Hunting for Justice

The Cosmology of Dike in Aeschylus’s Oresteia

Kalliopi Nikolopoulou

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English

State University of New York Press
02 September 2025

Theatre Studies; Literary studies: classical, early & medieval; Literary studies: plays & playwrights; Ancient history: to c 500 CE; Social & political philosophy

Series: SUNY series in Contemporary Continental Philosophy

Utilizes Greek tragedy to investigate the fundamentally arbitrary and violent nature of justice.

A purely political understanding of justice does not convey the cosmological origins of the ancient conception of justice, Dikē, in Aeschylus's Oresteia. Drawing from Walter Burkert's anthropology of the hunt in Homo Necans, which articulates an ancient cosmology and implies a theory of (tragic) seriousness that parallels Aristotle's naturalist interpretation of tragedy, Hunting for Justice argues that justice is rooted in predation as exemplified by the Furies. Although the Oresteia has been read as the passage from the violence of nature to civic justice, Kalliopi Nikolopoulou offers an original interpretation of the trilogy: the ending of the feud is less an instance of political deliberation (as Hegel maintained), and more an instance of nature's necessary halting of its own destructiven'ess for life to resume. Extending to contemporary contexts, she argues that nature's arbitrariness continues to underpin our notions of justice, albeit in a distorted form. In this sense, Hunting for Justice offers a critique of the political infinitization and idealization of justice that permeates our current discourses of activism and social justice.

By: Kalliopi Nikolopoulou
Imprint: State University of New York Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 229mm, Width: 152mm, Spine: 18mm
Weight: 363g
ISBN: 9798855801279
Series: SUNY series in Contemporary Continental Philosophy
Pages: 264
Publication Date: 02 September 2025
Audience: Professional and scholarly , Undergraduate
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

Kalliopi Nikolopoulou is Associate Professor of Comparative Literature at the University at Buffalo, the State University of New York. She is the author of Tragically Speaking: On the Use and Abuse of Theory for Life.

Reviews for Hunting for Justice: The Cosmology of Dike in Aeschylus’s Oresteia

""Nikolopoulou's insightful work shows how we might still read the ancients productively. She looks to Aeschylus not as confirmation or precursor of our strongest commitments and most cherished values but shows how his tragedies can help us understand the limits of our politics, instrumental rationality, and progressive sense of history. That Aeschylus does so precisely through an account of justice that is constantly grounded in cosmological necessity proves instructive for recognizing the remnant of injustice that resides even in our best efforts of righting past wrongs. The scholarship is impressive and wide-ranging, the concerns never more relevant: this book tarries with the inherent violence of justice and the importance of nature's capacity for regeneration in the face of an all-too-human hubris."" — Jason Winfree, coeditor of The Obsessions of Georges Bataille: Community and Communication