POLI 231 Lecture Notes - Lecture 22: Les Blancs, Political Philosophy, Libido
17 May 2018
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POLI231
Lecture 22 - 12 April 2018
Final lecture: Review
• The difference between the texts that we have read is vast
• In Antigone and Les Blancs, we saw:
- Death
- Burial
- Tragedy
- Conflict
Antigone: Was it solvable without so much death?
• All around family tragedy because they can’t come to an agreement about whether to bury
the dead
• We hear characters even when they can’t hear each other
• They are talking and fighting with words and yet they cannot hear one another
• The tragedy: Creon did not want this outcome
• Problem of different perspectives and worldviews
• Why was ancient Greek tragedy a public form?
- Discusses how we might live together is peace and concord
- Conflict is a part of the human world view
- We have different perspective
- We must talk to each other
- Compromise is essential to governance
Les Blancs: Characters are talking to each other but often unable to hear each other
• Tshembe understands the American journalist but they can’t get a conversation going
• Tshembe’s father thought the natives should be self-governing
- This was not within the world view of other characters – they did not feel that the natives
should be self-governing
- For certain characters, the idea of the natives’ self-government was like allowing children
to be self-determining
- Colonizers refused to see that the colonized were not children, but individuals who did not
necessarily want what the colonizers were doing
• Inability to see other perspectives or legitimate social claims
• Political philosophy is interested in what the beliefs/ values/ norms are that we use to
structure ourselves and our societies
Plato: Apology and Creon
• Socrates: pursues the fundamental question of how people should live
• Ancients: believed that humans are not just animals that need to be fed → humans have a
conception of being excellent as humans and moral capacities to be developed in a society
• We can also be the worst animals, depending on the social/ political order of our society
(double-edged sword)
• Socrates tries to improve the social order by challenging authorities, knowing how power can
impose without a good argument
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Document Summary
Final lecture: review: the difference between the texts that we have read is vast. Discusses how we might live together is peace and concord. Conflict is a part of the human world view. Les blancs: characters are talking to each other but often unable to hear each other: tshembe understands the american journalist but they can"t get a conversation going, tshembe"s father thought the natives should be self-governing. This was not within the world view of other characters they did not feel that the natives should be self-governing. For certain characters, the idea of the natives" self-government was like allowing children to be self-determining. Colonizers refused to see that the colonized were not children, but individuals who did not necessarily want what the colonizers were doing. Inability to see other perspectives or legitimate social claims: political philosophy is interested in what the beliefs/ values/ norms are that we use to structure ourselves and our societies.
