What Does Greek Tragedy Say About Decision Making?
On Ethical Dilemmas and Responsibility
If Agamemnon sacrifices his daughter, Iphigenia, his ship will arrive in Troy. If he doesn’t, he’ll remain marooned, and shirk his obligation to defend his State.
If Antigone buries her brother, she’ll violate an imperial decree. If she does not, she’ll violate her obligation to family and gods.
We face difficult choices all the time, even if they are not as extreme as those confronted by tragic heroes. One way to understand Greek tragedy is that it describes a “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” reality.
Reiner Schürmann, however, reads it differently. The problem with Agamemnon, he says, is not that he chose nation over family, but that he denied his choice was a choice.
Agamemnon is eventually murdered by his wife, Clytemnestra. But Schürmann argues that his downfall is recompense for his ethical arrogance, not for the sin of human sacrifice.
Imagine an alternative Agamemnon who announces his sorrow at having to sacrifice his daughter and who accepts responsibility for it. It’s possibly a more horrifying version, but it’s also a more heroic one. For Schürmann, Agamemnon fails—and meets his end—because he pretends his decision was prescribed. He was just following the algorithm.
Executives are definitionally responsible for making hard calls. “Leadership,” though, says Schürmann, isn’t necessarily about making the correct decision (since there likely isn’t one). Rather, it’s about acknowledging that the decision is difficult, and accepting the consequences. Cowardice pretends the decision is easy, obvious; or that it can be solved in only one way.
When calculative reasoning is brought in to justify the decision, you know the leader is hiding behind the data.
For Schürmann, tragedy is a lesson in meta-ethics: it doesn’t tell us how to act, but how to live with our actions.
Not all decisions are tragic, but those that are tragic can’t be addressed by consulting first principles.
Do you agree with Schürmann? What does it look like for you to apply this lesson in your own life? Why is it so hard to accept that some decisions are neither right nor wrong (or both right and wrong)?
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