Reference no: EM133728178
Case: Appiah, in his chapter "Autonomy and Its Critics,"while sketching out his understanding of autonomy, suggests that "it can be disputed whether it makes sense, in any society, to speak of individuals' choosing their ends," and, quoting Michael Walzer, he asks rhetorically: "Can we imagine individuals without any involuntary ties at all, unbound, utterly free?" (Appiah45).
Emerson, in his essay "Self-Reliance," exhorts the reader to "[t]rust thyself" (p. 260), and he asserts that "[w]hoso would be a man must be a nonconformist" (Emerson 261).
The chorus of Sophocles' Antigone sings to Antigone: "With praise as your portion you go / in fame to the vault of the dead. / Untouched by wasting disease, / not paying the price of the sword, / of your own free will (literally: ‘autonomous') you go. / Alone among mortals will you descend in life to the house of Death" (Ant. 817-823).
Develop an argument about the character of Antigone (i.e., her beliefs, values, behavior) that addresses the following questions:
Question 1) In what sense(s), if in any, is Antigone autonomous?
Question 2) How, if at all, ought her character serve as a model for us to emulate, and how not?
Question In your response, closely engage Sophocles' Antigone, as well as Appiah's chapter "Autonomy and Its Critics" and Emerson's essay "Self-Reliance."