BC and that ended in the defeat of Athens by the Spartans. The lecture will

consider how the debates in Athens at the time, about the relationship between openness, transparency, and free speech and its possibly deleterious effects in times of great danger, parallel many of the debates after 9/11 about how much the right to free speech might need to be limited for the purposes of securing America against terrorist attacks. Sophocles’ whole play revolves around these issues. In particular, it asks, can a person or polity committed to free speech and truthfulness resort to deceptive linguistic utterances and strategies, without this thereby affecting the whole character of the polity, especially after the war has been won or lost?