Letteratura angloamericana

The Minister's black veil (1832) Billy Budd (1889-1891/1924)

Letteratura anglo-americana II

Going to meet the man (1965) The Monster (1898) A jury of her peers (1917)

Lezione 1

Justice and a plurality of claims which apparently produce dilemma.

What kind of category is justice? One hand we have morality/philosophy/ethics, on the other politics/theology/legal field. Is not just the question right VS wrong but it is connected with "Living well" --> (doing well). Political and legal field: translate as illegal.

Gli Usa nacque con l'idea di assicurare justice. The only modern state which encapsulate this.

A text from the classical western tradition: a famous play belonged to classical and antiquity in which there is a potential split between justice and law: Antigone.

Antigone (/ænˈtɪɡəniː/) is a tragedy by Sophocles written in or before 441 BC.

The action of “Antigone” follows on from the Theban civil war, in which the two brothers, Eteocles and Polynices, died fighting each other for the throne of Thebes after Eteocles had refused to give up the crown to his brother as their father Oedipus had prescribed. Creon (the uncle of both the characters), the new ruler of Thebes, has declared that Eteocles is to be honoured and Polynices is to be disgraced by leaving his body unburied on the battlefield (a harsh and shameful punishment at the time), so he shouldn't be buried.

So we have a conflict between 2 different understanding of what justice is about. From one hand we have the laws of the city and if you stand by the laws of the city there is no doubt that you just obey to Creon's decree. On the other hand you have also the staging of some kind of more ancient, fundamental law which is the ancestor law compelling humans to bury (the most ancient law known in the civilization).

So it is split between the city as state, as community kept together by the law, and on the other hand the ancient laws, the ancient moral laws, religious law who is claimed by Antigone of being more compelling than just the laws of the city.

If you watch/read the play you realize that all the characters have their own reasons: Creon, for example, is a ruler, is a politician, he has the duty to keep his city together. If he doesn't, all the state will fall apart!

Also Antigone has her own reason too.

15th century b.c.: It belongs to a moment when in western civilization when the question of the origin of law, the foundation, the function and the relationship between what is legal and what is just was all ready.

The basic question of justice in moral, legal and political sense comes down to this kind of everlasting whether the law exists because it is founded on some kind of divine or natural foundation and whether the law is necessary or has metaphysical ground, where the legal system is completely arbitrary, political in its sense, function and therefore it only exists because it is man made, as a result of some action of power ----> whether the law has a legitimacy or whether the legitimacy of law comes only from the power that establishes the law itself ---> so basically is justice the result of the law or is the law the result of justice? Is something just because it is legal or it is illegal because it is just?

The history of thinking about this dilemma is a very conflictly history: there 2 different tradition of understanding relationship between justice and law.

• There is tradition that assumes that all laws are in one way or in another, grounded in some kind of natural truth, in some kind of divine truth and has some kind of transcendental.
• The law is whoever has the power to establish the law (I am the person who is in power here, all the men with beard are going to fail the exam).

Antigone captures this important moment of transition between ancient model of civilization where the law was actually based what would called ... (the family, so a tradition way of understanding the law) and law based on demos (etimology of the word "democracy"). So in that time the important Greek polis, citie's state, were beginning to be establish and beginning to create their legal system and the role of law that is "keeping together".

Socrates

Several philosophers debate the foundation of love, the foundation of justice, what justice is about and what the role of law is in a well organised.

Socrates was put on trial. The death sentence of Socrates was the legal consequence of asking politico-philosophic questions of his students, from which resulted the two accusations of moral corruption and of impiety. At trial, the majority of the dikasts (male-citizen jurors chosen by lot) voted to convict him of the two charges; then, consistent with common legal practice, voted to determine his punishment, and agreed to a sentence of death to be executed by Socrates’s drinking a poisonous beverage of hemlock.

He considered himself innocent but he accepted the idea of drinking poison, in order to not violate the power the city, to sure his respect for the city's power and the law's power. Basically Socrates' position was: "Even though it is an unjust law it's still a law so I'm going to obey".

Behind Socrates' position there have been an everlasting debate, established by Sophists: they were the first philosopher in the history to embrace the idea that laws are entirely and completely man made ----> no real foundation in any transcendental notion of what is good and what is just. The law establishes what is just, no based in some kind of transcendental sense of what is good and what is just. They are arbitrary, conventional, man made, define what is just and what is right. Legalistical understanding of the law.

And this was extremely problematic in order to keep a society together: to do it you need some kind of shared sense of values. So the philosophers after sophistis, tried to reconcile this kind of split between natural laws and man made legal laws. They tried to demonstrate that even though laws are conventional they still capture and are based on something that was shared by all men, something which is at least natural.

Plato

Plato had the idea that the best rulers of the city would be the philosophers (king should be p and il contrario). The basic notion that he established as the foundation of Republic is the idea of justice.

For him justice is the foundation of well ruled and well capted city and therefore Republic/state, and he defines justice something that is comprehensive of all man's virtues. Justice is the comprehensive over all syntetic virtues for whatever is good, both in individual and the construction of the state.

Justice is the possession of what is yours and the ability to do your duty. Justice is something that has to do what the way you are, with your personality, your balance as person, your set of personal values and qualities and the way you use them.

So from one hand we have justice as moral quality (have to do with your inner balance, capacity to perceive what is wrong or right, to not prevaricate on others). On the other hand this idea of justice as the ability of fulfill an obligation. If you are just a ruler, you are producing justice around you because that is your function. If you are just professor you are trying to make sure that students get grades according to what they deserve.

For Plato justice is both moral and political virtue and justice of the individual is the foundation of the justice of the state, and just state rereinforces individual justice because it's easier to people to be just in a just state and there is no just state of people are not just individually (Ideal republic).

He distinguishes different form of government: the best form of government was the aristocratic government, against democracy (the rule of the many), against tyranne because a tyrant in order to keep the power would be surrounded by very bad people.

Aristotele

Aristotele, most important philosopher in Greek tradition in terms of how he influenced the western history. A very systematic philosopher, wrote on a lots of topics, including "Nicomachea" (written for his son"). He devotes one book to the virtue of justice; and it's interesting because he only devotes one single book to all the other virtues. Why? Because to him justice is the virtue which sums up all the other virtues.

He says that it is the most perfect virtue because whoever has that virtue can use virtue to ....others and not just himself (note that ethic for Greek philosopher is all about being well and live a good life ---> be an happy person ---> a collection a happy people -> happy society [B. Franklin]).

Aristotele emphasized the notion of justice and he uses a lots of numbers of categorization. Discusses some varieties of justice: distributive justice (when you give to everyone according to a just principle distribution), community justice (make sure that if I give you this bottle you give me something which is adequate in return and not much more/less than the bottle worthes).

The legal system is part of the personal justice, he distinguishes private law and public law, legitimated law and natural law. The natural kind of justice (Natural law) is what is understood as just everywhere, always recognised as just by everyone, regardeless of attitude, culture, place.

The legal justice is what originally can be just or unjust, right or not, but only becomes right once it has been established as legally (--> it's wrong to kill people and there is something that is more/less generally recognised by human beings in all ages and times but it can be right or wrong because until something until red light exists there is no way of saying whether redlight means something or something different.

So this is the kind of law that only becomes just because it's legal, but has not any deep natural foundation in human civilization). We have something that we recognise as civilization even when there is no law in forcing.

Aristotele: man is a political animal (quality of human being). Being a political animal means that humans that human are made together, to communicate, to organize themselves. This is another reason why to Aristotele language is very important. Complex understanding of human beings, nate to communicate.

By language human being is able to say what is useful and worthful (?), and therefore what is just and what is unjust. So the main role of language is telling to other humans what is good/bad for them and immediatly what is just or wrong. The community building function of language is directly connected to the notion of justice and to the ability to distinguish what is just or unjust, right and wrong. And right and wrong become the equivalent of what is useful and worthful: whether is right is just, whether poisons you is bad.

Man is the only animal who has the notion of good and evil, just and unjust.

Aristotele influenced all the Christian philosophycal thinkers, to the United States.

Stoic philosophy

Another philosophical school we need to mention is the stoic: incredible important in Roman culture, throughout the political western philosophy. Stoic philosophy lasted a long time. And influenced such characters as Cicero. He was the single most important political philosopher throughout the reinassance and post reinassance tradition. Politicians up 19th century politicians were being educated on Cicero's critics.

"The Officiis", a treaty about the duties of the governors, was probably the most influencial treaty of philosophy ever. And this all came from stoic because Cicero was storic philosopher (?).

They also influenced quite a bit the Christian philosophy as well.

During the period when people complotted one another: what philosophers could do? Stoics were teaching people to survive and best way of surviving was by cultivating untouchment being in balanced and untouched by adversities, evil has no ontological existence. So what the wise person was about? The idea of autarkeia: being indipendent, autonoumous or someone would say self-reliant (in a more American contest).

Stoics are completely untouched by material things. Recognise the idea that there is a natural law, a natural understanding of what is just or unjust/right or wrong. They believe that this comes before the polis so there is not a function or result of man as political being. To the stoics natural law comes even before the polis and this is universally recognised because it is based in the logos.

The universal of logos, ration faculty embodied by all human beings, in all ages: this is the foundation of natural law! And it is natural and universal because it is shared by all human equally, by virtue of based on human reason. It is something that prexisists polis, community and recognized by everyone. And so ---> Law of the people = law of the nature.

Whatever legal system wants to be recognized/legitimated has to be based on natural law. If we create a legal system that says we have systematically kill your neighbords, sleep with your mother is something might create some troubles in terms of being universally accepted as based on some kind of natural law. So the positive law draws its legitimacy from the fact of being in accordance with natural law.

The positive law would be more powerful the more it is based on an accordance with generally shared of what is natural law. This is the system that the stoics put into place in western culture: the idea that there are 2 different system of laws ---> one is natural law/legal law. And legal system will be more powerful the more it is legitimed and more legitimed the more in accordance with what the natural law establishes and what can be recognised as naturally accepted by everyone.

On one hand we can accept the idea that there are natural laws that everyone understands equally in the same way because they are based on some kind inner sense that all humans have. So any law which respect that fundamentally understanding shared humans would be a law legitimated ---> there are some universal truths ---> The declaration of indipendence.

Go back to Antigone and think of that drama without the ancestral burial right that Antigone insists to be able to perform. Antigone's claim that she needs to bury her brother is not based on an ancestrol tradition, divine law. We have a clash of 2 subjectivities each wishing to do a different thing! Two wills clashing and their conflict can be only awarded by whoever is stronger: every law is the result of power, is arbitrary. So this is the alternative juridical position who comes into play in a modern history.

S. Augustine

S. Augustine: had an education as pagane, influenced by stoics. Evil has lacking metaphysical reality. Forges the link of natural law (which prexists) with divine law (God's law). We are rational beings, so we are able to understand the law of the nature that are the laws of God. The system is founded in nature and therefore in God.

Lesson 2 (Bavaro/scritto io)

Martin Van Buren

Martin Van Buren (martin van biuran)

Martin Van Buren was eighth /eɪtθ/ president of the United States (1837–41) and one of the founders of the Democratic Party. He was known as the “Little Magician” to his friends (and the “Sly Fox” to his enemies) in recognition /ˌrɛkəɡˈnɪʃən/ of his reputed cunning and skill as a politician.

When Van Buren took office in 1837, he became the first president who was born as a U.S. citizen. Almost immediately he faced a national financial panic brought about in part by the transfer of federal funds from the Bank of the United States to state banks during Jackson’s second term.

He is known by his failure to support the proposed annexation /ˌænɪkˈseɪʃən/ of the newly independent state of Texas; However, the enduring economic crisis and the denial of statehood (essere uno stato) to Texas contributed to Van Buren being overwhelmingly defeated by the Whig candidate William Henry Harrison.

The Indian Removal Act

The Indian Removal Act was signed into law by President Andrew Jackson on May 28, 1830, authorizing the president to grant unsettled lands west of the Mississippi (Oklahoma) in exchange for Indian lands (Georgia). We are destined to move to west.

In addition, in Georgia they found gold in 1829.

A small gang of Cherokees began to think it may be best to submit to a treaty before the government attacked them. Therefore, in December 1835, the Treaty of New Echota was signed, giving Cherokees two years to prepare for the removal.

A few tribes went peacefully, but many resisted (i) the relocation policy. ----> Van Buren defended the Cherokee removal. He sent troops to the Cherokee Nation to round up (radunare) every member of the tribe and imprison them in internment camps. Approximately 4,000 Cherokees died on this forced march, which became known as the "Trail of Tears."

Letter and transcendentalism attitude

Letter (Transcendentalism attitude ---> desire to get involved in politics and the actions of the American government.)

In response:

• It was written to the government's efforts to remove the Cherokee people from their native lands.
• In his letter to then-president Martin Van Buren, Emerson strongly represents that he, as well as other citizens of the American nation, feel that the American government is əcommitting a serious evil in proceeding with the removal /rɪˈmuːv l/ of the Cherokee.

He stresses the efforts of the aboriginal population (saw the Cherokee as innocent people • still left untainted (not spoiled-incontaminato) by the “atrocities” of society.) by stating that “Even in our distant state, some good rumor of their worth and civility has arrived, We have learned with joy their improvement in social arts. We have read their newspapers. We have seen some of them in our schools and colleges. In common with the great body of the American people we have witnessed with sympathy the painful labors of these red men to redeem their own race from the doom of eternal inferiority...“

The newspapers now inform us, that, in December 1835, a treaty contracting for the exchange of all the Cherokee territory, was pretended to be made by an agent on the part of the United States with some persons appearing on the part of the Cherokees; that the fact afterwards transpired that these deputies did by no means represent the will of the nation, and that out of eighteen thousand souls composing the (Cherokee) nation, fifteen thousand six hundred and sixty eight have protested against the so called Treaty.

Emerson believed