Dear Alison,

I meant to reply to your original post on this since it is very succinct. And exactly so, I think, in its reading of the Orestia and the founding of the state in terms of the legitimacy of violence.

Though I read the play just not as the founding of the Athenian state, but as a change in consciousness, a moment in which we can actually see the mind of western culture thinking itself into existence. So that children become the property of their father's seed, the mother viewed just as a temporary and insignificant vessel for that seed, so that the Furies, figures of divine revenge for matricide, become the domesticated Eumenides, etc., that "division" between the legitimate and illegimate murder, which is partly a question of not only which violence is allowable but which violence is sacred, not only tolerated but sanctioned. 

And I think this is where it may pertain to your considerations of euthanasia or abortion, for in general, the state 'tolerates' those forms of violence, they are viewed as a necessary evil, not as sacred or sanctioned rights. Though some may think of abortion or euthanasia as a right, the state merely allows the pracitces to continue, in part I suspect out of a reluctance to give up the perogative of being the only agency to wield the right to murder. For it's not only that the state takes the right to itself to murder other human beings, but that it is a right the state holds exclusively to itself. However I wonder at the word "murder," for what makes "murdering" different than "killing" is that there is the expectation of feeling connected with murdering. Killing is murder without emotional involvement. It is 'cold-blooded' as defined by the state, and therefore, partakes of logic and necessity, the rigors of the mind and of actuality. In part what is held against Orestes is his feeling.   

Best,

Rebecca

Rebecca Seiferle
www.thedrunkenboat.com

-------Original Message-------
From: Alison Croggon <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: 04/18/03 10:31 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Fw: from the dream we are having

> 
> Dear Peter

I was using the word "murder" in relation to my discussion of the
Oresteia, where the argument about the legitimacy of what are
(uncontroversially, I think) a series of murders become the impetus
that symbolically sets up the Athenian state.  The council at the
end, which determines whether or not Orestes is to be further
punished for the murder of Clytemnestra, is a legal system.  So using
this as a model, I was suggesting that murder is deeply embedded in
the concept of state: the state defines itself, to an extent, by
deciding for itself the legitimacy of some murders as opposed to the
illegitimacy of others.  I have never heard of a state which does not
take to itself as a right in some form the right to murder other
human beings.

I was deliberately expanding the definition of murder to include the
intentional and violent killing of one human being by another and
taking it out of a legal definition.  I was also trying to take all
moral judgement out of it and just look at that model.  It seems to
me, according to this logic, that killings in war are murder as well.
The moral opprobrium we attach to such murders seem very much to
depend on whether we think such murders are legitimate or not.  We
are very used to thinking that some murdering is ok, but to me that
is a result of cultural conditioning.  I am quite aware that this
makes things like abortion (which I think is an important right for
women) or euthanasia (which I do not oppose either) extremely
problematic, but that problematic is the fact of the cases.  Taking
another human life in any circumstance is problematic.  There are
very few decisions we can make as human beings which are
unadulteratedly wrong or right.

Best

A
--


Alison Croggon
Editor
Masthead Online
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