ABSTRACT
This chapter distinguishes two conceptions of how the right to use a hero might be understood – and provides a few reasons to prefer the latter, political, conception. It explores this political conception to the Macedonian naming dispute, and gives some ideas of what a way forward might look like in this conflict. It is that we have resources to develop the political conception, which emerge from the literature on political justice and its relationship to diversity. The most important is the idea that the modern inhabitants of the self-described Macedonian state are ethnically and linguistically unrelated to the Alexander the Great, the most important figure in Macedonian history. If the Macedonian state is using the figure of Alexander to build a political identity, it is entirely within the rights of the Greek state to regard that conception as being wrongful – indeed, as faintly silly.
