23 th Mai Savle Tsereteli Institute of Philosophy organized a public lecture of Prof. Dr. Johan Tralau (University of Upsala) on the topic: “The Beginnings of Political and Moral Philosophy III: Sophokles’ Elektra and the anatomy of normative theory”
In this lecture, Professor Tralau moved forward in time, to a text that is arguably the culmination of pre-Platonic argumentation about morality and politics. On the way, he mentioned the historian Herodotos, the orator Thrasymachos, the tragic poet Euripides, and Sokrates. Yet the pinnacle is arguably to be found in ca. 410 BC, when Sophokles’ Elektra was staged. Plato was probably a teenager at the time (he had probably at best just recently been allowed to compete in the adult class in wrestling). Yet Sophokles
presents us with the kind of refutation that we typically associate with Plato. In a vibrant debate about
murder and revenge, he lets Elektra refute a certain argument pertaining to retaliatory killing. This is a
striking case of internal critique. Moreover, Sophokles seems to make a conceptual suggestion,
proposing a term – Greek nomos, typically ‘law’ – in order to identify the concept of a normative
principle. By Professors Tralau’s view all this suggested that 5 th century BC poetry is fundamental in the evolution of Greek political and moral philosophy, and that we need to rediscover the early history of philosophical terminology and normative argument.
