Moral Pluralism and Practical Conflict in Euripides' Hecuba

Abstract

During the Trojan War Hecuba lost her husband — King Priam — her country, her friends and nearly all of her children; as she maintained the confidence in the law and the rule of the community over the citizens, she accepted her destiny, even when she was being humiliated by the Greeks, who enslaved her during almost the entirety of the play; her opinion changed though, when the Greek army leader, Agamemnon, ignored her plead for justice against Polymestor, the King of Thrace. Because of the high regard Polymestor had amongst the Trojans, he received a large endowment to take care of Polydorus, Hecuba's youngest son, which was then killed by Polymestor when the Trojans fell. This play was staged at a time when the confidence of the citizens in the Greek political institutions was deteriorating, and the drama deliberately challenges its audience to think about important moral questions then and now, such as the universality of values, the practical conflict and the various conceptions of what is a good life. Thus, analyzing the political and social context of the protagonist, but also exploring the funding questions of the Greek ethics at the time, we'll attempt to face the question that appears during the whole play and still resonates in our days characterized by plurality and difference: are moral and legal judgements free from the contingencies experienced by the agent, escaping the practical conflict, in the same way that was pretended after Plato and is still pretended by some authors? The methodology will be the bibliographical exploration of reflections, in ethics, law and Greek literature, all which have treated the discussion with its due relevancy. We seek to contribute with the debate about this question, who is evoked in different ways and under different premises, but with a common core shared by the importance given to it by philosophers, jurists and politicians.