Expendable Bodies

What Sophocles can teach us about our political moment

An ancient Greek tragedy, Sophocles’s Philoctetes, can help us to think holistically about our own political moment. What Sophocles shows us is that the same bodies the polity dominates, annihilates, or consigns to suffering in isolation it also tends to use for its own ends. That political communities too often view ...
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Expendable Bodies

What Thucydides Can Teach Us

Ancient reflections on a time of plague

Coronavirus will end the Trump presidency – or it will boost his chances of reelection. COVID-19 will provoke a revolution – or it will restore trust in liberal democratic institutions. It will make us more distant – or it will bring us closer together. Thucydides, the ancient Athenian author of the History of the Peloponnesian War, ...
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What Thucydides Can Teach Us