04 homer on virtue

► 4.1 An Overview ‘ 4-1 ►

é Rene Mario Micallef, 11-Dec-02 6:08 AM

4. HOMER ON VIRTUE AND COSMOLOGY

4.1 An Overview 4.1.1 SETTING THE SCENE MASTER SAPIENS

Let us start this first Philosophical debate by asking Whiz Dom to translate from Italian the passage in Cioffi et al I:39-401 that I find is a great introduction to Homer.

WHIZ-DOM ’The Homeric poems give us a picture of the Greek society at its origins and its morality. The values of the warriors, chieftains of the aristocratic clans (ghe ne) are the prevalent values portrayed. Land is concentrated in the hands of these warriors, as is political and military power. In this epoch (archaic Greece), virtue (arete ) is identified with strength. Social prestige is confined to the ability of lording it over others using violence (bie): one can keep one…s place among the select group of aristoi (the betters) because one has the power to impose one…s will on a herd of inferior weaklings. ’Since one…s virtue is bound to the imposition of might, in the Iliad, the virtue of the hero is not a stable acquisition, but must be shown in action whenever it is questioned. Sub-jecting oneself to the will of another is unacceptable to one…s virtue: this constitutes a dishonour that can only be removed by, in turn, imposing one…s will on the offender. Achilles, offended by Agamemnon who took Briseis away from him, thinks that there is no other way to regain his arete but through the use of violence: he renounces a fight with the supreme chief of the Achaean army only because Athena orders him to do so. He retires from war vexed and dishonoured: the Greeks have to accept that without the arete of Achilles they are not able to win over the Trojans and to regain for Achilles the honour of which Agamemnon deprived him. ’The Odyssey…s system of values is more complex. New motifs appear, linked to the time of peace in which they second Homeric poem is set: namely family values and values linked to the good management of one…s property (oikonomia). Even the heroic arete becomes more complexly characterised as the Odysseus of the Odyssey takes the place of the Achilles of the Iliad as the prime hero. The warrior…s might still constitutes the core of arete (demonstrated, namely, in the violent justice dealt to the bad adminis-trators of his property on his return to Ithaca) but this is supplemented with cunning (metis), intelligence (nous) and the ability of engaging persuasively in discourse (logos). These capacities allow the hero to prevail where the hero…s might is useless or insuffi-cient (e.g. when Odysseus and his companions need to escape the Cyclops Polyphe-mus).…

MASTER SAPIENS What have you understood, Claire?

MEN…S CLARA O.K. We…re talking about Homer…s idea of virtue, aka ’goodness…. It must be different from ours, otherwise, why bother? Nevertheless, I still don…t get what Cioffi is talking about because I don…t know who these guys are and what they do in the story. Any ideas, anyone?

1 Cioffi, Luppi, Vigorelli, Zanette. 2000. Il testo filosofico. Edizioni Scolastiche Bruno Mondadori. Milano.

‘ 4-2 ► 4.1 An Overview ‘


THINK TANK

The Iliad is the story of the siege of Troy during the Trojan War. Agamemnon, the leader of the Greek army (attacking the Trojans) offends the most skilful Greek warrior, Achil-les, by taking his slave girl, Briseis. Achilles then refuses to fight with Agamemnon, and the Greeks start losing. The Trojans attack and kill Patroclus, Achilles… friend, whom Achilles was expected to protect. To avenge his friend, Achilles returns to the battle (knowing he would be killed) and the Greeks win. In heaven, or better on Mount Olym-pus, the gods take sides, and intervene to help or hinder the heroes. The Odyssey gives us an image of the Greek hero in a time of peace: this time, it is a guy called Odysseus going back home from the Trojan war. He desperately wants to go back because his kingdom awaits him and is badly governed in his absence, but the gods try to hinder his return.

MASTER SAPIENS All right. Let us take an hour by ourselves to read a page-long summary of the plot of the Iliad and the Odyssey from an encyclopaedia, or from the Web. Then, go back to the passage that Whiz-Dom read, and see if it makes more sense.

4.1.2 WHAT…S THE POINT? Tank Nobody thinks Homer was a Philosopher, right? So what…s the point in starting Philoso-

phy from Homer? Men…s Well, as Cioffi says, Homer gives us a picture of the Archaic Greek society– what peo-

ple in Greece thought about all sorts of things in life before the advent of Philosophy. Now I can think of two ways how this could be interesting to us studying Philosophy. A new idea does not come from nowhere. In a way, it CHALLENGES the old, i.e. the preva-lent idea that preceded it. But in a way, it BUILDS ON THE OLD– it assumes at least part of the context which sustained the old idea. Think of a proposal of changing, say, a bus route. Its defenders must contrast it with the old route and argue that it deals with the shortcomings of the old route– this part of the argument will focus on the differences. However, they must also show how it serves the purposes of the old route, and how it links to the remainder of the bus network that will remain unchanged with the new route. This would focus on the similarities. Similarly, if a Philosopher has to stand up and say something new, he must be fully aware of the background of his/her listeners (which happens to be his/her very background). In Ancient Greece, this background was the Archaic Greek culture, which Homer simply portrays in his poems. If a Philosopher had to come up with a new way of defining what is the good thing to do in a given situation, he/she must CHALLENGE Homer (i.e. the Archaic culture) on that specific point– but on the other hand he/she CANNOT BUT ASSUME some of that culture, otherwise his/her ar-guments would hang in the air, and nobody would understand him/her. You cannot change a system of thought all in one big swoop.

Whiz I think a famous metaphor for what you are saying, Men…s, is that of the raft. You can mend a raft at sea, but by replacing one log at a time. If you try to mend it all at once, it will sink. Similarly, if the Ancient Philosophers wanted to remedy for the shortcomings of the Archaic culture portrayed in Homer (as regards Moral thinking, Cosmology, Theol-ogy), they could only challenge one thing at a time, otherwise their ideas would seem to-tally alien to their listeners (and to themselves– for who could imagine a world totally different from the one she was taught to believe in since she was a child?). So they would use bits of Homer to sustain some of their arguments that in turn would challenge other parts of Homer.

► 4.2 An annotated summary of Irwin (1998), Chap. 2 ‘ 4-3 ►


Sap. I must stop this discussion for some re-focussing. You are discussing some very inter-esting issues in Epistemology, but this is going too far. What is important at this point is that Homer is important to the Philosophers as the eloquent representative of the Ar-chaic culture. Knowledge of this culture helps to define Philosophy positively, by pointing out similarities (comparison) and negatively, but pointing out differences (contrast). It helps us understand why the Philosophers said certain things that seem very strange to us, people who come from a very different culture.

Now Whiz mentioned ETHICS (Moral Theory: the study of the principles that determine what is the right and the wrong thing to do, the study of the correct behaviour to assume in society), COSMOLOGY (the study of the structure of the Universe (= the sum of all existing things), its regularities, its origin and composition– ), THEOLOGY (the study of the supernatural, and specifically of God/the gods). Homer never wrote a treatise on these subjects. But if you read through his poetic narratives, you can filter out a lot of stuff on what people in Archaic Greece thought about such issues. What is the good (vir-tuous) behaviour for the Homeric heroes? – what is the right thing to do in certain circumstances? By observing the actions of Achilles and Odysseus and their conse-quences in the two works, we get interesting answers to these Ethical questions. How do natural forces work? How do the gods act? Again, read through Homer, and you will find how the Archaic Greek people would have answered such Cosmological and Theological questions.

Incidentally, this procedure is the one used by Irwin in Chap. 2 of his book ’Classical Thought…. He goes through the Iliad (mainly) and sees how the Greeks before the advent of Philosophy answered these questions. In a way, though nobody would call Homer a Philosopher, Irwin…s analysis helps us to filter out some of the Philosophical elements present in the Greek culture BEFORE what is officially considered as Philosophy came to be. It would be wrong to think that Philosophy came from nowhere. It came from a cul-ture predisposed to ask certain questions. Such a predisposition constitutes the groundwork of Philosophy. After all, a lot of ancient non-western Philosophy is done by a similar analysis of ancient literary texts similar to Homer…s poems.

Tank, maybe you could give us a summary of Irwin and add some comments. This will help our non-initiated companions learn how to read a textbook, take notes, and reflect on it. I know your comments are often illuminating but sometimes quite tough for the be-ginners, Tank. But that…s O.K., they give us a taste of some of the ’real… hot issues, even if they may be hard to grasp.

4.2 An annotated summary of Irwin (1998), Chap. 2

Summary of Irwin (1998) Comments

i. The importance of Homer

Iliad and Odyssey:

• religious, cultural texts of great im-portance

• did not have the doctrinal authority of the Hebrew Bible, yet were ex-tremely influential over a wide area for hundreds of years, especially as a basic educational text.

• philosophers often refer to the Ho-meric poems as the cultural 'given': at times as an authority to sustain their theories, at times as a target which is challenged and critiqued by their theories.

Some experts claim that Homer was not a historical person. Most agree that if any-thing, the name ’Homer… designates a per-son who collected, compiled and edited a series of poems and stories of very an-cient tradition. He moulded and elaborated these popular myths and stories around a clear central plot, using a popular poetic metre (the hexameter). Eventually, the whole compilations were learnt by heart and passed on by generations of ’poets… till someone wrote them down.

‘ 4-4 ► 4.2 An annotated summary of Irwin (1998), Chap. 2 ‘


their theories, at times as a target which is challenged and critiqued by their theories.

The plot indicates the existence a single editor, however, in itself, it is of secondary importance: the poems are best consid-ered as a treasury from which we can re-construct early Greek culture, language, religion, cosmology (rational explanation of the world), customs, morality and val-ues, social structure, politics etc.

ii. The ideal person and the ideal life

The poems' heroes are ideal persons who exemplify arete (= goodness, ex-cellence, virtue). This is not identical to the Christian or to the Modern (e.g. Kantian) concept of goodness, hence may sound strange to us.

1. arete (goodness that others can see) is PARTLY OUTSIDE OUR CON-TROL. Clearly, propriety and virtue in our public behaviour are influ-enced by the circumstances in which we were born and grew up. This is traditionally expressed by the idea of 'noble blood' and often treated as a hereditary component of arete . A person who grew up in socially unfavourable circum-stances cannot be expected to ex-cel (publicly)... especially in the strongly stratified archaic Greek so-ciety where the moral achieve-ments of the lower classes were disregarded. (The upper class at the time, the 'nobles', was that of the warriors; hence excellence was in the first place military prowess).

2. arete is PARTIALLY IN OUR CONTROL. Given the right social/hereditary conditions, it is our job to excel. Public excellence generates per-sonal honour (time ), that includes primarily other people's good opin-ion, and secondarily the material and social 'honours' linked to the former. Heroes seek to increase their success and reputation, and hence seek to perform acts of ex-cellence, which not only benefit the hero but also the persons from whom the hero seeks respect.

Arete originally meant nobility ('good blood'); then was used to express excel-lence (at doing something, e.g. in combat); then came to mean virtue (maturity in a set of behaviours that a society/individual values because they help the soci-ety/individual achieve the goods that the society/individual aims at achieving); fi-nally coming to signify moral 'goodness'.

Arete is a social measure of goodness: it is goodness that others can see. We moderns often assume that true 'good-ness' is something internal (good inten-tion) that may not always translate into actions that are externally conceived as good and laudable, and that people who look saintly to the beholder may be rotten inside. The ancients did not share our scepticism on moral perception, possibly because social relationships were more defined, simpler and more authentic. They believed that a good person will be so-cially recognised as such, and hence be honoured as such. This is why arete and time (honour) are closely linked. The Ho-meric hero not only wanted to seem good in the eyes of others (and hence have their esteem); he also wanted to be good: he believed that (except in strange cir-cumstances) one would seem good only if one were really good, and one who were good would seem good.

Irwin calls the Homeric hero 'individualistic' since he seeks his honour first, but then Irwin claims that time is also 'other-directed' since society may also blackmail the hero: "you can enjoy a good reputation (and hence serve your interest) only if you do x and y... which are things that serve our interest". I think this is a blatantly modern reading of the poems (see the discussion below).

iii. Self and Others Homeric ’goodness… (arete ) is linked to the way one treats others, but this is not the major component of arete . Hence, one may treat others badly and still be considered ’good… and ’virtuous….

Homeric goodness is not primarily the goodness shown towards others. The word ’good… in Homer designates some-one who stands out from the crowd be-cause s/he is ’better… than the rest: richer, more powerful, stronger, imposingly ’supe-rior…, i.e., a person who, in virtue of his/her social standing and his/her achievements can demand respect and reverence from the others. Achilles (in The Iliad) and Odysseus (in The Odyssey) are depictions of such a ’super-man….



A hero is expected

1. to care for his inferiors (e.g. wife, children, subjects– );

2. to care for the welfare of his group of peers (e.g. comrades in the army, co-citizens);

3. to be moved by human feelings (and not be indifferent towards oth-ers, their problems, their suffering, their honour– ).

If a hero fails to do these things he is criticized, but does not substantially lose his arete . Achilles remains the ’best of the Achaens… even if he aban-dons the army on a personal matter (thereby letting down his peers and let-ting down his inferior, Patroclus by not fighting by his side and protecting his life). On the other hand, had Achilles been captured by pirates and sold into slavery, he would have lost half his vir-tue/goodness.

more powerful, stronger, imposingly ’supe-rior…, i.e., a person who, in virtue of his/her social standing and his/her achievements can demand respect and reverence from the others. Achilles (in The Iliad) and Odysseus (in The Odyssey) are depictions of such a ’super-man….

iv. Priorities ’For a Homeric hero [– ] the interests of other people are often important, but always strictly secondary. Indeed they count for so much less than the primary virtues that a man…s goodness or bad-ness is finally measured by the primary virtues alone, not at all by his concern for others.… (Irwin, 1998:11.)

The ’primary virtues… here are those vir-tues that directly promote one…s honour and good reputation: leadership, physical might, social standing, skill at managing one…s household, political far-sightedness–

v. Difficulties in Homeric ethics

The Homeric hero seeks to accomplish his own aims in life, which he considers the best for himself. But Homeric moral-ity also asks him to behave in such a way so as to merit honour and esteem from his peers, and claims that such behaviour is the ’best… behaviour. This may create conflicts within the hero be-tween what he considers ’best… for him-self and what others consider ’best… for him.

Irwin…s (like most Anglo-American philoso-phers) is influenced by a Modern author, David Hume, and his reading assumes that the good in Homer is ’subjective…: i.e. actions and things are not good or bad in themselves but whether something is good or bad depends ultimately on who is JUDGING. To abandon the battle because one…s honour is offended may thus be the good thing to do for Achilles, but may be considered bad by his companions.

I believe this is a bad way of reading Homer, since all ancient and traditional morality assumes moral objectivity (i.e. it is non-subjective): it assumes that some-thing is good or bad independent of who is judging it. Hence, if there is any conflict on what is the good thing to do, or the best thing to do, it is because the hero or those around him have not yet DISCOVERED what is good, or what is the best thing to do in those circumstances. In Archaic society, one assumed that what was socially es-teemed was so esteemed BECAUSE it was objectively ’good… (on the basis of a vener-able social tradition that was considered knowledgeable of what was good), and NOT that something was good BECAUSE it was socially esteemed as desirable. Within this objectivist framework, Irwin…s critique does not make any sense. The conflicts within the Homeric hero are nor-mal everyday moral problems of a mortal who does not know everything in advance,



teemed was so esteemed BECAUSE it was objectively ’good… (on the basis of a vener-able social tradition that was considered knowledgeable of what was good), and NOT that something was good BECAUSE it was socially esteemed as desirable. Within this objectivist framework, Irwin…s critique does not make any sense. The conflicts within the Homeric hero are nor-mal everyday moral problems of a mortal who does not know everything in advance, but needs to discover what is objectively good for him/her day by day.

Furthermore, the ’selfish and parasitic behaviour… of the Homeric heroes ’is bad for the whole community, and yet, from one point of view, it is eminently heroic…. This seems to be an incoher-ence in Homer…s ethics.

The problem, here, is only Irwin…s, not Homer…s. The behaviour of the Homeric heroes is the paradigm, the model, of what Homer considers ’good…, with all the com-plexities involved in that conception. Such behaviour is simply ’eminently heroic… for Homer; if it is ’selfish and parasitic… (from Irwin…s point of view, or even objectively) it certainly does not appear so from Homer…s standpoint. Hence, contrary to what Irwin claims, Homer…s ethics does not seem IN-TERNALLY incoherent.

Irwin then provides a hypothetical ar-gument of a defender of Homeric mo-rality who claims that in the conditions of an Archaic society, the Homeric hero might be useful to his community. This would be the reason why society should be structured in such a way. Irwin claims that this is a weak defence of Homeric morality.

I think that no serious defender of Homeric morality would use an argument based on the UTILITY of the social structure that gen-erates Archaic morality to defend such a morality. What is GOOD cannot be reduced to what is USEFUL, and this is more so in traditional ethics, such as that of Homer. Killing someone who is harming a lot of people may be useful to those people, but may not necessarily be a good thing to do. Building a dam may be very useful, but it may be a bad thing to do if it entails pro-voking an ecological disaster. A defender of Homer cannot claim that the social ine-qualities in Homer are good because they are useful. He or she may simply claim that people are not born equal (this is a claim that can neither be DECISIVELY proved, nor disproved), and that trying to put the betters on the same level as the inferiors is contrary to the order of nature and to the desire of the gods (or of God). Obviously, we would not find this accept-able today (because of our social and ethical background), but surely, most Ar-chaic Greeks did. And Nietzsche, and the Fascists, who held similar views, are still very contemporary!

vi. Gods and the world

Homer depicts the gods using human forms (rather than monstrous images) because he wants to make them intelli-gible: ’fairly rational agents with fairly stable aims are predictable and reli-able…. On one hand gods are not sim-ple, rigid mechanisms: you offer this sacrifice, they give you that. They care for sacrifices but do not let themselves be manipulated through them. On the other hand, they are not too complex to understand and to deal with. Knowing what the gods are after, persons can tell more or less how they will behave.

A predictable universe is one which hu-mans can control. In the 1600…s, scientists like Descartes and Newton produced de-terministic models of the universe that tend to present reality as totally predict-able. This promoted the idea that humans can, with the use of machines, have full control over nature. People started to be-lieve that science and technology would eventually solve all our problems, take us wherever we want, kill pests, overcome disease and death. Einstein…s model has reintroduced a lot of chance and unpre-dictability in the universe. Today, we are



gible: ’fairly rational agents with fairly stable aims are predictable and reli-able…. On one hand gods are not sim-ple, rigid mechanisms: you offer this sacrifice, they give you that. They care for sacrifices but do not let themselves be manipulated through them. On the other hand, they are not too complex to understand and to deal with. Knowing what the gods are after, persons can tell more or less how they will behave. ’Natural forces, similarly, do not strike at random, but as a result of the steady purposes and intentions of the gods…. (p 14).

Hence, in the Homeric universe, MOST THINGS HAPPEN FOR A REASON. This con-ception of the world eventually leads to a search for regularities and laws in nature, which flourishes into scientific disciplines and philosophy. Even so, THERE IS ALSO SPACE FOR CHANCE EVENTS in the Homeric universe.

terministic models of the universe that tend to present reality as totally predict-able. This promoted the idea that humans can, with the use of machines, have full control over nature. People started to be-lieve that science and technology would eventually solve all our problems, take us wherever we want, kill pests, overcome disease and death. Einstein…s model has reintroduced a lot of chance and unpre-dictability in the universe. Today, we are more sceptical of what power technology can give us over nature, and at what cost.

vii. Gods and moral ideals

In the poems, Gods are the ultimate moral ideals (or ’paradigms…); heroes exemplify virtue because they strive to act like the gods. The gods, on the whole, are content with their eternal lives. They do get angry at times, but they usually get satisfaction in such cases. They possess security, life, hon-our, power.

Heroes, however, are mortals, and can-not get it all as the gods do. In order to be secure like the gods, they often have to forsake honour. To attain godly power, they risk losing their security, or their life. Hence they must often face conflicts among their aims.

viii. Zeus and the world order

Zeus is above all the other Gods, and Homer insists that HIS WILL IS IN CON-TROL. He ’seems to have wider con-cerns than his own honour… and ’is also concerned with justice in human socie-ties… (p. 17). Nonetheless, he has a strange relation with the ’fates…. Time and again, he seems able to save a particular hero from his fate (that de-cides whether he has to die or not in a given occasion), and ponders on whether to do so or not, but in the end, his decision always turns out to con-form to the fates.

Irwin suggests that this relationship be-tween Zeus and the fates indicates two trends in Homeric thinking that are po-tentially in opposition: ’the fates suggest an impersonal, amoral order, inde-pendent of the choices of gods or hu-man beings… while Zeus ’suggests a moral order embodying an intelligence and will that transcend normal heroic values, but still recognizably belong to an intelligent moral agent.… (p. 17)

Zeus and the Fates are portrayed anthro-pomorphically in Homer (i.e. ’in the shape of human beings…), but in a Cosmological reading of the poems they personify the forces of Order and Disorder present in the Universe. This means that when we ask the question ’what does Homer think about the regularity an the irregularity (’kaos…) in the universe?…, the answer can be found in his stories that put Zeus face to face with the fates.

So what prevails, Order or Disorder? Who has the last word, Zeus or the Fates? Homer does not give us a satisfactory an-swer (and this paves the way for the de-velopment of Philosophical cosmology). He insists that Zeus (Order) is supreme. This means that the universe has an or-der, it is regular and predictable (and hence can be studied scientifically– we can make generalizations and laws on how things behave in the universe). This tendency (to assume Order as supreme) is prevalent in Greek culture, and it drives the first scientific enquiries. Yet Homer never gives us an example of real conflict between Zeus and the Fates. He shuns



trends in Homeric thinking that are po-tentially in opposition: ’the fates suggest an impersonal, amoral order, inde-pendent of the choices of gods or hu-man beings… while Zeus ’suggests a moral order embodying an intelligence and will that transcend normal heroic values, but still recognizably belong to an intelligent moral agent.… (p. 17)

He insists that Zeus (Order) is supreme. This means that the universe has an or-der, it is regular and predictable (and hence can be studied scientifically– we can make generalizations and laws on how things behave in the universe). This tendency (to assume Order as supreme) is prevalent in Greek culture, and it drives the first scientific enquiries. Yet Homer never gives us an example of real conflict between Zeus and the Fates. He shuns the issue, and is reluctant to conclude that Zeus would prevail. So Zeus is portrayed always as coming to a decision independ-ently, which happens to confirm that of the fates.

At the bottom of all this lies a very impor-tant question. In science, we assume an order in the universe. Is this real or simply apparent? We are aware of the presence of both order and disorder in the universe. Is the disorder only apparent, i.e. a com-plex combination of regular elements? Or is the order only apparent (a chance regu-larity in a sea of disorder)?

ix. The main diffi-culties in Homer

In Homer we find an ETHICS (a discus-sion on what is the best thing to do, what is the ’good… in relationships be-tween human beings, between humans and gods, between humans and na-ture), a THEOLOGY (a discussion about who the gods are, how they behave– ) and a COSMOLOGY (a discussion about the world, nature, the universe: i.e. about the forces present in natural events, the regularities in nature (cor-responding to the will of Zeus, who is more or less predictable), the unex-plainable in nature (corresponding to the unpredictable, unintelligible Fates)).

Homer…s Ethics, Theology and Cosmol-ogy appeal to COMMON SENSE and to EVERYDAY EXPERIENCE (our ’observation… of the world). Hence they are difficult to disprove, and resist critiques. Yet, the three disciplines abound with internal conflicts, and this spurs the first Phi-losophers to find new theories to de-termine what is the Good, who is God, how does the World work.

► 4.3 Are the Homeric Heroes ’selfish� and ’individualistic�? ‘ 4-9 ►


4.3 Are the Homeric Heroes ’selfish, and ’individualistic,? Note: Men…s just pinched this bit from the sketches of a book on Ethics that Master Sapiens is writing. It is rather tough stuff‘ not for the faint-hearted. But do give it a try. It gives you an idea of some of reactions that a mature Philosopher may have when reading Irwin. If it seems too dif-ficult, just move on. Are the Homeric heroes ’selfish… and ’individualistic…? Irwin claims that they are, all over the chap-ter. Clearly, from our point of view as students in a democratic, developed country, they seem so. But I think that the words ’selfish… and ’individualistic… are not appropriate to describe the Homeric heroes.

4.3.1 AN ANALYSIS OF WHAT WE CONSIDER �SELFISH… AND �INDIVIDUALISTIC… IN ORDINARY LANGUAGE SHOWS THAT WE CANNOT ATTRIBUTE THESE TERMS TO THE HOMERIC HE-ROES

Consider the following examples:

• Tom is a person who is already very rich and who seeks to become ever richer (and other people are influenced negatively by this, since resources are limited). We call Tom self-ish.

• Jane is an athlete who seeks to break the world record for the 1000m race. She is ready to sacrifice many things for this. Unless she gravely neglects very important duties in or-der to achieve his goal (e.g. abandoning her husband and children) we would not call her selfish in this.

• Peter is a good footballer who very rarely passes the ball when he is in a position to score– even if there is a team-mate in a better position. We would call this behaviour ’selfish… only if it is detrimental to the team in the long run.

• Alice, a tourist visiting a developing country, finds herself in a jungle where a number of natives are about to be executed for no good reason. She protests to the authorities, who answer that if she wants to free the natives, she should offer up her life in their stead. If she refuses to do so, we would not call her selfish because she has no duty to give up her life for the sake of the natives.

Thus, we call ’selfish… a person who seeks to profit himself/herself at the expense of others, who is ready to let down the team or take over other people…s fair share of the resources of society in order to advance his interest (e.g. Peter and Tom). Seeking to advance one…s interest when this does not influence others is not selfish (e.g. Jane)– it is rather a matter of respect for one…s goals in life. What about seeking to advance one…s interest when this influences others? Well, it depends. There are things in life that are so central to our being that we cannot sacrifice them (or cannot be expected to sacrifice them) for the sake of others. Alice…s LIFE is a good example. Con-sider, further, that instead of giving up her life, Alice is asked to shoot one of the natives herself, and the others would then be set free (if she does not, all will be killed). Alice…s RELIGION de-mands that she does not kill (even if, overall, more people are killed (by others) as a result of this). She is certainly not selfish if she does not go against her religion to save a large number of people, since religion is so central to one…s life that it cannot easily be put aside (thereby commit-ting, say, a grave ’sin…) for the sake of others. Some philosophers say that we are ’situated…, ’encumbered… selves. This means that there are SOME things we just cannot give up for the sake of others. In the case of the Homeric heroes, HONOUR was something that could not be given up, even at the expense of letting down the team and thence loosing a war. Hence, I find it hard to call Achil-

‘ 4-10 ► 4.3 Are the Homeric Heroes ’selfish� and ’individualistic�? ‘


les ’selfish… since honour was at the time the basis of morality and of authority. Furthermore, each hero represented a clan, a people, hence his honour was that of the ’kingdom… he came from. The Trojan War was sparked by a personal affair � the elopement of Helen with a lover from a different nation. Such a ’personal… matter is considered an offence to the whole nation, not only to her husband. Similarly, the quarrel between Achilles and Agamemnon is not simply a dispute be-tween two soldiers in a modern army over a purely personal matter. It is more like a dispute be-tween two leaders of allied nations (at war with a third nation) over a public matter, which risks to break the alliance asunder. To conclude, we must say that it is true that the Homeric heroes seek to uphold their honour even at the expense of letting down the group. This is not only a matter of personal interest, but also a public duty towards their clan. Furthermore, honour in the Archaic times was so constitu-tive of who you are that it could not be given up easily for the sake of others, as may be the case today: in those days a person without honour was considered a non-person, a nobody. Thus I would not call Achilles… behaviour selfish or individualistic.

4.3.2 THE MODERN UNDERSTANDING OF THESE TERMS, IMPLICIT IN OUR ORDINARY LAN-GUAGE, CANNOT BE USED TO EVALUATE THE HOMERIC HEROES

We have argued above that Achilles and Agamemnon cannot be considered ’selfish…, not even using our concept of what is ’selfish…. A more radical critique of Irwin would however claim that it is inappropriate to apply our concept of what is ’selfish… to Archaic Greek society. The terms ’self-ishness… and ’individualism…, as we normally use them:

1. denote malaises of modern society, that is very different from Homeric society; 2. judge the heroes and their STANDARD of ’goodness… by OUR STANDARD of goodness, hence

implicitly assume that our standard is the better of the two (since it can be used to judge the other).

As regards (1) we note that in ancient society, what WE would describe ’typically selfish behav-iour… might be socially esteemed as ’good… and ’appropriate…. The ’good… in question is not the good of people in general treated as equals, but the ’good… of a hierarchically-ordered society. For instance, it was a ’good… thing for the hero to be mighty and to demonstrate this violently to anyone who challenged his authority. Defending one…s honour was a better thing than cooperat-ing with others. The might that is socially valued is not a sort of sadistic pastime but a social as-set that is necessary to protect one…s clan and inferiors in a violent world. The honour that one defended was that of one…s people. Showing off one…s might and defending one…s honour, one earned a good reputation among one…s peers and one…s inferiors. Such a reputation is not sought for one…s own benefit as an ’unsituated individual… (a sort of being without any social ties) but for the benefit of a person conceived as a socially-embedded being, whose reputation affects the well-being of his friends, family, and inferiors. Hence it is misleading to imply (as Irwin does) that seeking a good reputation is 'individualistic'. Clearly, the hero…s action 'does not aim primarily at some collective goal that includes the good of other people', but within the archaic social circum-stances, the actions deemed honourable for the hero did achieve collective goals that included the good of one…s kinsfolk and inferiors because public esteem was directly linked to such a good. Obviously, if for Irwin, the only true 'collective' goal/good, the only true non-individualistic act, is that of the maximization of the happiness ('utility') of all human beings in a global society of equals, the hero is indeed an individualist. But this would be a Utilitarian (hence, Modern) reading of Homer!

► 4.3 Are the Homeric Heroes ’selfish� and ’individualistic�?‘ 4-11 ►


From the above, and from (2), we can note a fundamental defect in Irwin…s work. Speaking of Homer and his heroes, we are speaking of a system of morality, an ’Ethics…, different from ours. A system of morality makes sense in itself, and cannot be explained in terms of a different system of morality without being denatured, oversimplified and rendered banal. Irwin…s attempt at explaining the rationality of Homeric ethics (i.e. Homer…s way of thinking about what is ’good…, how the ’ideal person… should behave– ) in terms of our ethical rationality is a ’non-starter…, i.e. it is a mistake right from the start. If you want to see what a good man is for Homer and for the Archaic Greek society you don…t read a chapter on Homeric ethics in a pre-university textbook. Instead, you observe the characters Achilles and Odysseus in the poems. You see how they behave, how they take decisions, how they talk, how they relate with others. You go and read the text. And if you want to be ’good… in the Homeric sense of the word ’good…, then you memorise the actions of those heroes, as Greek children did for hundreds of years, and you seek to live as those heroes lived2. If you want to evaluate which of the two Ethical systems (Homer…s and ours) is the better, you need to know both from the inside, and to observe their internal flaws (incoherencies), and not use one standard (of what constitutes the good) to judge another standard.

2 The difficulties in comparing different ethical theories and the problems of explaining one in terms of another is the subject of my M.A. dissertation, that evaluates Alasdair MacIntyre…s work in this field.

04 homer on virtue

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