Letters from an alums about The Antigone and Ethics

The content of your issue on ethics (PAW Jan. 26), was completely engaging and substantive (so much so that I only just now finished reading through, slow as I am, all of it). I particularly appreciated the thoughtful exploration of bioethics by former President Harold Shapiro *64. But not one mention could I find, in the entire issue, of the Antigone by Sophocles. Surely that seminal piece of drama has a place in any discussion whatsoever of morals and ethics, particularly in regard to the teaching of both. Yet not one reference was there to that instructive tension between Creon, King of Thebes, and the condemned Antigone (who defied his decree to bury her brother). We impoverish ourselves (as a school, as a culture, as humanity), by the omission.

ROCKY SEMMES ’79

Date Posted: 04/21/05

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