Essay 1

Your answer should be typed, 3-5 double-space pages, and include a source citation for any events you use in your analysis. No title pages, please: just put your name on the top of the first page.  Due Tuesday, March 11

Answer the following questions in one continuous essay. Where appropriate, use a current event or ongoing phenomenon to illustrate your analysis in answering the following questions:

1. What is Crick’s understanding of politics? What else would you include? What would you exclude? Why?
2. Crick bases his version of politics on Aristotle’s notion of the polis as an aggregate; among the implications of this is that a recognition of diverse interests requires freedom. Does politics as such require diversity? Does ‘unity’ or a quest for unity always lead to a suppression of politics? Relatedly, how does politics require freedom? Are freedom and unity always in opposition?
3. What is the ideology of science, engineering, and administration and why does Crick think it is such a threat to politics? Do you agree or disagree? Why?
4. In Antigone, Creon seeks to exclude a cultural practice—the burial of Polynices—in order to make a political point. What are the respective claims of Creon and Antigone? How do you determine which one is correct? If both (or neither) is right, then what? How ought political authority deal with claims from culture? How ought those making claims from culture deal with political authority?