everything is in the file attached but if you need anything just let me know. thank you
Thought Experiment 1: On the Relation of Art & Life *Note that you will be performing / posting this assignment in ALL ASSIGNMENTS, where you will find the "Thought Experiment I Repository." *** As indicated both in our course syllabus and in our "overview of course requirements" (both found in the "START HERE" section of our course site), with our "thought experiment" assignments, students will reflect PERSONALLY on the ways in which the experience of the pursuit of imperishability in ART (i.e., in literature/film) might relate to the student's own personal experience (or lack of experience) with the pursuit of imperishability in LIFE. So for "Thought Experiment I" we will see if we can make connections between (1) that unique zone of imperishability which gets released into the world through the Orestia Trilogy and (2) comparable zones of imperishability that might exist either (1) in our own lives and / or (2) in the lives of persons with whom we might have a personal relationship (and which may include our personalized relationships with people of fame or noteriety in history or in the media). It has been argued that the unique attribute of the play Orestia Trilogy that gives to the artwork its condition a imperishability -- its ability to be an artwork of timeless truth -- is in the innovation that it contributes to concepts of personal and civic justice as they stood at the time of the play's earliest performances, in 5th century BC. We essentially find that by the play's end: a logic of revenge / vengeance -- understood as the dominant form of justice represented by the Furies -- is metamorphosed into a logic of absolution or acquittal -- understood as the emergent form of justice represented by the Eumenides, by whose "kindly" and "compassionate" power and energy Orestes -- who is on trial for the murder of his mother, Clytemnestra -- is absolved, acquitted. In other words, as the character of the Furies (deities of "fury, the "furious," vengeance, revenge) are metamorphosed into the Eumenides, we are left not so much with the sense that a form of eye-for-an-eye justice rooted in revenge and vengeance has been eradicated form the Earth; but rather we are left with a sense that the dominant form of Fury-Justice has been hyrbidized into an alternative and emergent form of Eumenides-Justice, which, miraculously, holds a space for the possibilities of totally unwarranted (and arguably supernatural) forgiveness, absolution, acquittal, compassion. And at once, with such a hyrbidized form of Justice that, paradoxically, holds some of the energies of the Furies and some of the energies of the Eumenides together, the one-time impossibilities of mercy, compassion, sympathy, empathy become preeminent possibilities for an entire population who, until that point and for many centuries prior, had been steeped in logic of judicial vengeance. These new possibilities, in other words, become available to an entire population of Greeks as a new literacy, as new way of performing personal and civic justice that might include the the kindlier Eumenidean energies of compassion, absolution and acquittal. This new hybridized form of justice and conflict resolution is precisely the form of justice and conflict resolution that president Robert F. Kennedy recommended -- in a radio-and-televized speech -- to the American population on the evening of the day that MLK was assassinated. In other words, RFK's Aeschylean recommendation to America came precisely when the spirit of racial xenophobia -- giving rise to a spirit of division, social enmity and lawlessness in American -- had reached the very proportions of racial xenophobia and social enmity that we as a population witness now in 2020. The purification of Orestes by Apollo would have been well-known in 5th-century-BCE, as it was particularly represented in the opening scene of The Eumenides, the third play in the trilogy: In this scene, Orestes, who has killed his adulterous mother, Clytemnestra, and her lover Aegisthus, has fled to the Temple of Apollo for refuge, but he is pursued by the Furies, the goddesses of vengeance. Apollo puts two of the Furies to sleep while he purifies the young man with pig's blood. In the scene, the female figure is the ghost of Clytemnestra, vainly attempting to awaken the Furies to perform vengeance, to perform a form of eye-for-eye / blood-for-blood justice on her son. But at the play's end, Orestes -- supported by Zeus and his ambassador Athena, who establishes a way out of the cycle of vengeance for Orestes, namely she establishes a tribunal court -- is acquitted, and the Furies are metamorphosed into the Eumenides (“Kindly Deities”). Now for Thought Experiment I: think of a time in which you have been ready to either offer free forgiveness -- when you could have just as easily, by justice, demanded a form of revenge or retribution for a wrong done unto you-- or a time in which you have been offered free forgiveness by another who could have just as easily, by "justice," demanded a form of revenge or retribution towards you for a wrong you performed unto another. And if you feel that you cannot draw from your own personal experience to perform the thought experiment, then feel free to recruit an example (or examples) from the the arts or from life...whether examples that you already know or which you have found in the media / online.