aeschylus | Pandaemonium

ON JUSTICE AND VENGEANCE

January 28, 2018 by Kenan Malik

This essay was the main part of my Observer column this week. (The column included also a shorter piece on public attitudes on immigration in the wake of the Brexit referendum.) It was published in the Observer, 28 January, under the headline ‘A desire for vengeance is human but checks the pursuit of proper justice’. Two court cases last week, on either side of the Atlantic, helped illuminate the tensions in our thinking about justice. The first was the harrowing […]

Categories: Culture & Books, Justice & Liberties • Tags: aeschylus, civilisation, justice, larry nassar, oresteia, vengeance

A SNIPPET OF THE QUEST: FROM HONOUR TO JUSTICE

September 8, 2014 by Kenan Malik

The North American edition of The Quest for a Moral Compass is published this week by Melville House. I will be in New York and Toronto to talk about it. While I am away, I will be publishing on Pandaemonium short extracts from the book. This first snippet is from Chapter 1, and discusses Aeschylus’ trilogy of tragedies, the Oresteia, and what it reveals to us about the transformation of Greek moral thought. I have previously published the opening section […]

Categories: History of moral thought, Philosophy & Ethics • Tags: aeschylus, ethics, greek philosophy, greek tragedy, history of moral thought, homer

HOMER, AESCHYLUS AND MELANIE PHILLIPS

March 3, 2011 by Kenan Malik

‘Vengeance is simply justice with bad pr’. So claimed melanie Phillips on The Moral Maze last night, in a programme that began as a discussion of the possibilities of penal redemption and ended as a debate on the role of vengeance in the judicial system. It was a great line (Phillips was defending another panelist Anne McElvoy who had argued for the importance of vengeance to justice). And it was, of course, partly tongue in cheek. But it also summed up […]

Categories: Justice & Liberties • Tags: aeschylus, broadcasts, greek philosophy, greek tragedy, history of moral thought, homer, law, melanie phillips, moral maze, trojan war