Skirting the Ethical

Readings of six works, each noted for its politico-ethical stance. The first four (Sophocles’ Antigone, Plato’s Symposium and Republic Hamann’s “Aesthetica in nuce” have a recognized place in the canon. The last two, Sebald’s The Emigrants and Jane Campion’s The Piano are exemplary for our contemporary scene.  The straight-forward assumptions about justice, divine and state power, the good, and identity politics that every reader or viewer inevitably comes upon are disrupted when one takes into account the role of language. What emerges is a non-prescriptive ethics of another order.