Classical Western Thought

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Classical Western Thought

• 1. The Homeric Moral Outlook

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1. The Importance of Homer
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• In the Western classical tradition Homer (? 750
  BC), is the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey,
  and is revered as the greatest ancient Greek epic
  poet (??).
• Many Greeks with some eduction learnt the Homeric
  poems.
• The Athenians heard them recited in public.

Your fathers took him to be such an excellent
poet that they passed a law that every four years
he, alone of all poets, should have his works
performed by reciters at the All-Athenian
festival. -- Augustine, Confession
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Illustration 1. All-Athenian Festival
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Illustration 2 Ancient Greek Singers
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• From Homer many Greeks drew central and
  influential elements of their conception of the
  gods and the relation of gods to human beings,
  and they drew a moral outlook and ideal.
• It is not surprising that later philosophers
  regularly quote Homer.
• He is not always an authority indeed, he is
  sometimes a target, since thoughtful Greeks
  attack and challenge his views on morality and
  religion.

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2. The Ideal Person and the Ideal Life
The Homeric moral outlook is most easily
understood from its conception of the ideal
person.

• Some of a person's goodness is outside his
  control.
• A good person must have been born into a good
  family, and must himself be rich and strong.
• The hereditary, social, and material components
  of a person's goodness are so important that, if
  you have them, you remain a good person, even if
  you behave badly.

A Good Person
Heredity
Social Status
Wealth
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Iliad, book 3, 20-40

• At once Menelaus jumped from his chariot,
• down to the ground, his weapons in his fists.
• When godlike Alexander saw Menelaus there,
• among the fighters at the front, his heart sank.
• He moved back into the ranks, among his comrades,
• avoiding death. Just as a man stumbles on a snake
• in some mountainous ravine and gives way, jumping
  back,
• his limbs trembling, his cheeks pale, so godlike
  Paris,
• afraid of Atreus' son, slid back into proud
  Trojan ranks.

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• Some aspects of a person's goodness are in his
  control.
• A hero is expected to display his excellence in
  his actions, characteristically and ideally the
  actions of a warrior and leader.
• A good man excels in battle, and his
  characteristic virtues are strength, skill, and
  courage.
• The hero is individualistic, in so far as he is
  concerned primarily with his own success and
  reputation he does not aim primarily at some
  collective goal that includes the good of other
  people, or of a whole society.

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An example Achilles

• Birth
• Achilles was the son of the nymph Thetis and
  Peleus, the king of the Myrmidons.
• His mother, Thetis is a sea nymph or known as the
  goddess of water.
• when Achilles was born Thetis tried to make him
  immortal by dipping him in the river Styx.
  However, he was left vulnerable at the part of
  the body by which she held him, his heel.
• He was taught by Chiron, an intellegent Centaur
  who was known for his knowledge and skills with
  medicine.

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Achilles' parents Thetis and Peleus (Attic
red-figured kylix 460 BC)
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The Education of Achilles (1772) by James Barry
(1741-1806)
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• Achilles in the Trojan War
• Achilles' father sent him to Troy "always to be
  best and to excel the others".
• Achilles is the "best of the Achaeans", above all
  because he is the strongest, the bravest, and the
  most skillful.
• Achilles and Agamemnon quarrel at the beginning
  of the war, because Agamemnon takes Briseis, who
  is Achilles' prize, and so slights Achilles'
  honour.

Honour, as Homer conceives it, includes,
primarily, other people's good opinion, and,
secondarily, the material and social "honours"
that are both causes and effects of this good
opinion.
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Briseis being taken to Agamemnon
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Achilles' rage by Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, 1757
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3. Self and Others

• The hero is certainly not indifferent to others.
• Thetis is concerned about her son Achilles
• Thetis and attendants bring armor she had
  prepared for him to Achilles, an Attic
  black-figure hydria, c. 575550 BC

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• Hector is concerned about his wife and son.
• Hector's last visit to his family before his duel
  with Achilles Astyanax, on Andromache's knees,
  stretches to touch his father's helmet.
  red-figure column-crater, 370360 BC

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• Achilles tending Patroclus wounded by an arrow (
  500 BC)

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• A hero of superior strength and power has
  inferiors who depend on him, and he is expected
  to defend them.
• A good husband, such as Hector, cares about his
  wife.
• Achilles does what is expected of the greater
  hero, and cares about his friend and dependant
  Patroclus.
• Odysseus appeals to the common interest of the
  group in his attempt to persuade Achilles to give
  up the quarrel with Agamemnon.

Odysseus was a legendary Greek king of Ithaca
and the hero of Homer's epic poem the Odyssey.
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• Apart from these specific expectations of
  particular people in special relations to the
  hero, people in general expect him to be moved by
  common human feelings.
• Achilles displays callous indifference in his
  dishonouring of Hectors corpse.
• He finally outgrows this attitude when he meets
  Priam when he thinks of his own father, he
  understands Priams feelings and is moved by
  them.

Priam begs Achilles to pity him, saying "I have
endured what no one on earth has ever done before
I put my lips to the hands of the man who
killed my son."
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Triumphant Achilles Achilles dragging the dead
body of Hector in front of the gates of Troy,
painting, 1892
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Priam Asking Achilles to Return Hector's Body,
painting, 1824
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• The interests of other people are important to a
  hero, but a heros attitude to these interests is
  not a prominent part of his goodness.
• A hero is criticized if he is as indifferent to
  them as Achilles is.
• Achilles loses none of his heroic virtue by being
  selfishly indifferent to others.
• He remains the best of the Achaeans, and no one
  so much as suggests that his selfish indifference
  might damage his reputation for goodness.
• If he had been captured by pirates and sold into
  slavery, he would have lost half his virtue.

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4. Difficulties in Homeric Ethics

• The Homeric outlook creates conflicts for those
  who accept it.
• Some of the conflicts arise for the individual
  himself.
• Achilles knows that honor is unstable and
  transitory, and in any case does not matter much
  to someone when he is dead.
• However, his shame at the dishonor he suffers
  from the death of Patroculus forces him back into
  the battle, even though he knows his own death
  will be the result.

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• Homeric ethics creates the conflict within an
  individual, but it also creates it within a
  society.
• Each hero wants his own honour and fights for it
  with others. When everyone tolerates this system,
  it may be bad for everyone.
• Example Penelopes suitors. Their selfish and
  parasitic behaviour is bad for the whole
  community. But from one point of view, it is
  heroic, since it promises considerable rewards in
  honour and status for the luck one who marries
  Penelope.

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Penelope and the Suitors by John William
Waterhouse (1912)
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Slaughter of the suitors by Odysseus,
bell-krater, 330 BC
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Odysseus using a bow and arrow to slay Penelope's
suitors
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Thersitess criticism

• Thersites was a soldier of the Greek army during
  the Trojan War.
• He is a brash, obstreperous, and ugly
  rabble-rouser.
• He denouces the kings as selfish parasites
  wasting the resources of the community.
• He is beaten by Odysseus for his insolence.