- Historical perspective of the polis as an authority for good and evil
- Both chose to die
- Although claiming to adhere to divine law, neither does
- Both of them knew the consequences of their actions (death) and willingly chose it
- Importance of following the law
- Each committed serious offenses
Monday, September 28, 2009
Death to the Heretics!
The A Team Calls for Socrates' and Antigone's Death
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My original argument for the in-class debate...
Purpose: defend human rights using the Greek Civil and Divine laws
Human Right, in its colloquially exercised definition, or most primal sense, is equivalent to the “basic rights and freedoms to which all humans are entitled.”
Therefore, one can assert that the basic rights and freedoms of all mankind should not be subject to waver or vacillate beyond these divinely, delineated freedoms; the basic rights of man (or woman), uninsured, emanate from divine law.
However, natural law, also referred to as civil law or political law, gives us the majorly agreed upon code or rulebook for society’s faculty in order to enforce the power of a falsified interpretation of the divine law; hence, civil law functions as our societal insurance. Natural law is, subject to, the imposition of moral and cultural relativisms associable with a particular society.
Then pronounce civil law, also referred to as political law or natural law, subject to change based on interpretation of contemporary, common values.
Consequently, this subjectivity or changeability would not be conducive to a logical defense of the impartial rights of mankind or human rights. Civil law or politically inspired law (Greek Law) would be incapable of producing any type of efficacy for a viable human rights argument.
Yet, one could argue that divine law, is also subject to change, since it is also based on the formation of human understanding in time through new revelation.
The major difference between divine law and civil law is that civil law is inevitably subject to change overtime, across different geographical and geopolitical boundaries, versus that of divine law, which is subject only to modified interpretations spanning across a diversity of geographic bounds. Antithetically, the omnipresence of divine law lacks the legal enforcement offered by Civil law. Civil law relies on law code, which in turn, is based on statutes that are formed using the same methodology for common law, influenced at one point or another by ruling of the courts. Civil law, only in its most obscure derivation, emanates from a faint interpretation of the aforementioned concept of divine law. Again, predicated on this proposed inferential knowledge, civil law appears nothing closer than an antipode of divine law, leading us back to the conclusion that, this form of law must be dispelled and never used to argue in defense of human rights. Be that as it may, we ought to employ our notion of divine law in order to uphold our pro-human rights argument.
Further, we are led to the idea that our only unchangeable defense of human rights stems from the rudimentary conception that we are all God’s children. Therefore, we can assume that we are all supposed to live on as god’s children otherwise we would not exist. Thus, the killing of man is a form of injustice, or the marked violation of an inherent human right (in modern society, this would inevitably lead to a lawsuit) is not in accordance with god’s purpose for our mutual existence in society.
“The killing of man” would go against natural law and divine law (similar to that of natural law). Therefore, perpetuating laws beyond this implicit principle would be seen construable by each individual entity (or child of God).
Consequently, the murder of this individual entity should not lead to punishment by death, even if this particular individual has committed moral or ethical plunder. Punishment by death or the “death penalty” is not in accordance with the one defensible human right. Thus, men do not know how to ethically or morally punish murder since only God can punish murder. All interpretations of human rights beyond this, are not purely divine, and are definably left up to the eyes of its beholder.
Other notes-to-self;
As seen in Sophocles’ Antigone, Antigone would be considered to be acting more in accordance with the one defensible human right since she is not basing her actions on anything beyond what is natural law. On the other hand, Ismene strays from the idea of human right since she is acting as though she is tied or fettered to political law.
Ismene: “By my very nature I cannot possibly take arms against the city.”
Antigone: “Go on, make excuses[…]”
Also see the exchange between Ismene and Antigone on pg. 3.
Antigone is not necessarily acting in accordance with or against the one defensible human right, but again, is justifiably more in-line with that of this human right. This exchange between Ismene and Antigone outlines the idea that human rights cannot be declared through governmental restraint.
Other references: pg. 91 in Plato’s Crito, Socrates’ understanding of how local government would react to him questioning their enforcement of civil code. This forms the basis for why government should not be allowed to issue the death penalty as a morally just sentence for Socrates’ supposedly committed injustice.
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