Limited justice

In a 1982 article on justice in the Oresteia in the American Political Science Review , Peter Euben observes that the dualism of passion and action, violence adn renewal, obliteration and revelation that stymies politics and ethics in Argos seem to be overcome in the just city of Athens: “Certainly the Athens we see on stage at the end of the Eumenides shows (or at least indicates) men and women as partners in sustaining a whole which gives identity and dignity to each, rather than as victims of each other’s actions. Similarly young and old are not warring factions but mutual participants in a collectivity that communalizes the burdens of action while providing object and limit for passion. In Athens the deeds of children do not murder those of parents but enlarge them.  Freed from the mechanical cycle of revenge and the life-destroying passins which paralyzed action in the Agamemnon , these Athenians will participate in framing their own destiny in conjunction with the gods.”

But this is only a partial victory: “Yet even a just city is composed of mortals and thus of potentially warring forces.  Athens too must rely on those passions and actions whose destructiveness we have seen in the Agamemnon. Though the just polis does offer respite from injustice and corruption it is only a respite. Even if it can turn ruinous forces toward good, the dual capacity of passion and action remain.   That is why all resolution is but temporary.”  This is the best Aeschylus can offer; there is no city of the blessed, no permanently just city, no city of God.