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�Lecture Schedule 1970, 1971
Sept 25, 1970 Robert A. Goldwin
St. John’s College, Annapolis
Oct 2
Allen R. Clark
Silver Spring, MD
Oct 23
Alexander Bicket
Center For Advanced Study in the
Behavioral Sciences, Stanford CA
Oct 30
Martin Diamond
Claremont Men’s Coll., Claremont
CA
Nov 6
Noel Lee
Paris, France
Nov 18
Hans-Georg Gadamev
Heidelberg U, Heidelberg Germany
Nov 20
King William Players
St. John’s Coll. Annapolis
Dec 11
Richard McKee
Yale U., New Haven CT
Jan 8, 1971
Leon Kass
National Research Council,
Washington DC
Jan 15
Douglas Allanbrook
St. John’s College, Annapolis
Jan 22
Muhsin Mahdi
Harvard U., Cambridge MA
Feb 5
John Logan
SUNY, Buffalo NY
Feb 12
Iowa String Quartet
Feb 19
Charles Singleton
Johns Hopkins U, Baltimore MD
Feb 26
William Darkey
St. John’s College, Santa Fe
Mar 5, 1971
Gisela Berns
St. John’s Coll. Annapolis
Mar 12
Leo Strauss
St. John’s College, Annapolis
Apr 2
Eva Brann
St. John’s Coll. Annapolis
Aprt 16
Gabriel Stolzenberg
Northeast U, Boston MA
Apr 23
Eastern Chamber Ensemble
New York, NY
Deans Opening Lecture
“Philosophy of Law”
“The New Supreme CourtProspects & Problems”
On the U.S. Constitution
Piano Concert
“Plato As A Hermeneutic
Problem”
Henry IV, Part I
Concert
Biomedical Advance and
Ethical Problems
Harpsicord Concert
“Religion and Politics in
Arabian Nights”
“A Concert of Poetry, With
Comments”
Concert
“The Structure of The Divine
Comedy”
“Books and Experience”
“On Hippolytus”
On Machiavelli
On Thomas Mann’s Death in
Venice
On Mathematics
Woodwind Quintet Concert
�Lecture Schedule 1970, 1971
Apr 30
Peter Brown
The Urban Inst., Washington DC
May 1
May 7
Leslie Epstein & Douglas Allanbrook
Curtis Wilson
U. of California, San Diego CA
John Graham & Douglas Allanbrook
Allan Bloom
U of Toronto, Toronto Ont Canada
Jacob Kline
St. John’s College, Annapolis
William Pitt
Rabbi Bernard Ducoff
Bureau of Jewish Education, San
Francisco CA
May 8
May 14
May 20
May 28
June 4
“Some Moral Issues in
Metropolis Finance: Can I get
Away From It All in the
Suburbs”
Harpsicord & Recorder Concert
“Kepler, Newton and Planetary
Motion”
Harpsicord & Viola Concert
“Emile”
“About Plato’s Philebus”
“Logic- Beyond Modality”
“On Translating the Bible-Then
& Now”
�
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Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College. During the Fall and Spring semesters, lectures are given on Friday nights. Items include audio and video recordings and typescripts.<br /><br />For more information, and for a schedule of upcoming lectures, please visit the <strong><a href="http://www.sjc.edu/programs-and-events/annapolis/formal-lecture-series/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">St. John's College website</a></strong>. <br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Formal Lecture Series" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=5">Items in the St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.<br /><br />A growing number of lecture recordings are also available on the St. John's College (Annapolis) Lectures podcast. Visit <a href="https://anchor.fm/greenfieldlibrary" title="Anchor.fm">Anchor.fm</a>, <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/st-johns-college-annapolis-lectures/id1695157772">Apple Podcasts</a>, <a href="https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmNob3IuZm0vcy84Yzk5MzdhYy9wb2RjYXN0L3Jzcw" title="Google Podcasts">Google Podcasts</a>, or <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/6GDsIRqC8SWZ28AY72BsYM?si=f2ecfa9e247a456f" title="Spotify">Spotify</a> to listen and subscribe.
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St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis
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formallectureseriesannapolis
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Lecture Schedule 1970, 1971 (handwritten & transcribed)
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1970-1971
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Schedule of lectures and concerts for the 1970-1971 Academic Year.
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Lecture Schedule 1970-1971
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Annapolis, MD
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St. John's College
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English
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text
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pdf
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March 03, 1971. Berns, Gisela. <a href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/1093" title="Nomos and physis">Nomos and physis: an interpretation of Euripides' Hippolytus</a>
May 07, 1971. Wilson, Curtis. <a href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/3647" title="On the origins of celestial dynamics">On the origins of celestial dynamics: Kepler and Newton</a>
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Goldwin, Robert A., 1922-2010
Clark, Allen R.
Bicket, Alexander
Diamond, Martin
Lee, Noël, 1924-2013
Gadamev, Hans-Georg
McKee, Richard
Kass, Leon
Allanbrook, Douglas
Mahdi, Muhsin
Logan, John
Singleton, Charles
Darkey, William
Berns, Gisela N.
Strauss, Leo
Brann, Eva T. H.
Stolzenberg, Gabriel
Brown, Peter
Wilson, Curtis
Bloom, Allan
Klein, Jacob
Pitt, William
Ducoff, Rabbi Bernard
King William Players
Friday night lecture
Lecture schedule
-
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9d74f5084d00cfa6fe701bd8d78d3530
PDF Text
Text
v _ THE
.•··.J'
'sReview
r St. a
Jl
'f
I
l
,i' '"i
l
'
.I
l
Spring, 1985
�f
Editor:
J. Walter Sterling
Managing Editor:
Anita Kronsberg
Poetry Editor:
Richard Freis
Editorial Board:
Eva Brann
S. Richard Freis,
Alumni representative
Joe Sachs
Cary Stickney
Curtis A. Wilson
Unsolicited articles, stories, and poems
are welcome, but should be accompanied by a stamped, self-addressed
envelope in each instance. Reasoned
comments are also welcome.
The St. John's Review (formerly The College) is published by the Office of the
Dean, St. John's College, Annapolis,
Maryland 21404. Edwin J. Delattre,
President, George Doskow, Dean. Published thrice yearly, in the winter,
spring, and summer. For those not on
the distribution list, subscriptions:
$12.00 yearly, $24.00 for two years, or
$36.00 for three years, payable in advance. Address all correspondence to
The St. John's Review, St. John's College,
Annapolis, Maryland 21404.
Volume XXXV1, Number 2
Spring, 1985
© 1985 St. John's College; All rights
reserved. Reproduction in whole or in
part without permission is prohibited.
ISSN 0277-4720
Composition: Best Impressions, Inc.
Printing: St. John's College Press
Cover: From the east pediment of the
Temple of Aphaia on Aegina. Fallen
warrior, Parian marble. Length 1.85 m.
ca. 490/480 B.C. Munich, Glyptother 85
�THE
StJohn's Review
Contents
3
Groups, Rings, and Lattices
Curtis Wilson
12
Sartorial (poem)
Elliott Zuckerman
13
The Logic of Morality
Allen Clark
25
Social Science and Humanism
Leo Strauss
30
Reply to Tertullian (poem)
M. L. Coughlin
31
Achilles and Hector: The Homeric Hero
Part I Style
Seth Benardete
BoOK REVIEWS
59
. . . . . The White Rose: Munich 1942-43
The Short Life of Sophie Scholl
- Beate Ruhm von Oppen
63
A Lover's Afterthought (poem)
Max Dublin
64
The Effects of Gravity on Health (poem)
Max Dublin
i
i
'
�I know that I speak not only for myself but for the whole community, and especially for those of us associated with The St. John's Review, when I express my sadness at the death of Thomas Parran.
It was not unexpected. He had been recurrently ill for a long time, and the brave, unobtrusive way in which
he bore his hospitalizations and returns won the admiration of us all.
It was good to see Tom back each time and to keep up the habit of dropping into his office for some business
and a pleasant talk. Being the most courteous and gentlemanly of men, he would never fail to make one welcome, and his praise for one's writing, delivered in an unassuming but convincing way, was always a pleasure
to come away with.
He was the Managing Editor of the Review for so many years that I came to think of him as the guardian
spirit of its appearance, the more so since he had a fine eye for layout. We would sometimes chat about the
articles he was preparing for the printer, and it seemed to me that his private judgments were very acute as well.
St. John's College and the Review have lost a good and devoted friend, and we shall miss him.
Eva Brann
It was shortly after I became editor of The St. John's Review that Tom Parran's cancer came out of remission.
From my first meeting with him I had been impressed by his manner - gentlemanly and courteous, yet entirely
down to earth. But what I shall not forget is the grace he exhibited throughout his last year and a half. At the
least to all appearances he treated his illness as but a nuisance. Never did his humor or enjoyment of life seem
diminished. His was a spirit grateful for the more than a decade that the cancer had been held in check. There
was no time when I was with him that he did not quickly deflect attention from any awareness of his health
to other matters. He showed no need for sympathy or support in his illness, though he did not exhibit impatience with expressions of concern. He formally resigned as managing editor of the Review at the end of January,
1985. Quietly and unobtrusively he passed from the life of the college, so quietly and unobtrusively that his own
passing went scarcely noticed.
Walter Sterling
�In Memoriam
Thomas Parran, Jr.
1920-1985
�THE
ST.
JoHN'S REVIEW
Spring 1985
Groups, Rings and Lattices
Curtis Wilson
The words "group, u "ring," and "lattice," as used in
modern mathematics, are names for certain kinds of
formal structure. Let me say at once that this will not be
a lecture about mathematics; I am going to attempt to discuss the nature of intellectual work, and to use the
mathematical structures, especially the group structure,
as models or paradigms of structures which, so I shall
claim, are rather generally present, either implicitly or explicitly, in the exercise of intelligence.
To describe what goes on in the exercise of intelligence
is no easy task. In a rough analogy, one might compare
thinking to riding in an airplane, and now and then going up front to do a bit of steering; the riding and even
the steering are possible without understanding what
keeps the airplane aloft and moves it forward.
This difficulty of description is rooted in the fact that
thinking involves a temporal process. The fact has several
aspects.
In the first place, whatever is accomplished in intellectual work, whatever is grasped or understood, is grasped
or understood through successive steps, by running
through connections. At a certain moment, I believe
myself justified in saying: "Now I understand the situation which I previously did not understand." What has
gone on in the interim? Well, I take it that whenever I
understand anything, whenever I grasp anything, what
is understood or grasped is a complex of elements, with
their properties and relations; if it were only a solitary
thing, without any internal complexity or any relation to
anything else, we would speak not of understanding but
Curtis Wilson is a tutor and former dean at St. John's College, Annapolis.
Groups, Rings, and lAttices was originally delivered as a formal lecture
at St. John's College, Annapolis in September 1959.
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
perhaps of trance. In other words, understanding is
always understanding of something which is somehow
many. In the interim, then, I have been presumably tracing out the relations between elements of the situation,
presumably one by one, and then I say: "I understand
now." But at this moment in which I say that I understand, it does not seem possible that all these relations
are present to me at once, in their full significance; and
it becomes a problem as to how they are present. And in
any case, it is clear that the acquisition of any understanding involves necessarily a kind of evanescence; different
aspects of the situation to be understood have to fall successively into the background, into the past; and when
I try to understand my understanding, to grasp reflectively what has gone on in the process of understanding, it seems that I must either reactivate the original
process, step by step, or else I am liable to fall into
superficiality or false generalization.
This problem of evanescence goes beyond any single
process leading to a single act of understanding. All intellectual work is based on previous acquisitions which
have become as though embedded and submerged in
one's thinking. Previous acquisitions, in order to become
transmissible from one person to another, or even to remain accessible to one person, have in general to be
framed in words, written or spoken. And written or
spoken words exercise a seductive power; increasing
familiarity with certain words and patterns of words
makes possible a certain kind of passive and superficial
understanding; which carries us forward to another stage
without our grasping the full meaning, without our having gotten to the roots of what has been presented. Even
thinking which has seemed satisfying and adequate
always involves an interlacing of what is grasped centrally
and with a degree of clarity and distinctness, and what
is accepted passively as pre-given, often without the
3
�awareness that there is an embedded structure which
needs to be brought to light. Learning never starts from
a zero-situation, complaining members of the teaching
profession to the contrary notwithstanding.
This state of affairs with regard to past acquisitions is
inevitable, is an essential aspect of the human quest for
knowledge. I am not the first member of the human race,
nor can I actually put myself in the position of the first
member of the human race. What happened in the past
of the race cannot be resurrected and re-lived just as it
was in fact; first because the past presents us only with
a few documents and monuments, fragmentary endproducts of processes whose factual character remains inaccessible; secondly because whatever I understand of the
past is understood in my own present, and in the light
of my own interests and preoccupations. I cannot even
re-live my own past as it was in fact, for recollection differs essentially from the original experience; I cannot
abolish the fact that I now know the outcome. Moreover,
I do not even remember my own birth-! suspect that no
human being ever does-nor do I remember how I began
to emerge from the buzzing and booming confusion of
the sensations which first bombarded me. Whatever its
cause, whether it is because we forget what is painful,
as Freud says, or because we forget what is useless, as
Bergson says, this childhood amnesia seems to be universal. We are all in the situation of Adam, who according
to William James-James may not be quite the proper
authority to refer to here-was created with a navel, and
must have been rather puzzled by it, if no one told him
what it meant.
The situation with regard to past acquisitions, this
engulfment in time, is mirrored by a corresponding situation with regard to the future. Whatever I accomplish in
intellectual work remains open to modification or
qualification by a series of future investigators, including
me. If I claim to understand or grasp anything with any
kind of completeness-and the nature of this completeness is just our problem-there yet remains the open
possibility of grasping further relations, determinations,
connections, so that what has thus far been grasped appears as a special case of something else.
The difficulty of describing the mind at work lies just
in the fact that the being of the mind is its work, it is what
it does, and this doing involves temporal succession, a
coming-to-be and passing-away of moments, with a
bewildering complexity of structure which is constantly
being modified, or fading into the past.
So much for the difficulty. What I propose to do is to
start with an example of thinking, one in which there is
an advance from passive acceptance of the pre-given to
an active grasp of a situation and its parts and relations.
And then I shall try to frame a generalization on the basis
of the example, to arrive at a model or paradigm that can
be applied and tested in other cases.
Now for example.* Suppose I am asked to find the sum
*This example is given in Max Wartheimer, Productive Thinking.
4
of 1+2+3+4+5+6. (The correct answer is 21). What do
you do when you add? Ordinarily when one is asked
what the sum of 4+5 is, I suspect the answer "9" comes
immediately-we even say "without thought;" one has
been drilled in the repetition of the addition tables since
childhood, the associations are built into one's memory,
and the answer comes automatically when a situation requires it. But what if the series to be summed were much
longer? Suppose one were asked to find the sum of the
first 201 whole numbers? Adding them up successively
would be tedious, and one might have to check the additions several times to be sure of having the correct
result, which is 20,301.
Is there a shorter way? The reader may know that there
is a formula for the sum of any such series; it is n(n + 1)/2,
where n is the last term of the series. Use of the formula
involves merely a recognition of the cases to which it is
applicable, a substitution for n, and a multiplication and
a division, based on memorized tables.
But someone will undoubtedly ask: how do we know
that this formula is correct? The answer is, of course, that
we can prove it. There are several proofs, but let me give
one which can be stated very briefly. I write the series
down twice, mice in the usual way and the second time,
just underneath, in reverse order:
1 + 2 + 3 + ..... + (n-2) + (n-1) + n
n + (n-1) + (n-2) + ..... + 3 + 2 + 1
(n+1) + (n+1) + (n+1) + ..... + (n+1) + (n+1) + (n+1)
Then if I add the two terms in each vertical column, I find
the sum in each case to be (n + 1). There are n such sums,
that is, just as many as there-are terms in the series. So
the sum of the series taken twice is n(n + 1), and the sum
of the series taken just once is half that, or n(n + 1)/2.
All right. I have gone through the proof, nodding in
assent at each step, and my conclusion is that the formula is true. I may still be left with a vague sense of
dissatisfaction, as though a neat trick had been performed
which I clid not fully understand; insight may still be lacking. I can still ask why the formula is correct; more
specifically, what is the connection between the fonn of
the series and the sum of its terms? Why is just this particular formula the formula for this particular kind of
series, a series of this form?
There is a clue to the answer in the proof I have just given,
but let me return to a particular case, the series
1+2+3+4+5+6. First I note that the series has a direction of increase going from left to right:
1+2+3+4+5+6.
Next, an obvious remark, but one that will prove decisive.
The increase from left to right involves a corresponding
decrease from right to left:
1+2+3+4+5+6.
If I go from left to right, from the first number to the sec-
SPRING 1985
�ond, there is an increase of one; if I go from right to left,
from the last number at the right to the next preceding,
there is a decrease of one. Hence the sum of the first and
last numbers must be the same as the sum of the next
inner pair. And this must be true throughout:
1+2+3+4+5+6
~
What we grasp now can be symbolized by two arrows,
meeting in the center:
1+2+3+4+5+6
There remains only the question: how many pairs are
there? Obviously the number of pairs is one-half of all
the numbers, hence of the last number; so we get (6/2).7
as the sum, or in general (n/2)(n + 1). Here (n + 1)
represents the value of each pair, (n/2) the number of
pairs.
If one knew the formula only blindly, then expressions
of the forms (n' + n)/2 and (n + 1)(n/2) would be completely equivalent. But in view of the derivation just completed, the meaningful form is (n/2)(n + 1): we have a sum
for each pair, namely (n + 1), and then we multiply by the
number of pairs. The two factors of the product have different functions.
The formula applies equally when the series ends with
an odd number, for example:
1+2+3+4+5+6+7.
~
What is to be done with the number in the middle which
cannot be paired? Well, it turns out to be half a pair, that
is, (n + 1)12, so that all in all we have 3 + 'h or n/2 pairs,
and the formula does not change. Or better: just take the
center term and multiply it by the number of terms in
the series: 7 x 4 or n x (n + 1)/2. In the case of a series
ending with an even number, the corresponding thing
would be to take the average of the middle two terms.
In each case a central value is taken, and multiplied by n.
Now I believe we can say at this point that we have
more than a formula, a way of getting the correct answer.
I grasp, I have insight into, the relation between the formula and the form of the series, and I can go on to work
out the sums for series of different types from the type
just considered. For example, I see almost at once that
the sum of the numbers: 96+97 +98+ 102+ 103+ 104 is
600. For the terms are grouped symmetrically about 100,
and there are six terms; so six times the central value,
100, gives 600. The formula (n/2)(n + 1) now appears as
a special case only. The important thing is the basic relationship: some series show a clear relation between their
principle of construction and their sum. The relationship
uncovered here, the notion of a balance in the whole,
compensation among the parts, symmetry, has numerous
applications; it is fundamental, for instance, in the integral calculus.
Let me try to re-state and generalize what is involved
in the example. In the first place, I am presented with
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
a manifold, a many-ness of elements. The elements in
this case are numbers. In the second place, the elements
have a certain kind of order among themselves. In the
example this is what is called linear or serial order. It is
grasped initially as a relation between each term and its
inunediate successor and predecessor. In the third place,
in the course of approaching this order from opposite
sides, I come to grasp the symmetry of the situation, the
possibility of pairing off the terms symmetrically about
a central position in the series.
I would propose that any piece of intellectual work,
leading to understanding or insight of any kind,
necessarily involves a consideration of a multiplicity, a
many-ness, a manifold of elements and things, with their
properties and relations. By an "element" or "thing"
here I mean just any possible object of thought, anything
that is somehow one; by a relation, any kind of connectedness between things, any characteristic of a thing
that can be specified only through the intermediary of
another thing.
Let me add just one more term: "operation." The consideration of a manifold of things and their relations involves the performance of operations of some kind, carried out on images or symbols, or perhaps even on
physical objects. The distinction between a relation and
an operation is just that a relation holds between two or
more elements of a manifold simply in virtue of what and
how the elements are, while an operation is something
that we can perform, an action that we may will to carry
out. Equality, for instance, is a relation; addition is an
operation.
I would maintain, then, that different kinds of objects
or elements and relations or orderings of things can be
isolated and grasped only with the development of a corresponding set of operations. For instance, consider the
linear order in our example: 1< 2<3<4<5<6. The order
here is like that which I may construct by arranging different sticks, A, B, C, D, and so on, in the order of their
lengths: A<B<C<D< . . . The ordering relation is
assymmetrical-B is shorter than C but C is not shorter
than B-and transitive-B is not only shorter than C but
also than D orE or any stick farther along in the series.
The construction of such a series presupposes, first, the
operation of comparing any two of the objects and noting
the difference, the assymmetry. Then, as one learns to
proceed systematically, rather than just comparing parts
of the objects at random, a further operation is presupposed: one will try to find the smallest of the elements
first, then the smallest of those left over, and so on. Here
one is coordinating two inverse relations: Cis larger than
A orB, and is shorter than D or any longer object. In the
case of the series of numbers, the ordering presupposes
the more specific operation of getting from one number
to the next by adding 1; in fact, the understanding of what
the numbers themselves are presupposes my awareness
of the ability always to add one more, and there is a sense
in which one can say that one successively constructs or
re-constructs the numbers by this process. The discovery
5
�of symmetry in the example depended on the possibility
of applying this operation reversibly, the correlation of
increase with decrease.
Let me say a few words about kinds of order other than
linear order. Linear order is an instance of a more general
kind of order called "lattice" order, which is an instance
of a yet more general kind of order called "partial" order.
In general any set of a finite number of elements, in which
the elements are related by a single assymmetrical relation, can be presented by a diagram; the elements a, b,
c, and so on, can be represented by small circles, and an
ascending line from a to b will mean that
a is less than b, or is included in b or is,
so to speak, at the lower pole of the
assymmetrical relation between a and b.
In the case of linear order, we have
simply a series of circles placed one
above the other and connected by vertical
lines.
By drawing different diagrams one can
illustrate very different kinds of order.
For instance, suppose we have a
classification, like the classifications used
in biology, or like the one presented in
Plato's dialogue The Sophist. We start
with a class of things-call it "A"characterized by some property. Then we
subclivide A-for simplicity's sake I shall
assume that we subdivide it only into
two parts, B and B', and so on . . . A
system of class inclusions of this kind presupposes a
number of reversible OP,erations. For instance, there is the
formation of the union of D and D', the result being C1 :
D+D 1 =C1; C+C'=B; and so on. Reversely, C1 -D1 =D;
B- C' = C; and so on. Also, there is the operation of forming the intersection of any two classes, that is, forming the
class of all those elements which are in both of the given
classes; thus I write:
D x D1 = 0, because there are no elements ·common to
both D and D1;
C x B = C, because the only members which are in both
B and C are those in C. This system of class inclusions
forms a semi-lattice. Roughly speaking, in a complete lattice one would have to have the diagram end not only
in a single circle above, but also in a single circle below.
Different sorts of ordered systems will presuppose a
number of different sorts of operations, and the understanding of such systems will involve implicitly the performance of such operations.
Ordered systems such as I have described, in which
there is a set of elements !md a single, assymmetrical relation, constitute one of the simplest kinds of mathematical
structure. A more complex structure may involve several
relations. Also, there is another possibility. An operation,
such as addition, may be drawn from its hiding place
behind a relation, be given a symbol, and be incorporated
explicitly as part of a mathematical structure. Thus another
simple kind of mathematical structure will consist of a
d
6
set of elements together with a single operation; the most
important example of this kind is group structure. We
can complicate matters now by constructing systems in
which there are sets of elements, and both relations and
explicit operations. There is still another possibility.
Operations may be incorporated in a structure not only
as operations, but also as elements. That is, the character
of operations may be grasped reflectively, the operations
may themselves be made into objects of thought, and sets
of operations may be found to have an objective structure which can be described. The structure may be that
of a group, and in this case we speak of a group of transformations.
Let me summarize. I am proposing that intellectual
work consists in a consideration of a manifold of elements
and relations. At any given stage of intellectual work,
some of the elements and relations are taken as pre-given,
others are not given but are progressively isolated by
means of operations. What is taken as pregiven at any
stage itself involves sets of related operations, which may
be embedded in one's thought, but which can be unearthed by a kind of retrogressive inquiry.
The interest in this connection of the mathematical
theory of groups of transformations lies first in the fact
that the operations, which belong initially to the subjective side, are here objectivated; one is no longer performing them, one is viewing them. In the second place, the
mathematical theory of groups of trartSformations brings
to the fore the question of invariance. Given a group of
transformations, one asks what remains invariant or
unaltered under this group of transformations. Or given
a presumptive invariant, the problem is to discover the
group of transformations under which this something remains invariant. The importance of the notion of an invariant under a group of operations lies simply in the fact
that the most general or universal aim of intellectual work
is the discovery of invariants, of that which is not timebound in a fluctuant world. Every piece of intellectual
work, I should say-and I believe the remark is nothing
extraordinary-aims at the cliscovery of an invariant structure of some kind. Mathematics, in the most general
sense, is the study of formal structure. Group structure
is just one such structure. But it suggests itself as a kind
of paradigm for intellectual work generally, because it involves an explicit consideration of operation and invariant, the two poles, subjective and objective, of intellectual work. To keep these two poles in an articulate
and conscious relation with one another, I would suggest, constitutes the liberal climension of intellectual work.
In presenting the mathematical notion of a group I shall
follow the standard textbook expositions. The notion of
a mathematical group first received explicit formulation
in a letter written by Evariste Galois in 1832, on the night
before he was killed, at the age of 20, in a duel which
had nothing to do with his mathematical interests. Since
that time the theory of groups has been found to have
wide ramifications; it is applied, for instance, in relativity theory and in quantum mechanics. To begin with, I
SPRING 1985
�shall describe a simple example, having to do with the
symmetry of a rectangle, then go on to a formal definition.
Imagine a cardboard rectangle,
placed against the chalkboard so rAr------~10>'"'
that two of its edges are horizontal
and two are vertical. I label the corners of the cardboard A, B, C, D.
If I rotate the cardboard clockwise P
c.through 180 deg. about its center,
that is, the intersection of its diagonals, the cardboard will
then cover exactly the same rectangular spot on the
chalkboard as before, but now the corner A will have
taken the former place of C, C will have taken the former
place of A, and also the positions of B and D will have
been interchanged. In the mathematician's way of speaking, the rectangle has been carried into itself by a clockwise
rotation of 180 deg. Let us call this rotation R.
What about a clockwise rotation of 360 deg.? This has
the same final effect as not rotating the cardboard at all,
and so does a rotation through any integral number of
whole revolutions. Before considering these, let me ask
also about counter-clockwise rotations. You will see, I
hope, that a counter-clockwise rotation of 180 deg. has
the same final effect as a clockwise rotation of 180 deg.;
that is, the letters A, B, C, D will be carried into the same
final positions in either case. Even if I rotate the rectangle
through 360 deg. plus 180 deg. in either direction, or
through 720 deg. plus 180 deg. in either direction, the
final result is always the same. Because of this state of
affairs, it will be well if we change our definition of R;
henceforth let us mean by R any rotation which interchanges the position of A with the position of C, and the
position of B with the position of D. R refers to any one
of a whole class of rotations, or in mathematical language,
designates a transformation. A transformation is specified
completely by its initial and final positions; the path from
the one to the other is unimportant for Bpecifying the
transformation.
The transformation so far
~
described exhibits the rota/
~ )l
tiona/ symmetry of the recI
tangle. There are two addiI
tional transformations which
carry the rectangle into itself, 1-1
__ ___ _ _e- _
-- +I..
and which exhibit the reflective
symmetry of the rectangle.
:D
Thus we may reflect the rec1
tangle about a horizontal axis
'
running through its center. This transformation carries
A into D and D into A, and it carries B into C and C into
B. Let us call this transformation H. Similarly, we may
reflect the rectangle about the vertical line through its
center; let us call this transformation V.
What happens if 1 perform two of these transformations
in succession? For instance, suppose I first perform R,
t/\
and then V. Starting from the initial
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
Bl
position~~~~'
I
Ii~ j,
I~;
1-
first obtain
and then
But this is the same
final result I would obtain if I simply performed H. To
symbolize the situation, I write RV = H, where the letters
Rand V in succession, written like an algebraic product,
mean that I first perform R and then V. The same sort
of result occurs in other cases: if I perform two of the
transformations in succession, the result is always the
same as the third transformation. In symbols,
RV=H=VR, VH=R=HV, HR=V=RH.
What if I perform R twice in succession? The result is
a total rotation of 360 deg., and I have simply returned
to the starting-point. I get the same result if I perform
H twice, flipping the rectangle twice over the horizontal
axis, or if I perform V twice. In order to be able to write
equations in these cases also, we do something a bit
strange; we speak of any rotation or motion which carries the cardboard from its initial position back into its
initial position as the identity transformation-although
it is not really a transformation at all-and we symbolize
it by "I." The transformation I has the same sort of function as zero in the addition of numbers, and the reason
for introducing the one is about the same as the reason
for introducing the other. I can now write:
R1 =H'=V1 =1.
(fhe superscript "2" just means that the transformation
is performed twice in succession.)
Adding I now to our list of transformations, we have
four all told; there are no other transformations,
distinguishable from these four, which carry the rectangle
into itself; and I say that these four transformations, along
with the ways in which they combine, tell us all there
is to say about the symmetry of the rectangle. To say a
figure is symmetrical is to say that there is a set of
transformations which carry the figure into itself. In the
case of a square there are eight transformations in the set;
in the case of a cube there are 48; and so on.
So much for the example; I have now to show that it
exemplifies group structure. In order to have a group in
this technical sense, it is necessary first of all to have a
set of somethings-in our case, transformations-and
secondly to have a way of combining any two of the
somethings-in our case the operation of combining or
"multiplying" transformations by performing them one
after another. Let the somethings, the elements of the
system, be designated by lower case letters a, b, c, ...
, and let the combining operation be designated by a circle: o. Such a system will constitute a group if four conditions hold:
(1) The result of combining two elements of the set is
itself a member of the set; in symbols: a o b = c. This
particular condition is so important that it is sometimes
referred to as the group property. In our example it is clear
that it applies: the result of performing any two of the
four transformations in succession is itself one of the four
transformations.
(2) There must exist an identity element-! shall
7
I
1
'
t
(.
'
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�designate it by "I" -which is such that when it is combined with any given element then the result of the combination is the given element again; in symbols: a o I =
I o a = a. In our example it is clear that there is an identity transformation fulfilling this condition.
(3) For each element there must be an inverse element,
such that when any element is combined with its inverse,
the result is the identity element. To symbolize this I shall
designate the inverse of any element a by a- 1; then the
condition stated in symbols is: a o a-1 = a- 1 o a = I. In
our case it turns out that all four transformations are their
own inverses. This is a somewhat special situation, but
it is still true that the condition is satisfied.
(4) Finally, there is a condition called "associativity:"
when three elements a, b, care to be combined, it makes
no difference whether I first combine a and b and then
combine the result with c, or first combine b and c and
then combine a with the result. In symbols: a o (b o c)
= (a o b) o c. It can be shown that the transformations
of our example, taken three at a time, obey this associative
law.
I give a few more illustrations of groups, to help fix in
mind these four conditions, especially the first three,
which are most important for what follows. Countless
other examples can be found in any textbook on group
theory.
The positive and negative integers, including zero,
form a group under the operation of addition. Oearly the
sum of any two integers is an integer. The identity element is zero, and the inverse of each integer a is -a. This
group is actually a subgroup of a larger group, in which
the elements are all the positive and negative integers and
fractions-all the rational numbers, we say-and in which
the operation is again addition, and the identity element
zero.
The positive and negative rational numbers, excluding
zero, form a group under the operation of multiplication.
Thus the product of any two rational numbers is a rational
number. The identity element is 1, since 1 multiplied by
any given rational number yields as a result the given
number again. The inverse of any rational number a is
what is usually called its reciprocal, that is 1/a; for the
product of a and 1/a is always the idenhty element 1. Zero
has to be excluded here because it has no reciprocal.
If we consider all positive .and negative rational
numbers under the operations both of addition ahd
multiplication, we obtain an example of a type of structure called a field. A field, in turn, is a special instance
of a type of structure called a ring.
Now I am proposing group structure as ·a kind of
paradigm of the structures involved in rationality, in the
exercise of intelligence. Let me try to justify the proposal
in terms of the characteristics of a group.
In the first place, the presence of group structure means
that we have a closed system. To say that a system is closed
means that the combination of two elements of the system
always yields an element of the system, something of the
same kind as the somethings I began with. If I combine
8
two musical tones, in the sense of sounding them either
in succession or simultaneously, the result is not a musical
tone, but something different, a melodic move or one of
the intervals of harmony. But two colors, in the form of
two pigments or colored lights, can always be mixed to
form a color, if you include white and black and gray as
colors. And two sentences when combined by such connectives as "and," "or/' but," "although," form
sentences. And so on. The importance of the group property, that is, the property of a system in virtue of which
it is closed, is that it provides a criterion of relevance and
a means of distinguishing one subject matter from
another, or one level of consideration of a subject matter
from another level, or one kind of invariant from another.
On any particular level of discourse, the group structure
provides a paradigm of completeness; it lies at the root
of the fact that there are just five regular solids, for instance, or just 32 types of crystals. When more than one
level is involved, the group property may provide a
criterion for distinguishing them.
In the second place, because of the fact that every element in a group has an inverse, any given application
of the combining operation can be reversed. If I add 7
to 5 and so obtain 12, I can always proceed to add the
inverse of 7, namely -7, to 12 and so obtain 5 again,
returning to the starting-point. In other words, operations
are reversible. This reversibility is an essential characteristic of an operation. All operations are actions,
whether carried out on physical objects, images, or symbols; but not all actions are reversible. If I write down a
sentence, going from the left to the right side of the paper,
the action is irreversible, in the sense that I cannot write
the sentence from right to left Without first going through
the labor of acquiring a totally new habit. Or if I act out
of a passion, for instance wrath or love, the actions entails consequences which cannot simply be reversed, and
I cannot return exactly to the original starting-point.
Reversibility is, I believe, an essential condition of rationality. I would hypothesize that the possibility of progression and return, with reference to an invariant point
of origin, lies at the basis of every exercise of the
intelligence.
Thirdly, I return to the notion of invariance under a
group of transformations. The reversibility of operations,
also perhaps their associativity, the possibility of performing then in different orders without changing the
end-result, give them a certain neutrality. If I cut down
a tree, the action is irreversible, and the world has been
irrevocably changed. But if I take ten steps eastward, I
can reverse the operation, taking ten steps westward; the
first operation is annulled by the second. That which remains invariant under a set of such operations may, as
the operations are carried out, emerge as an organizing
principle. For instance, taking ten steps east and then
again ten steps west, I experience a kaleidoscopic flow
or series of shifting views of colors and shapes, which
I organize in terms of the notions of physical object and
spatial framework. There is a physical object over there,
11
SPRING 1985
�another beside it to the left, another behind it, and so on.
I would propose, then, that invariants such as physical
objects do not swim ready-made into our ken, as complete, pre-given wholes. The discovery of invariants goes
hand in hand with the development of sets or groups of
reversible operations. We attempt to assimilate new experience in terms of previously developed operational
structures; sometimes everything does not go smoothly,
we are thwarted in our attempt, and have to accommodate the operations to what is presented. The progress
of knowledge proceeds in two complementary directions,
in the direction of increasing articulation of experience
as organized in terms of invariants, and in the direction
of increasing awareness of operations as being in equilibrium and as forming groups. This twofold progress
enables the individual subject to place himeself within
the world as part of a coherent whole.
The progressive emergence of the physical object as an
invariant involves the development of a number of groups
of operations. These have been traced out in some detail
in the experiments of Jean Piaget on the child's conception of space. There is, for instance, the group of Euclidean transformations, also the group of projective
transformations and the group of topological transformations. The Euclidean transformations are those which
carry every point of space into another point, either by
the translation of every point by a given amount in a given
direction and sense, or by a rotation of all space, thought
of as a rigid body, about a point or line, or by a combination of a translation with a rotation, that is, a twist. All
these transformations, which are infinitely many, form
a group. What remains invariant under this group of
transformation is the congruence of geometrical figures,
that is equality of size and sameness of shape. Euclidean
geometry is largely the study of what remains invariant
under this group of transformations.
Secondly, there are the projective transformations. Suppose I project a plane figure from one plane to another
by means of straight lines running from my eye through
the first plane to the second. Any given point in the
original figure will have a corresponding point in the second plane, located by means of the line which passes
through my eye and the given point of the original figure.
Straight lines in the original figure are carried into straight
lines in the new figure, but angles and lengths in the
original figure may differ markedly from angles and
lengths in the new figure; thus neither size nor shape is
conserved. The projective transformations, however,
form a group; and projective geometry is the study of
what remains invariant under this group. What remains
invariant, principally the straightness of lines, the incidence of points on lines, and something called the crossratio of four points on a line, is what enables us to correlate different perspective views of an object as being
views of the same object.
Finally, the topological transformations. Topological
transformations are those which carry one figure into
another in such a way that to every point of the one figure
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
there corresponds a single point of the other, and points
that are nearby or neighboring in the one figure remain
nearby or neighboring in the other. Figures can be
stretched and shrunk and enormously distorted under
topological transformations. A circle can be transformed
into a square or an ellipse, but not into a straight line;
a sphere into a cube but not into the figure of a doughnut.
The relations which remain invariant under such transformations, relations like contiguity, surrounding or being
surrounded, closure or lack of closure, constitute the subject matter of topology.
I have listed these three branches of geometry in the
historical order in which they have been made subjects
of mathematical study. It is Piaget' s conclusion that the
order of development in the child is just the reverse. The
child grasps topological invariants before projective invariants, and projective invariants before Euclidean invariants. Each of these acquisitions presupposes the ability to carry out, in part physically but more importantly
in the imagination, a corresponding group of operations.
Topological invariants can be established before there is
a clear demarcation between the operating subject and
the objects operated on. Projective invariants involve the
correlation of different visual points of view, and hence
presuppose the child's realization that he is seeing from
a point of view. Here the polar opposition between self
and world, subject and object, begins to crystallize out.
Only with the attainment of equilibrium of the Euclidean
operations does the physical object appear in its final
character, as an ideal unity within a spatial framework,
over against the observer, accidentally where it is and
capable of being somewhere else, capable of presenting
constantly different aspects, but never of presenting itself
all-at-once as a whole.
There is one other sort of invariant, radically different
from the physical object, which I wish to take up, namely
idea. But first it is necessary that I consider yet another
kind of thing, another sort of invariant if you wish,
namely word. Words are in general the medium through
which the result of any piece of intellectual work becomes
the possession of more than one man; and operations
with words, as well as with images and physical objects,
may be importantly involved in the original carrying out
of the work. What is a word?
As I talk to you now, we in this room are aware of
sounds corning from my mouth. The sounds, considered
just as sounds, are part of the world of nature, the world
of physical objects and processes occurring in space and
time. As sounds, they do not differ from the sounds of
nature, the sounds produced by brooks and breezes; each
one is a temporal event, occurring during a certain time,
and apprehended at certain places.
We sometimes speak of a sound being repeated; we say
that we have heard the same sound, for instance the
sound of a whistle, several times repeated. If we were
strict, we would say, not that the sounds are the same,
but that they are similar, in the same way that we say
that giraffes are similar, or objects produced on an
9
I
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�assembly line are similar. Each sound is an individual temporal process; everything belonging to the world of
nature is individuated in space and time. No two individuals belonging to the world of nature, whether
physical object or temporal event, can be precisely the
same; but two such individuals may be similar.
I submit, however, that I can repeat the same word
twice. A word is identifiable as identically the same word
in any number of real individual embodiments, whether
sounds or concatenations of written characters. I can
repeat exactly what I said before, if you failed to catch the
words. Therefore the words are not the sounds, but are
rather embodied in the sounds. This no doubt seems a
bit strange.
We have a similar problem-perhaps the same problem,
I am not quite sure-when we ask what a symphony or
a folk dance is, independent of its individual performances; or what the Iliad is, independent of a thousand
copies or a thousand recitations of it.
I do not believe that the word can be defined as a class
of similar sounds or marks. When I grasp a word as embodied in a sound, the action is different from grasping
the fact, for instance, that an individual animal belongs
to the class of giraffes. One has to try to ascertain precisely
what it means to speak or to listen to speech.
Listening now to the sounds coming from my mouth,
we are aware of these sounds as having functions which
merely natural processes lack. Seeing my body and hearing my voice, we are aware of me as willing the sounds
and giving expression to thoughts which I wish to communicate. We apprehend the sound of my voice as manifesting certain psychic processes and as embodying expressions of certain meanings or ideas.
The word, then, is intrinsically relative to psychic or
subjective activities. Within the objective world, there are
many things which are thus relative to psychic activities.
The qualification of anything as familiar or strange, useful
or useless, as a tool or monument, as a slave or a king,
presupposes the existence of psycho-physical beings who
use things for intended ends or goals. We encounter here
a new stratum of the world, over and above the stratum
of the inclividual objects and processes of nature; let us
call it the cultural stratum. The cultural stratum includes
some things which are individuated in space and time,
such as ashtrays, but it also includes objects like words
and symphonies whlch are not inclividuated in space and
time, but which can be repeatedly embodied in particular
spatio-temporal inclividuals, physical objects or processes.
The fact that words and symphonies are not spatiotemporal individuals does not make them any the less
objective. Through their embodiments, they are observable, distinguishable, repeatedly identifiable somethings;
one can ask questions and make verifiable judgments
about them.
In the grasping of such cultural invariants, there is
presupposed the fact that I belong to a community, with
established customs and traditions. I must have recognized myself as one among other psychophysical beings,
10
as one man among other men, who can intend the same
things as I. This recognition presupposes in turn the
establishment of certain modes of transaction, reversible
operations in whlch I put myself imaginatively in the
place of another man, in whlch I identify myself, in certain respects, with every man.
Words, embodied in sounds or written characters, not
only manifest psychic activities; they express meanings
or ideas. An idea is not itself a psychlc activity; it is not,
so to speak, within consciousness. Consciousness is
always consciousness of something; thls somethlng is an
object of some kind; and an idea is one such kind of object. When I grasp an idea, I grasp it with the sense that
it is something I can return to and see or grasp on another
occasion; also, that it is possible for someone else to grasp
it, too. We can ask questions about ideas, and make
testable statements about them; they fulfill the criteria for
objectivity, although they are not physical objects. On the
other hand, they may be exemplified or illustrated in
physical objects or processes or relations, as the idea of
giraffe is exemplified by a particular giraffe, or the idea
of equality is illustrated in the relation with respect to
weight or size of two particular boclies. But it belongs to
the idea of idea that an idea can be entertained in the
absence of any physical exemplification of it.
The grasping of an idea presupposes certain judgments,
and prefigures other judgments. We cannot sharply
separate the making of judgments and the grasping of
ideas, as though the ideas were first grasped, and then
judgments were then built out of conjunctions of ideas
the way a house is built out of bricks. Every judgment,
every grasping of a relation, presupposes operations such
as comparison, classification, seriation, and the ideas can
emerge clearly only as these operations reach equilibrium.
In large part, ideas are presented to us through the
medium of speech and writing, as presumptive invariants.
Most words are encountered as familiar; we understand
them in the sense of being vaguely, passively conscious
of their meaning. An intellectual conscience will propose
the task of making this meaning distinct, of articulating,
one by one, the parts of thls vaguely unitary sense.
One of the most important procedures
here is just the free variation of the image which comes with the word. As the
operations become established whereby
I pass from one form of the image to
another, varying one factor at a time,
they tend to assume the equilibrium of
group structure. Suppose, for instance,
that I uncover four variants of the image (see figure); once
I can pass from any one form to any other by carrying
out a specific variation, then the operations form a group;
any two of them are equivalent to a third, and each is
its own inverse.
Besides this free but disciplined use of fantasy, there
are the operations on symbols employed in hypothetical
or deductive reasoning. Like fantasy, hypothetical reasoning is a way of dealing with what is physically absent;
SPRING 1985
�it enables us to draw out the implications of possible
statements; and to discover invariants which fall outside
the range of empirical verification, for instance the law
of inertia.
The diagram I have just drawn will remind some of you
of the traditional square of opposition, which is involved
in what are called immediate inferences. The grasping of
the relations involved in the square presupposes the
establishment of operations whereby any one of the four
propositional forms is transformed into any other, and
the six operations or transformations form a group.
Again, a group of operations is involved in the part of
logic which deals with the propositional connectives, such
as "and/' and 0t/' "if-then," "neither-nor," ~~unless,"
together with the sign of negation of a proposition,
namely "not." Given any two propositions, p and q, we
can construct sixteen fundamental propositional forms by
means of these connectives, for instance, p and q, p or
q, if p then q, if q then p, and so on. All sixteen forms
can be expressed by means of the three logical words
"and," "for," and "not." The sixteen forms, thus expressed, constitute the elements of a lattice. More important, the operations whereby one of these forms can be
transformed into another constitute a group.
Let me try to recapitulate what I have been saying. The
work of the mind-and the mind simply is its work-is
a process of attending to and grasping situations, affairs,
complexes of elements that are somehow presented, and
explicating them with respect to such of their detenninations and relations as are likewise presented. There is no
zero starting-point for inquiry, but in any inquiry
something is accepted initially as pre-given. Then either
of two directions may be taken; either further invariant
relations are sought by tracing out the connections between the elements, which continue to be taken as pregiven, or else the pre-given elements themselves become
the problem, and it is necessary to reactivate the embedded relations and connections upon which the grasp11
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
ing of them depends. But whether the work proceeds progressively or retrogressively, it always involves operations, that is, actions which are reversible and repeatable.
To say that I understand a situation is to say that I have
performed the operations of tracing out the relations in
the situation, and have the clear sense that I can perform
them again. Completeness of understanding on any level
implies that the operations have attained the equilibrium
of group structure, so that the transformations taking us
from any one element of the situation to any other have
become explicit. The structure of operations thus becomes
cyclical and transparent to what is operated on; new invariants may now come into view, or what has previously
been taken as invariant may appear for the first time with
clear boundaries.
We are prone to ask ultimate questions, and inevitably
we ask how far this process goes and where it may arrive. Does there exist, at the summit of the hierarchy of
structures, a pure form, the form of forms, of which every
other form or structure is a refracted image? Can the
edifice of forms traced out in intellectual work have completeness or is there inevitably something left out,
something which is inaccessible to the intellect? Plato and
Aristotle recognized some such thing called Necessity or
Matter, which kept the world from being completely intelligible. jerusalem, in opposition to Athens, has insisted
that the highest principle is not accessible to the human
intellect, and that our chief duty is loving submission
rather than inquiry. Contemporary existentialism has
claimed that the intellect itself is corrupt; that the freedom
from engulfment in time which it pretends to give us is
an illusion; and that the identification which it brings
about between the self and everyman is a bar to direct
knowledge of our existence and its mortality. But wherever the truth lies here, it is clear that the explication of
these opposing positions, the drawing out of their consequences in every detail, is itself a task for the intellect
at work.
11
�Sartorial
How I envy men who remember what
They know! They slide the wall of a walk-in closet
And seize the robe that fits, show us the cut
And cloth, the designer's label for that particular
Paisley. And their drawers, how organized
They are, while mine are muddled and anyway stick
In every season. My birds are rarely in
Their cages, and my wardrobe is a warren
Of what is worn or otherwise unwearable,
For stripes and tartans clash. It's easier
To go out and buy a suit,
And in discussion over gin or scotch,
To think up something green, that will not match
And isn't in the best tradition
And will not be remembered.
Elliott Zuckerman
Elliott Zuckerman is a ttitor at St. John's College, Annapolis.
12
SPRING 1985
�The Logic of Morality
Allen Oark
Introduction
Ethics is perhaps of all subjects the driest and tritest,
and it is fortunate that it is so, for the triteness of ethics
is testimony to the fact that all the basic truths of ethics
are commonplaces, tediously familiar to everyone, because they were discovered very early in the history of
the human race; and had they not been discovered very
early, the human race would not have long survived. For
ethics is concerned with those rules of human conduct
that are indispensable in order for human life to be possible and (for human life to be) worth living. Human beings had to learn the basic rules of morality very early,
for the same reason that they had to learn the basic rules
of agriculture or dietetics, very early; because otherwise
they would not have survived. Morality is, therefore,
nothing accidental or arbitraiy, no matter of mere opinion, but an indispensable necessity for human existence,
as indispensable as skill in finding food, as indispensable
as air or water. Morality, is, in short, a biological necessity
for man.
For man is, like the bees and the ants, one of the socinl
animals. But unlike the bees and the ants, he is not supplied with instincts that determine inevitably his cooperation with other members of the species. In place of
instinct he has intelligence; and the incomparable superiority of intelligence over instinct is its capacity for error. Those who repeat the ancient apothegm Human urn
est errare, ''to err is human,'' speak more wisely than they
know. For this apothegm may be taken, not only as an
observation about man, but as a definition of man. Man
Allen Oark, formerly a tutor at St. John's College, Annapolis, delivered
The Logic of Morality as a formal lecture at St. John's College·, Annapolis in 1970.
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
is of all animals, the most prone to error; the dangers that
other animals avoid through instinct, he must avoid
through foresight; the flickering light of his intellect illumines his path but a few paces ahead. He lives in
awareness of constant dangers, which his intellect is
strong enough to foresee, but too weak to forestall.
The greatest of these dangers is death. All animals must
die; but only man knows that he must die. The fear of
death is, therefore, a peculiarly human burden, and a
peculiarly human privilege. Because he knows that he
must die, he can dream of inunortality. Because he knows
that the individual must die, he can dream of perpetuating his nation or his race. He can thus dream of values
that transcend his own body and his own life-and can
devote himself to merely imagined goals. And by so doing he enters upon the ethical life.
What is the Criterion of Ethics?
Most fundamental of the questions that are raised concerning ethical matters is the question of the ultimate
criterion of ethics: on what basis shall we judge an action
to be right or wrong? The most immediate answer, of
course, is that we judge an action to be right or wrong
according to some accepted moral code. It is 'right' if it
conforms to the accepted moral code, and 'wrong' if it
violates this code. But we soon become aware that there
are different moral codes, that what has been accepted
in one time and place has been condemned at other times
and places, and that even moral philosophers-who
might be expected to take broader views of such
matters-have tended all too often to differ with each
other even more than do the generality of mankind.
Therefore we are forced, as soon as we reflect at all upon
the questions of moral conduct, to consider the question
13
�of what is the ultimate standard, if any, by which the
various moral codes, and moral philosophies, are
themselves to be judged. Is there any universal moral
standard, and, if so, what is it?
Relativism
Some may attempt to escape this question by saying,
''There is no universal moral standard; it is right for each
man to follow whatever moral customs happen to be accepted in his community." This is the position known
as Moral Relativism, which has a good deal of prestige
these days. But of course it may be pointed out that even
this position does enunciate a universal rule as binding
upon all men without exception, namely, that each man
ought to follow the moral customs of his own community. The position of Moral Relativism, therefore, is after
all a form of moral absolutism; it does enunciate a single
moral criterion which it asserts to be valid for all men
everywhere; and this criterion is the criterion of
CONFORMITY.
Or, taking a slightly different view, the relativist may
say, not that conformity to custom is right, but that it is
what is everywhere CJllled "right.'' Nothing really is right
or wrong, but men call things right or wrong according
to their various customs. What is called right in Persia
may be called wrong in Greece. We call cannibalism
wrong, but the cannibals call it right, and so on. Hence
there are no universal standards.
Now of course the mere fact that men differ in their
moral views does not prove that there are no universal
moral values; for there may be ways of showing that some
moral opinions are sounder than others.
Furthermore, if the relativist says that "right" simply
means "customary/' and 11 wrong" simply means ~~con
trary to custom," he is mistaken. For that is not the way
we use the words "right" and "wrong." We often admire martyrs and rebels and social reformers; we often
say that it was right for a man to violate the customs of
his time and place; that it was right for Christian martyrs
to defy the Roman emperors; that it was right for abolitionists in mid-nineteenth century America to violate the
Fugitive Slave Law. We can even see some moral value
in nonconformity within our present society.
Societies are not always monolithic. There are groups
within groups, and a man who conforms to the moral
code of his family may ipso facto violate that of his
neighborhood; or by conforming to his neighborhood, he
may defy his community; or by conforming to his community, he may outrage his tribe, or his nation. If there
is no universal standard, then by which of these many
conflicting standards should a man be judged?
The statement. that a man should be judged only by the
customs of his time and place contains, furthermore,
another ambiguity. Does it mean merely that a man's action must be interpreted in the light of the prevailing
customs; or does it mean that his action must be appraised
only by the standards of his group or culture? If, when
14
visiting China, I see the victorious party in a law-suit press
money into the palm of the judge, I cannot know whether
this was a bribe or merely the payment of a legal fee until I know the customs of the country. But if I discover
that the payment was indeed intended as a bribe, then
I am by no means obligated to condone the act merely
because bribery is condoned in China. If the bribe leads
the judge to deprive a man of his legal rights, then it is
unjust, no matter how completely such injustice may be
accepted in that society.
If the relativists deny our right to criticize customs by
any more general moral standard, then, in effect, they
make each custom an absolute; and I do not see how they
can logically stop short of making each particular man's
behavior an absolute, a law unto itself; and regarding
each man's moral judgments as relevant only to himself.
Moral Subjectivism
The most extreme of the moral relativists have done exactly this, and have adopted the position known as Moral
Subjectivism, which holds that when a man says, for example, "Stealing is wrong," all that he means to say is
"I disapprove of stealing." Hence every moral judgment
is merely a statement about the speaker's own attitudesa piece of his autobiography.
The absurdity of this doctrine is immediately shown by
the following fact. If, when I say, "War is wrong," all
I mean is that I disapprove of war; and, when you say,
"War is not wrong," all you mean is that you don't disapprove of war, then there is no conflict between our two
statements. For it may perfectly well be the case that I
do disapprove of war and you don't. Hence both our
statements are true, mine for me and yours for you, and
hence we don't disagree about anything after all!
This apparently absurd conclusion was, however, embraced by the most extreme of the moral subjectivists,
Alfred Ayer, in his little book Language, Truth, and Logic,
published in 1936. In this book, Ayer says we never do
disagree in our moral judgments, for the simple reason
that all moral judgments are meaningless, and hence they
can't possibly disagree with each other. According to Ayer,
a moral judgment is not even a statement at all; it is a mere
expression of emotion, equivalent to a grunt or a cry. I
quote some relevant passages from Ayer' s book:
"The presence of an ethical symbol in a proposition
adds nothing to its factual content. Thus if I say to someone, 'You acted wrongly in stealing that money,' I am
not stating anything more than if I had simply said, 'You
stole that money.' In adding that this action is wrong,
I am not making any further statement about it. I am
simply evincing my moral disapproval of it. It is as if I
had said, 'you stole that money!' in a peculiar tone of
horror ... The tone of horror adds nothing to the literal
meaning of the sentence. It merely serves to show that
the uttering of it is attended by certain feelings in the
speaker.
SPRING 1985
I
�"If now I generalise my previous statement and say
'stealing is wrong,' I produce a sentence which has no
factual meaning-that is, expresses no proposition which
can be either true or false. It is as though I had uttered
the word 'stealing!' in a peculiar tone of horror. The tone
of horror would express my feelings about stealing, but
it would not be equivalent to any proposition at all."
The ethical compenent of any utterance is simply the
overtone of approval or disapproval which it conveys; or,
in short, the emotive tone of the utterance. For this reason,
Alfred Ayer' s interpretation of ethical judgments has
come to be known as the Emotive Theory of Ethics.
The Emotive Theory of Ethics seemed to its followers
and its opponents alike to represent the utter destruction
of ethics, the complete reduction of what had been
thought mankind's noblest utterances to the level of mere
animal grunts and grimaces. Needless to say, in conservative quarters Alfred Ayer was regarded as the very devil
of the schools, an image of Satan himself.
But may not his followers and opponents alike have
been overhasty? I suggest that we, having pursued the
argument to the very pit of Hell, as it were, should follow
the example of Dante, and climb through this modern
Satan into starlight, at least, if not daylight, on the other
side of the world.
Suppose then, that Alfred Ayer were right in saying
that our moral judgments merely evince our moral approvals and disapprovals. Still, is not the most significant fact of all the very fact that men do feel moral approval
and disapproval? The very point with which Ayer concludes his demolition of ethics, namely that moral
judgments are emotional, should be the point at which
the real ethical investigation begins-namely, that we
human beings care about moral problems, that moral
problems do enlist our loyalities, our enthusiams, our
love, and hate, and fear. Of course, men are emotional
about ethics, because ethics concerns the very things that
we care most deeply about. The very argument by which
Ayer and his followers attempt to show that moral judgments are meaningless seems to me to show, on the contrary, that moral judgments are intensely meaningful.
Indeed, if men never became emotional about moral
issues, morality would be of as little importance to us as
astronomy. If moral judgments were merely factual propositions, like those of physics, they would impose as
little moral obligation upon us as do those of physics.
Moral judgments couldn't do what we need to have them
do unless they were, at least in part, emotive utterances.
For our moral feelings are already our commitments to
action; a man who deeply feels a repugnance at stealing
is already prepared to refrain from stealing and to deter
others from stealing. An honorable man is not a man who
merely knows that certain deeds are shameful; he is man
who would feel shame at his dishonorable deeds.
Therefore we must agree, I think, with the emotive
theory as far as it goes, and say that a genuine moral judgment contains at least some overtone of moral feeling,
of moral approval or disapproval. But-and here is the
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
important point-it con,tains a great deal more than that.
For when I say, for example, "War is wrong," I don't
mean merely "I hate war" -though, in fact, I do hate war.
What I mean is "I hate war, and you should, too; and
you would, too, if you really understood it." I mean that
I not only disapprove of war, but I disapprove of anyone's
not disapproving of war, and I approve of anyone's disapproving of war. Our moral approvals are second-order approvals, so to speak; that is, approvals of approvals. What
we morally approve of, we necessarily approve of approving of-and, indeed, approve of approving of approving
of, and so on, to third-order, fourth-order, and higherorder approvals. Hence the very notion of moral approval
seems to contain within it a potential infinity of higherorder approvals.
Universality
Now have we not, with this notion of higher-orderedness,
arrived at the distinguishing characteristic of moral
judgments, moral feelings, moral attitudes? The very
distinction between righteous indignation and simple
anger is that righteous indignation is anger which we approve of. When a man is righteously indignant he says "I
am angry, and I have a right to feel angry. Anyone would
feel angry in my place; or, if he didn't, he ought to." What
is morally significant here is not the anger but the feeling of justification, the feeling that is resenting an injustice
one is, for the moment, the spokesman of all mankind.
You resent the injustice, not merely because it hapened
to you, but because it is the sort of thing which you feel
that anyone would resent, and would approve of your
resenting. The greater depth and dignity of moral indignation, as compared with simple anger, comes from
the feeling of impersonality and universality that accompanies it; the feeling that your feeling would be reinorced
by the feelings of all who love justice.
Thus the emotive theory of ethics, though partly true,
has seized upon ethical questions by the wrong end.
What characterizes a moral judgment is not its emotiveness, but its universality. A proof of this is the fact that
if a man says, "Oysters are good," and you say, "Well,
I don't happen to like them," and he says, "Well, if you
don't like them you certainly don't have to eat them,"
he shows by his very tolerance that he is not making a
moral judgment, but an expression of taste. But if he were
to say, "I not only like oysters, but I demand that
everybody like oysters," then indeed he would be making a moral issue of it. Precisely what distinguishes our
judgments of taste from our judgments of morals is that
we don't demand, or even wish, that everyone should
share our tastes; whereas we do wish and demand that
everyone should share our moral judgments. If a man
were to say, "I happen to disapprove of kidnapping, but
of course I don't care whether anyone else disapproves
of it or not," we would say that he doesn't really disapprove of kidnapping; he merely dislikes it. What is essen-
15
�tial for any genuine moral judgment is that it contain an
implicit demand for universality.
Even the moral relativist, therefore, cannot finally avoid
the question of what is the universal standard of right
and wrong. He-like all other men, if they reflect upon
the matter long enough-is forced to consider the question of what it is that makes an action, or a moral rule,
or a moral code, right or wrong.
Hobbesian Theory
It seems to me that a way of approaching an answer
to this question is to ask, "Why do we need to have any
moral code at all?" And the answer to this question comes
very easily: if there were no moral code, no moral
restraints upon men, some men would take advantage
of this liberty to injure their fellow men. They would take
whatever they wanted and kill whoever stood in their
way. No man's life or property would be safe, for even
the strongest man can be easily overpowered by five or
six of the weakest. Hence all men would live in constant
fear of being robbed, wounded, or killed. No man could
trust another, for no man would feel any obligation to
keep his promises. No man could believe another, for no
man would feel any obligation to speak the truth. Hence
there could be no co-operation, nor even any communication among men, for the mutual trust and confidence
upon which these necessarily rest would have been
destroyed. Human life would indeed be, as Hobbes
described it in his Leviathan, "solitary, poor, nasty,
brutish, and short." It is morality, and morality alonewhether embodied in habit, custom, or law-that protects
us from these evils.
The basic rules of morality are those that are indispensable for the very existence of men in society; any society that tried to get along without them would soon exterminate itself, or dissolve into anarchy. The reason why
"there is honor even among thieves" is that without
some adherence to some rules of honor in their dealing
with each other, even a gang of thieves could not long
survive. One of the many tributes that vice pays to virtue is the fact that even vice cannot be successful without
making use of some of the virtues.
The Moral Law Well Known
The indispensable moral code is well known to all of
us, and is incorporated in the legal code of all civilized
communities. It has received the approval of the consensus of mankind. And indeed not accidentally, for this
code expresses the minimal set of restraints that are
necessary for the survival of the human race and human
society.
This basic moral law takes the form of a list of prohibitions, a list of "Thou shalt not's," such as "Thou shalt
not kill," "Thou shalt not steal," "Thou shalt not lie,"
16
"Thou shalt not make false promises," and so on. These
can all be summarized in a single prohibition, "Thou shalt
not injure anyone." And the quickest way to decide what
kinds of actions shall be considered injuries is to ask
yourself what kinds of actions you would resent as injuries if they were done to you. Different men may, to
be sure, resent different things, but there are cerlain things
that almost any man would resent having done to him,
and it is these generally resented injuries that may appropriately be restrained by general laws.
The Golden Rule
The fundamental principle common to all these indispensable prohibitions can therefore be summarized in
a single prohibition: "Do not do to others that which you
would not have them do to you,'' -in short, the Golden
Rule. The principle expressed by the Golden Rule might
be called the Principle of Mutuality.
a. Sympathy
The Golden Rule may be looked at from two other
standpoints, as embodying two other aspects of human
nature. First, it may be regarded as embodying the Principle of Sympathy. Such was the standpoint of Adam
Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments, published in 1759.
Human society would probably be impossible unless
most men felt some degree of sympathy with some of
their fellow men, and indeed the roots of such sympathy
seem to lie in the very structure of the human nervous
system. We tend unconsciou~ly to beat time to music, to
tap our feet in time with a march or a waltz. A crowd
watching a tight-rope walker will tend to sway unconsciously in sympathy with his movements. When we
see a man walking near the edge of a precipice, we tend
to shrink back ourselves, and to gasp when his foot slips.
Even when we are watching a stage play or a motion picture, we tend to be frightened at represented dangers,
to shrink with fear when the villain sneaks up behind the
hero, and feel an impulse to cry out a warning. Human
beings like to project themselves into the feelings of others
and to identify imaginatively with some real or fictitious
person, in history or legend, in a novel or a play.
Thus, when self-interest does not interfere, we tend
naturally to sympathize with the sufferings of another
person. We imagine what we should feel if we were in
his place and were threatened by his dangers. When we
see a man brutally assaulted by another, we tend more
naturally to sympathize with the victim than with his
assaillant, for we see what causes the fear and pain of
the victim, while we do not see what provoked the anger
or malice of the attacker.
Our sympathy with the victims of crime combines with
our fear of being victims ourselves to produce a general
consensus of feeling that crimes ought to be punished,
and that the laws ought to forbid a man to do to others
that which he would not willingly suffer himself. Sym-
SPRING 1985
�pathy and selfishness, which so often conflict, here coincide to give us a double motive for upholding those laws
that protect ourselves as well as others. Further more,
our natural sympathy, which itself was one of the fountains of morality, becomes incorporated into our moral
code as itself one of the virtues to be praised, rewarded,
and instilled in the young. Our natural tendencies toward
sympathy acquire a moral as well as a natural status; and
a man may cultivate as a moral virtue a benevolence to
which his own nature might not have inclined him. At
the very least he may learn to simulate benevolent
behavior, and to exhibit in his actions a generosity which
he may not feel in his heart.
Now the fullest development of sympathy would consist in feeling each man's pain and joy as though it were
your own. If aU men were perfectly sympathetic, then
the pain of one would be the pain of all, the joy of one
the joy of all, and hence the particular locus of the joy
of suffering would be unimportant. Each man would thus
treat all others as he would wish them to treat him,
and thus the perfect formula for the principle of sympathy
is simply the Golden Rule.
b. Rationality
Not only does the Golden Rule express the universalization of the spontaneous human emotion of sympathy; it also expresses the fullest application to ethics
of the human faculty of reason.
Human reason first begins to find application to ethics
when the accepted rules conflict, or do not seem to cover
some new kind of case, or when men disagree about what
is right-in short, when there is moral controversy. Now
in moral controversy one disputant will ask the other such
questions as "Why is lying wrong?" That is, he demands
reasons for conventionally accepted rules, and forces the
other disputant, perhaps for the first time, to look for rational grounds for his moral attitudes. It is through controversy that morality becomes rational. By the unflagging
criticism of each proposed moral principle, we reason our
way up to the highest moral principle of all, which merely
says that moral principles must be reasonable, that is,
universal, containing nothing arbitrary or accidental. As
a rule of conduct, it merely says, "So act that you could
consistently will the maxim of your action to be a universal law." In other words, "Obey the rules that you want
others to obey," or, in short, Don't make an exception
of yourself."
This is the very principle that is familiar to us all in the
demand for "fair play." When we say that someone has
behaved "unfairly," we mean that he has made an exception of himself; that he has not followed the rules that
he expects others to follow.
If we look for the formal property that characterizes all
wrong acts, such as lying, cheating, stealing, and so on,
we see that in every case the wrongdoer is behaving in
a way that even he cannot logically will that other people
behave. The cheat, for example, cannot want cheating to
become an accepted practice, for, if it were accepted, then
11
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
nobody would trust anybody, and hence he could not
cheat anybody. The liar cannot want lying to be permitted, for then no one would expect him to tell the truth,
and thus he could not deceive anyone through his lies.
Nor can the man who makes false promises want false
promises to be permitted, for then no one would trust
any promises, including his. Thus lying, cheating,
fraud-and, in general, all forms of deceit-have the
following purely formal structural property: they logically
entail the very rule that they violate. There is a kind of contradiction in the mind of the deceitful man: he wants to
deceive, and yet at the same time he wants to be forbidden to deceive. Thus the deceiver stands condemned out
of his own mouth.
Acts of violence or selfishness do not, indeed, entail
this same kind of contradiction, since they can be conceived
of as universal, but no rational man would by his own
will render them so, since he would thereby harm himself.
Thus there is a formal property of all acts that we commonly call wrong, namely, that they are acts that even
the man who commits them wants to forbid. They are
acts which no one could consistently defend on principle. They are self-condemning, like a self-contradictory
proposition in logic.
Such is the approach of Immanuel Kant, in his Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals, published in 1785. Kant
goes on to point out that we could have deduced the basic
axiom of morals from the bare concept of man as a rational
animal. For how could man express his rationality in action except by making his conduct conform to the very
principle of universality a·s such, namely, that rational
imperative:
"So act that you could consistently will the maxim of your
action to be a universal law,''
which Kant calls the Categorical Imperative.
This is, also, as you will have recognized, another form
of the Golden Rule, and it succeeds in expressing the
logical essence of the Golden Rule better than the familiar
formula of it does. For when we say, "Do unto others
as you would have them do unto you," we do not, of
course, mean that whatever specific act you want someone to perform for you, you must perform that same act
for him. Rather The Golden Rule means: "Act toward
others according to the same moral principles that you want
them to follow in their behavior toward you, and toward
all other men." And this is just the meaning that Kant
succeeded in expressing.
Now if a man is to make his maxims into universal
laws-as the Categorical Imperative says he must-then
he must (according to the Categorical Imperative) accord
the same privilege to each other man. That is, he must
accord each other man equal moral authority with himself
as a center of reason and conscience. Hence arises Kant's
second formula for the Categorical Imperative, which
reads:
17
�"So act as to treat humanity, both in your own person and
in the person of every other, never simply as a mere means,
but always at the same time as an end-in-itself."
This is the Law of Respect for Humanity, on which is
grounded the dignity of the individual.
The reason why each man is an end-in-himself is that
he is not only subject to moral laws, but also by his maxims creates moral law, insofar as his maxims agree with
those of every other rational man. Thus your maxims are
not valid moral laws unless you can conceive of their being voluntarily adopted by each rational man independently; and if they can be so adopted, they constitute what
may be called distinctively THE MORAL LAW, in capital
letters.
We thus arrive at the third formula for the Categorical
Imperative, which embodies the motion of an ideal moral
commonwealth, or Kingdom of Ends, as Kant calls it, in
which each man is both king and subject, both legislator
and citizen. No law can pass without unanimous consent;
therefore no man can be bound against his will. Yet once
a law is passed, it is inexorably enforced upon all. The
third formula of the Categorical Imperative reads:
"So act as if you were, through your maxims, a lawmaking
member of a kingdom of ends."
Now we must not make the mistake of regarding Kant's
imaginary Kingdom of Ends as a Utopia, a community
of saints, or a Kingdom of Heaven on earth. It is nothing
of the sort; nothing in its definition requires that its
citizens be good men; on the contrary we could people
it with the worst men on earth, and it would still serve
just as well as a model for morality. For under the
specified conditions it would be to the self-interest of each
man to vote for laws against murder, theft, arson,
burglary, fraud, and all other felonies; which, once being enacted, would bar him from crime. Thus a community of sinners would enact exactly the same laws as a community of saints; the only difference would be that the
saints would obey gladly the laws that the sinners would
obey only grudgingly.
Kant's moral republic is ideal only in the sense that it
is the pure idea of community as such, the very eidos of
community. It is also the eidos of legal system, abstracted
from all historical legal systems. From this myth of the
ideal moral commonwealth, we can derive the actual moral
duties of men. For it is the supreme privilege of man as
a rational creature that he can imagine himself even now
as a citizen of this merely possible community; and by imagining himself to be such, he can begin to act out the
role of such a citizen, and thus fit himself to join the
world-wide brotherhood of men of good will.
In the Kingdom of Ends, each man would have the utmost freedom that a man can morally have, namely the
freedom of being subject to no will but his own, since
he is bound only by laws to which he has given his consent. Yet, at the same time, he has complete moral
18
responsibility, since he is inexorably bound by all the laws
to which he has given his consent.
Thus the three cardinal notions of morality: Moral
Freedom, Moral Law, and Moral Responsibility, stand
linked in an intimate logical relationship. Moral Freedom
is whatever freedom a rational man would wish to enjoy
on condition that he grant equal freedom to all other men.
The Moral Law is whatever law would be consented to
by rational men in the exercise of their moral freedom.
And Moral Responsibility is the willingness of the morally
free man to be held responsible for his violations of the
Moral Law.
The Puzzle of Free Will vs. Determinism
11
The terms "freedom" and responsibility" immediately bring to mind the notorious puzzle of free-will versus determinism, which has absorbed such a large portion of the time of moral philosophers. The supposed conflict of free-will and determinism arises from the existence
of two very basic human interests: our interest in being
able to anticipate how other men are going to act; and our
interest in being able to hold them accountable for their
acts.
The free-will doctrine consists of saying that these two
interests are incompahble; that insofar as we can anticipate
a man's behavior, we cannot hold him accountable for
it. For our desire to anticipate human acts leads us to
develop various theories of psychological determinism, by
which every human choice is explained as resulting from
motives. But insofar as a man's choices are determined by
his motives, he cannot help acting as he does; and a man
is not responsible for what he cannot help. Therefore, a
man deserves praise and blame only in so far as he was
acting freely-that is, free from the influence of his own
desires.
From this argument it follows that the stronger a man's
desire to do evil, the less blame he deserves for doing
evil; or, conversely, the stronger his desire to do good,
the less praise he deserves for doing good. Hence the only
praiseworthy or blameworthy acts are completely unmotivated acts. A man's choice is good only insofar as
it was not made from good motives, and is evil only insofar as it was not made from evil motives.
To such an absurdity are we driven by the doctrine that
free will is essential to moral responsibility; and what it
shows, of course, is that free will, in fact, would be utterly destructive to all moral responsibility. For if a man
really had a free will, he would be impervious to all
motives, moral and immoral; he would be totally indifferent to all moral considerations, as well as to all other
considerations. He would either never act at all, or would
act in a completely unaccountable manner, like a lunatic
or an elementary particle.
Nothing could be further from the quantum indeter-
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just, according to his understanding of the precedents
established by previous judges in previous cases. As the
lower courts adjudicated conflicts between private
litigants, so the conflicting precedents established by
judges in the lower courts were reconciled by higher
courts. In deciding a novel case, not covered by the
precedents, or covered by conflicting precedents, a judge
could only rule as he thought best, and hope that higher
and later courts would uphold him. If a particular decision seemed too far out of line with the main body of
prevailing precedents, it was not likely to be followed,
or cited as a precedent in later cases, and hence would
have little influence in determining the contours of that
great body of precedents called collectively the Common
Law of England.
No one decision, no one judge, therefore, was likely
to have much influence upon the shape of the law. Each
decision added a page to the growing volumes of law
reports which were collected year after year, which grew
as a coral reef grows by successive layers of minute
deposits, as one marine organism after another deposits
its calcified remains upon it.
From time to time commentators raked through these
volumes of reports, and winnowed from them certain
general principles, or legal maxims, that seemed to be implicit in the way the judges were deciding cases. Then
later commentators commented upon earlier commentators, and still later ones upon these, from the Middle
Ages on down through Bracton, Glanville, Littleton,
Cook, and Blackstone. Gradually the law took shape, and
legal principles emerged, but no one knew in advance
just what shape this great organism was going to assume.
Justice Holmes, writing his commentary on the Common
Law in the 1880's was quite in the English spirit when
he defined law as ''a prediction of how the courts are going to act."
Of course the judges did not use the language of prediction in their decisions. Instead they declared "The law
is this," or "The law says this," as though the law were
already in existence somewhere; but in fact each decision
helped to make the law, insofar as it was incorporated into the body of precedents. The judges spoke as though
the law were dead and laid out in books, but in fact the
living edge of the law was before them in the instant case.
Only there is the living law; the rest, deposited in
casebooks, is only the fossilized remains, the deposits left
by previous acts of adjudication. Each judge studied the
body of precedents and tried, on the whole, to rule in
the spirit of the law; each decision, therefore, may be
regarded as a further inquiry into what the law is really
trying to say, the gist of the law. It is as though the law
were trying to find itself through the medium of the
courts; and the English Common Law is this continuing
process of the Law in Quest of Itself.
What we call the Moral Freedom-and at the same time
the Moral Responsibility-of the individual is his ability
to be determined by ideal goals. He can respect a moral
ideal, and he can respect the process by which moral
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
ideals are generated, and he can respect the ideal of having ideals. Moral Idealism is the principle of having ideals,
of acting for an ideal end.
Moral idealism is already implicit in the feedback circuits of an organism whereby it maintains self-control,
the first of the moral virtues, and thus affirms its courage
to be in the midst of a risky world. Man, however, is
distinctively a talking organism, and it is through language
that his self-control comes increasingly to operate. A man
is called "rational" insofar as he is amenable to linguistic
persuasions that are impersonal in form, and in ethics,
as in science, the appeal by which men seek to justify their
thinking or acting is the appeal to the viewpoint of the
disinterested judge; but in calling him" disinterested" we
do not mean that he is "uninterested." On the contrary,
this is only a peculiar way of saying that he is concerned
with all interests involved. He wishes to take account of
all the facts; he is sensitive to all moral demands. He can
see the issue from every point of view; hence his viewpoint includes all other viewpoints.
The process of moral enlightenment, whereby each
man approximates more and more toward the viewpoint
of an ideal observer, is the only real moral progress. It
is progress in the sense in which science makes progress
when it takes into account more and more of the facts
and harmonizes them into a coherent theory. For moral
sensitivity is a form of knowledge, an awareness of what
is the case. The objective observer is objective just because
he is the most compassionate of observers. His emotional
reactions are themselves realistic in that he feels with unerring accuracy the exact amount of pain that each act
causes, shares in full the joy of victory and also the pain
of defeat. His emotions are perfectly just in that they are
exactly proportioned to the total human significance of
the acts that arouse them.
We must not make the common error of supposing that
to be just or unbiased a man must be devoid of passion.
The presence or absence of pers~nal emotion has nothing
to do with the validity of a moral claim. A man may make
an impassioned plea for justice without thereby rendering
his plea invalid, or of only "subjective" validity. For he
is speaking as the champion of the rights of all litigants,
and of all possible future litigants, whether he intends
to or not. The passion that infuses his plea represents, so
to speak, or embodies the indignation of all wronged
men. Their rights speak through him, and their voices
blend together with one voice; he speaks with the voice
of humanity.
The great orator, like the scientist, is a spokesman for
universal human experience. Scientific language synthesizes human experience in one way, through abstraction; and if it speaks of human emotions at all, it does
so under passionless symbols. Only rhetorical language-including drama and poetry-can present emotions as emotions, causing the audience to feel what these
feelings are like. The fact that the great moral leader, or
dramatist, or poet speaks in emotional language in no
way entails that what he says has a merely personal or
21
�\.
subjective validity. What gives his utterance moral
authority is the fact that his heart and mind are open to
human experience to a greater degree than those of most
men are. Thus his feelings acquire a representative status;
that is, they are what the feelings of other men ought to
be, or would be, if freed from blindness, pettiness, and
narrowness of view.
A large part of the ability of a great moral teacher consists in his ability to see what is there in human experience.
The reason why sympathetic insight is the central moral
virtue is not that sympathy itself is good, but that sympathy is a doorway to truth; it opens the mind upon the
world and enables it to see what is actually the case. Sympathy is simply the realism of the emotions.
The heart of ethics is the eternal possibility of reexamining all ethical maxims in the light of reason and
experience to see whether the crystallized formulas still
express that which we really affirm; or whether they have
been preserved by inadvertence, absence of mind, inertia, or the interests of some particular class of men in
presenting re-examination of a formula that benefits them
at the expense of other men.
Ethical theory is thus analogous to scientific theory in
that the 'true' theory in either case is not otherwise
definable in advance than as that limit toward which an
indefinite continuation of the critical process would never
permanently cease to tend. The essentially ethical act is
the act of committing oneself to the quest for The Moral
Law; and the essentially ethical attitude is loyalty to this
quest.
Men can and do develop a loyalty to the Moral Quest
itself, just as they can and do develop a loyalty to the
Scientific Quest. For every man has some interest in truth,
if only because he does not want to have his hopes
frustrated by being based on error. Similarly, he desires
to avoid having to reproach himself for his own conduct,
and hence may try, even now, to anticipate the demands
of his future conscience. Conscience is as natural as
curiosity: men by nature find goods and evils in the
world, come to value certain kinds of objects, persons,
and traits, and even to value them distinterestedly. But
because rival goods conflict, men must learn to discriminate, to rank and compare, to evaluate. The human need
to evaluate is as natural as the human need to know; indeed, the two needs are inseparable; for all knowledge
involves evaluation, just as all valuation rests on
knowledge; and both have their biological basis in the
ability of organisms to make differential responses. Only
because an organism can respond differently to stimuli
A and B can it ever come to 'know' that stimulus A or
B is present, and thus eventually learn to delineate the
contours of its surrounding world. Only because some
stimuli are painful and others pleasurable can an
organism ever come to value some experiences and disvalue others, and thus learn how to evaluate its world.
But organismic sensitivity merely provides the basis for
the possibility of science, and morality; it is neither their
substance nor their goal. Science, though it may have its
22
origin in the sensitivity of the living protoplasm, projects
its curiosity into the farthest corners of the universe, far
beyond any needs of man's animal body, and hopes
eventually even to understand the structure of the protoplasm from which it sprang. Conscience, though it may
have its origin in the defensive reactions of the cell, extends its sympathies to the widest limits of the human
race and hopes at last to express the nature of man's
''glassy essence.''
Morality is as rationally defensible as science, or any
other branch of knowledge; and indeed both morality and
science stem from that same demand for rationality that
we call logic. Ultimately, the logic of morality is simply
logic itself. Morality is the logic of conduct, as logic is the
morality of thinking.
APPENDIX I
A large part of the activity of the moral philosopher consists of either encumbering the ground of ethics with
stumbling-blocks imported from other fields, or in clearing away the obstacles left by his predecessors. Were it
not for such peripheral and prophylactic activities there
would, indeed, be little left for the moral philosopher to
do. For the basic principles of ethics are well known to
everybody, and have been forthousands of years. No one
seriously advocates murder, arson, burglary, discourtesy,
cowardice, or lying on principle. The only genuine moral
problems are problems of casuistry: of the art of applying general rules to specific cases. It is only when faced
with a specific problem of moral choice that most of us
become interested in ethics; jllld we are quite right, for
it is only the specific cases that have either practical importance or intellectual interest. It is these that arouse our
sympathies and tax our ingenuity, for the same reason
that reading reports of courtroom trials and criminal cases
is much more interesting than reading the Revised Statutes.
And it is only casebook law that provides us with much
written material in casuistry. This most important branch
of ethics has been almost totally neglected. Most of the
handbooks or manuals of casuistry have been written by
Jesuits, and they are all in Latin. The professors of ethics
have made singularly little attempt to get down to cases,
and to test their own theories by seeing whether they
could serve to resolve moral conflicts.
APPENDIX II
Hume' s famous problem of how an "ought" can be
derived from an "is," i.e., how moral obligations can ever
be derived from mere facts, can be answered by considering, first of all, the inference "I promised to do X;
therefore I am obligated to do X." Now the premiss here
is a mere statement of fact, while the conclusion states
an obligation. How is this inference valid? What is needed
here is not a major premiss such as "Whoever promises
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:
to do something is obligated to do that which he promises," for this is only a generalization of the given inference. No major premiss is needed at all, for the statement "! promised to do X" means "I obligated myself to
do X." The very purpose of making promises is to create
obligations; and to make a promise simply is to take upon
oneself an obligation.
Next consider two friends, Damon and Pythias, and ask
"Why should Damon be loyal," and suppose that Damon
asks "Why should I be loyal to Pythias?" The question
is unanswerable, because the mutual loyalties of two
friends are not deduced from any general principle, such
as ''Friends ought to be loyal to each other.'' Rather their
friendship just is their mutual loyalty. When they cease
being loyal to each other, they will ipso facto have ceased
to be friends. They are not friends for the sake of anything
beyond their friendship.
Now imagine this friendship to embrace 3, 4, 5, ...
n persons, so as to form a community. The question
"Why should I be loyal to my community?" still does not
meaningfully arise; for a community simply is a network
of mutually reinforcing loyalties. One's obligation to the
community is simply one's way of being part of the community. It is one's concrete ties to the other persons in
the community, and is not derived from any abstract principle at all. If one no longer feels any loyalty to that community, then there is no reason why one should go on
being a member of it. An obligation is a sense of obligation.
Therefore a sentence like "You ought to be loyal to
Damon," or "You ought to pay Tom the money you owe
him" is not a statement about a moral relationship; itis
part of that relationship. The uttering of such sentences
is part of the way we keep friendships alive, and remind
people of their obligations, and induce them to do their
duties. When the Prodigal Son said to himself "I will arise
and go to my father," he was not informing himself of
a fact or making a prediction; he was performing an act
of repentance. Similarly when the sinner says "Peccavi,"
"I have sinned," he is not merely stating a fact; he is
acknowledging his sin thereby already beginning the process of repentance.
These are instances of what I may call the "liturgical"
use of language, wherein the uttering of certain words
is itself a moral act: such as praying, confessing, taking
a vow, making a pledge.
The liturgy of the courtroom is full of other examples
of such liturgical use of language: swearing an oath,
rendering a verdict, pronouncing a sentence. Or consider
one of the commonest examples, the making of a promise; when a man says "! promise" he by that act does
promise. To promise is to utter such a sign as "I promise,'' or some equivalent sign.
Now the role of language in the law is a peculiar one;
for, in a very real sense, we may say that the language
of the law is the law, in a sense in which, for example,
astronomy is not the language of astronomy, and chemistry is not the language of chemistry. For law is a matter
of words: a statute consists of words uttered by a legis-
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
lature,. a decision consists of wor?s uttered by a judge,
a verdtct of words uttered by a Jury; and legislatures,
judges and juries make the law by the words they use.
Law might be considered as a way of using such words
as "lawful," "unlawful," uguilty/' 'not guilty/'
"right," "property/' °Contract," and so on.
Similarly, we might say that ethics is the language of
ethics; ethics is concerned with the ways in which people influence each other by their use of such words as
''right,'' ''wrong,'' ''good,'' ''bad,'' ''virtue,'' ''con~
science," and so on.
1
APPENDIX III
The Role of Language in Ethics: A Dialog
jOHN (a simple-minded, unphilosophical fellow):
Stealing is wrong.
HENRY (a subjectivist philosopher): You mean, of
course, that you disapprove of stealing.
JOHN: That's right.
HENRY: Now, suppose jim says to you "No, stealing
isn't wrong." He, of course, merely means "I don't
disapprove of stealing." Therefore, your two statements
are equivalent, respectively, to the following:
A: john disapproves of stealing.
B: jim does not disapprove of stealing.
But these two statements are both true (assuming that
you both spoke sincerely). Hence there is no disagreement between you after all!
jOHN: Hmm! That's certainiy odd. I'd have sworn we
were disagreeing.
jEREMY (a utilitarian philosopher): just a minute,
Henry; you've missed the point. When john, or anyone,
says that stealing is wrong, he means that stealing injures
the long-run welfare of the human race. Hence, when
jim disagrees with him, they are really disputing the question of whether stealing does, in fact, injure the long-run
welfare of the human race. And this is a factual question,
capable-in principle-of being answered by empirical
evidence.
GEORGE: (an intuitionist philosopher): So, you say
that "wrong" simply means "injurious to the long-run
welfare of the human race?"
jEREMY: That's correct.
GEORGE: Well now, tell me: do you think it's wrong
to injure the long-run welfare of the human race?
jEREMY: Of course I do!
GEORGE: Now let's take your statement "Injuring the
long-run welfare of the human race is wrong" and
substitute for the word "wrong" your definition of the
word "wrong." What we get is the statement "Injuring
the long-run welfare of the human race injures the longrun welfare of the human race." But this is a mere
tautology! Is that all you meant to say?
JEREMY: Not exactly. Maybe I should try another
definition.
GEORGE: It won't do you any good. No matter what
23
�definition you give, I can show you that you are uttering
a mere tautology.
CHRISTIAN (A Christian): Jeremy, of course, was
wrong in his definition of "wrong." What "wrong"
really means is "displeasing to God."
GEORGE: Oh? Well, let me ask you: do you consider
it wrong to displease God?
CHRISTIAN: Certainly. To displease God is wrong,
indeed.
GEORGE: Now let's take your last statement and
substitute in it your deinfition of "wrong." What we get
is "To displease God is displeasing to God" -another
tautology.
You see, the mistake you are all making is to assume
that "wrong" is definable. But of course it isn't. For suppose you say o 'wrong' means 'X'," where 'X' is any
definition you please. Then I will ask you "Is X wrong?",
and you will have to say "Yes, X is wrong;" in which
case by your own definition, all you have said is "X is X."
You are all guilty of the Naturalistic Fallacy, which consists of supposing that ethical terms can be defined.
ALFRED (an emotivist philosopher): Just a minute,
George. You are very subtle, and you have been playing
a trick on all our friends here. When Christian said "To
displease God is wrong" is wasn't uttering a tautology;
he was evincing his disapproval of displeasing God. His utterance was equivalent to saying "What? displease God!"
in a peculiar tone of horror. The tone of horror added no
factual content to the utterance; it merely conveyed the
emotions of the speaker. The various ethical terms
uright," ~~wrong/' "good/' "bad," etc., serve merely
an emotive function. They convey the emotional attitudes
of the speaker. The utterance "X is good" does nothing
but convey the speaker's favorable emotional attitude
toward X. Thus Henry was quite correct in saying that
men never disagree in their moral judgments; but he was
incorrect in saying that this is because moral judgments
have purely autobiographical meaning. It is because they
have no meaning at all.
RICHARD (an imperativist philosopher): No Alfred,
you still miss the point. The motive for saying "Stealing
is wrong'' is not to vent one's emotions; the motive is
to dissuade other people from stealing. Moral judgments
have an imperative function. "Stealing is wrong" really
means "Thou shalt not steal!" This explains why moral
judgments seem to disagree. The judgments "Stealing
is right" and "Stealing is wrong" conflict in the same way
that "Shut the door" and "Don't shut the door" conflict: namely, it is impossible to obey both of them.
Neither utterance is true or false; you are right there,
Alfred. But they do conflict, and that is why men engage
in moral controversies: each is trying to get the other to
obey conflicting imperatives.
JOHN: But when I say "Stealing is wrong" I don't feel
that I am issuing a command at all. When I say "Shut
the door" I do so because I want the door to be shut. But
when I say "Stealing is wrong" it doesn't seem to me
that I am merely expressing my own wishes. I feel that
I am commanded not to steal. The imperative seems not
to issue from me, but to be issued to me, and to everyone
24
else. I assert "Stealing would be wrong even if I didn't
disapprove of it, and even if I didn't wish people not to
steal."
CHARLES (a logician): Quite right, John. Making a
moral judgment feels more like accepting an obligation
than imposing one. Isn't this because of the logicality of
the human creature? We call a man "rational" in proportion as he is amenable to linguistic persuasions that are
impersonal in form, that is, not dependent for their validity
upon anything peculiar to either speaker or hearer. This,
in turn, is part of our logical demand for universality in
our statements and beliefs. Ethics is, in this way, parallel
to science; for in both we seek to purge away the influence
of subjective error and limited perspectives, and frame
statements that shall hold true for all times, persons, and
places; in short, that are invariant under shift of origin
or frame of reference. It is for this reason that we are unwilling to rest content with any form of relativism or subjectivism; to do so would frustrate the demands of logic
itself. This logical demand is just what Kant expressed
in his so-called Categorical Imperative (which I prefer to
call the Rational Imperative): "So act that you could consistently (i.e. logically) will the maxim of your action to
become, by your act, a universal law." In other words,
"!, as a rational man, cannot be content to act in ways
that I could not justify on grounds that would be equally
valid for all rational men."
Now to sum up: you all are partly right. Henry is right
in emphasizing the autobiographical element in all moral
judgments. We expect a man to approve of whatever he
calls "right" and to disapprove of whatever he calls
"wrong." Otherwise we call him insincere. Alfred is right
in emphasizing the emotive etement in moral judgments;
for certainly we do feel emotional antagonism to that
which we judge to be morally wrong. Richard is right in
emphasizing the imperative element; for we do seek to
impose our moral judgments on others, but isn't that
because we believe them to be valid, and not merely
because they are ours? And Jeremy is right in emphasizing that we expect a moral judgment not to be an isolated
pellet of unexplained moralism, but to have demonstrable
connection with some total economy of human goods;
that every moral judgment must justify itself by reference
to human life as a whole. And George is right in emphasizing that "good" can never be exhaustively defined
in naturalistic terms; for, however, we define it, the question always remains open as to whether we can remain
forever content with our present view of what is good.
The very thing we are all searching for is to discover what
we can ultimately be content to approve of, in the light
of the fullest knowledge. This is the goal of moral controversy. Therefore, the one thing we all can agree upon
is that we must keep moral controversy alive, and keep
it logical. Rational controversy, or dialectic, is the living
heart of ethics itself, just as the continuing dialectic in the
law courts is the living heart of the law. The one truly
unethical act would be to try to cut short the process of
moral controversy itself by any arbitrary dogma. The one
goal that we can all agree to seek is the furtherance of
concrete reasonableness itself.
SPRING 1985
�1
l
Social Science and Humanism
!
Leo Strauss
!
I
. We have been assigned the task of discussing humanISm an~ the social sciences. As appears from our program,
f
I
humarusm is understood in contradistinction to science,
This little known paper* by Leo Strauss** is of special interest to students of the thought of Leo Strauss because in it
certain things are said in his own name which appear in his
other printed works as descriptions of other men's views. I refer
particularly to the twelfth paragraph on science. There, rather
than emphasizing the opposition between, or mutual exclusiveness of, ancient and modern science, he looks forward to a more
comprehensive universal science, "the true universal science
into which modern science will have to be integrated eventually." The suggestion is that each science, ancient and modern,
clarifies different aspects or parts of the same whole.
The notes are supplied as an aid to readers less familiar with
Strauss's writings, to enable them to follow up themes discussed
here in places where they are treated more extensively. This
paper was published by Strauss without any notes. I recommend reading it through at least once without looking at the
notes.
on the one hand, and to the civic art, on the other. It is
thus suggested to us that the social sciences are shaped
by sCience, the civic art, and humanism or that the social
sciences dwell in the region where science, the civic art,
and humanism meet and perhaps toward which they converge. Let us consider how this meeting might be understood.
Of the three elements mentioned, only science and humanism can be said to be at home in academic life. They
certainly exhibit one characteristic of academic life. According to an old adage, man is a wolf to man, woman
is more wolfish to woman, but a scholar in his relations
to scholars is the most wolfish of all. Science and humanism are then not always on friendly terms. We all know
the scientist who despises or ignores humanism, and the
humanist who despises or ignores science. To understand
Laurence Berns
this conflict, tension, or distinction between science and
*From The State of the Social Sciences (papers presented at the 25th Anniversary of the Social Science Research Building, The University of
Chicago, November 10-12, 1955), ed. Leonard D. White, (19.56: The
University of Chicago Press), pp. 415425. We are grateful to the University of Chicago Press fot permission to reprint.
*"Leo Strauss was the Robert Maynard Hutchins Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago, and at
the time of his death in 1973 the Scott Buchanan Distinguished Scholar
in Residence at St. John's College.
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
humanism, we do well to turn for a moment to the seventeenth century, to the age in which modern science constituted itself. At that time Pascal contrasted the spirit of
geometry (i.e., the scientific spirit) with the spirit of
finesse. We may circumscribe the meaning of the French
term by referring to terms such as these: subtlety, refinement, tact, delicacy, perceptivity. The scientic spirit is
characterized by detachment and by the forcefullness
which stems from simplicity or simplification. The spirit
of finesse is characterized by attachment or love and by
breadth. The principles to which the scientific spirit defers
are alien to common sense. The principles with which
the spirit of finesse has to do are within common sense,
yet they are barely visible; they are felt rather than seen.
They are not available in such a way that we could make
them the premises of our reasoning. The spirit of finesse
25
�is active not in reasoning but rather in grasping in one
view unanalyzed wholes in their distinctive characters.
What is meant today by the contrast between science and
humanism represents a more or less profound modification of Pascal's contrast between the spirit of geometry
and the spirit of finesse. In both cases the contrast implies that, in regard to the understanding of human
things, the spirit of science has severe limitationslimitations which are overcome by a decidedly nonscientific approach.
What are these limitations as we observe them today
within the social sciences? Social science consists of a
number of disciplines which are specialized and which
are becoming ever more specialized. There is certainly no
social science in existence which could claim that it studies
society as a whole, social man as a whole, or such wholes
as we have in mind when we speak, for example, of this
country, the United States of America. De Tocqueville
and Lord Bryce are not representative of present-day social science. From time to time one or the other special
and specialized science (e.g. psychology or sociology)
raises the claim to be comprehensive or fundamental; but
these claims always meet strong and justified resistance.
Co-operation of the various disciplines may enlarge the
horizon of the co-operating individuals; it cannot unify
the disciplines themselves; it cannot bring about a true,
hierarchic order.
Specialization may be said to originate ultimately in this
premise: In order to understand a whole, one must
analyze or resolve it into its elements, one must study
the elements by themselves, and then one must reconstruct the whole or recompose it by starting from the
elements. 1 Reconstruction requires that the whole be sufficiently grasped in advance, prior to the analysis. If the
primary grasp lacks definiteness and breadth, both the
analysis and the synthesis will be guided by a distorted
view of the whole, by a figment of a poor imagination
rather than by the thing in its fulness. And the elements
at which the analysis arrives will at best be only some
of the elements. The sovereign rule of specialization
means that the reconstruction cannot even be attempted.
The reason for the impossibility of reconstruction can be
stated as follows: The whole as primarily known is an
object of common sense; but it is of the essence of the
scientific spirit, at least as this spirit shows itself within
the social sciences, to be distrustful of common sense or
even to discard it altogether. The common-sense understanding expresses itself in common language; the scientific social scientist creates or fabricates a special scientific terminology. Thus scientific social science acquires
a specific abstractness. There is nothing wrong with
abstraction, but there is very much wrong with abstracting from essentials. Social science, to the extent to which
it is emphatically scientific, abstracts from essential
elements of social reality. I quote from a private communication by a philosophically sophisticated sociologist
who is very favorably disposed toward the scientific approach in the soCial sciences: "What the sociologist calls
26
'system,' 'role,' 'status,' 'role expectation/ 'situation,'
and 'institutionalization' is experienced by the individual
actor on the social scene in entirely different terms." This
is not merely to say that the citizen and the social scientist mean the same things but express them in different
terms. For "the social scientist qua theoretician has to
follow a system of relevances entirely different from that
of the actor on the social scene .... His problems originate
in his theoretical interest, and many elements of the social
world that are scientifically relevant are irrelevant from
the point of view of the actor on the social scene, and
vice versa.'' The scientific social scientist is concerned
with regularities of behavior; the citizen is concerned with
good government. The relevances for the citizen are
"values," values" believed in and cherished, nay,
"values" which are experienced as real qualities of real
things: of man, of actions and thought, of institutions,
of measures. But the scientistic social scientist draws a
sharp line between values and facts: he regards himself
as unable to pass any value judgments.'
To counteract the dangers inherent in specialization as
far as these dangers can be counteracted within the social
sciences, a conscious return to common-sense thinking
is needed-a return to the perspective of the citizen. We
must identify the whole in reference to which we should
select themes of research and integrate results of research,
with the over-all objectives of whole societies. By doing
this, we will understand social reality as it is understood
in social life by thoughtful and broad-minded men. In
other words, the true matrix of social science is the Civic
Art and not a general notion of science or scientific
method. Social science must either be a mere handmaid
of the Civic Art-in this case no great harm is done if it
forgets the wood for the trees, or, if it does not want to
become or to remain oblivious of the noble tradition from
which it sprang, if it believes that it might be able to
enlighten the Civic Art, it must indeed look farther afield
than the Civic Art, but it must look in the same direction
as the Civic Art. Its relevances must become identical,
at least at the outset, with those of the citizen or
statesman; and therefore it must speak, or learn to speak,
the language of the citizen and of the statesman. 3
From this point of view, the guiding theme of social
science in this age and in this country will be democracy,
or, more precisely, liberal democracy, especially in its
American form. Liberal democracy will be studied with
constant regard to the co-actual or co-potential alternatives and therefore especially to communism. The issue
posed by communism will be faced by a conscientious,
serious, and relentless critique of communism. At the
same time, the dangers inherent in liberal democracy will
be set forth squarely; for the friend of liberal democracy
is not its flatterer.' The sensitivity to these dangers will
be sharpened and, if need be, awakened. From the scientistic point of view, the politically neutral-that which is
common to all societies-must be looked upon as the clue
to the politically relevant-that which is distinctive of the
various regimes. But from the opposite point of view
II
SPRING 1985
"
tl
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tt.
hi
c,
t •
�which I am trying to adumbrate, the emphasis is put on
the politically relevant: the burning issues'
Social science cannot then rest satisfied with the overall objectives of whole societies as they are for the most
part understood in social life. Social science must clarify
those objectives, ferret out their self-contraclictions and
haifheartednesses, and strive for knowledge of the true
over-all objectives of whole societies. That is to say, the
only alternative to an ever more specialized, an ever more
aimless, social science is a social science ruled by the
legitimate queen of the social sciences-the pursuit traclitionally known by the name of ethics. Even today it is
difficult, in dealing with social matters, consistently to
avoid terms like a man of character," honesty," "loyalty," "citizenship education," etc.
This, or something like this, is, I believe, what many
people have in mind when speaking of a humanistic approach, as distinguished from the scientistic approach,
to social phenomena. We must still account for the term
"humanism." The social scientist is a student of human
societies, of societies of humans. If he wishes to be loyal
to his task, he must never forget that he is dealing with
human things, with human beings. He must reflect on
the human as human. And he must pay due attention
to the fact that he himself is a human being and that social
science is always a kind of self-knowledge. Social science,
being the pursuit of human knowledge of human things,
includes as its foundation the human knowledge of what
constitutes humanity or, rather, of what makes man complete or whole, so that he is truly human. Aristotle calls
his equivalent of what now would be called social science
the liberal inquiry regarcling the human things, and his
Ethics is the first, the fundamental, and the clirective part
of that inquiry. •
But, if we understand by social science the knowledge
of human things, are we not driven to the conclusion that
the time-honored distinction between social science and
the humanities must be abandoned? Perhaps we must
follow Aristotle a step further and make a clistinction between the life of society and the life of the mind, and
hence assign the study of the former to social science and
the study of the latter, or a certain kind of study of the
latter, to the humanities.
I do not have to go into another implication of the term
"humanism" -viz., the contradistinction of human
studies to clivinity, since our program is silent about
clivinity. I may limit myself to the remark that humanism
may be said to imply that the moral principles are more
knowable to man, or less controversial among earnest
men, than theological principles. 7
By reflecting on what it means to be a human being,
one sharpens his awareness of what is common to ali
human beings, if in clifferent degrees, and of the goals
toward which all human beings are clirected by the fact
that they are human beings. One transcends the horizon
of the mere citizen-of every kind of sectionalism-and
becomes a citizen ofthe world. Humanism as awareness
of man's distinctive character as well as of man's clistinc11
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
tive completion, purpose, or duty issues in humaneness:
m the earnest concern for both human kindness and the
betterment and opening of one's mind-a blend of firm
delicacy and hard-won serenity-a last and not merely
last freedom from the degradation or hardening effected
especially by conceit or pretense. One is tempted to say
that to be inhuman is the same as to be unteachable, to
be unable or unwilling to listen to other human beings.
Yet, even if all were said that could be said and that
cannot be said, humanism is not enough. Man, while being at least potentially a whole, is only a part of a larger
whole. While forming a kind of world and even being
a kind of world, man is only a little world, a microcosm.
The macrocosm, the whole to which man belongs, is not
human. That whole, or its origin, is either subhuman or
superhuman. Man cannot be understood in his own light
but only in the light of either the subhuman or the
superhuman. Either man is an accidental product of a
blind evolution or else the process leading to man,
culminating in man, is clirected toward man. Mere
humanism avoids this ultimate issue. The human meaning of what we have come to call "Science" consists
precisely in this-that the human or the higher is
understood in the light of the subhuman or the lower.
Mere humanism is powerless to withstand the onslaught
of modern science. It is from this point that we can begin
to understand again the original meaning of science, of
which the contemporary meaning is only a modification:
science as man's attempt to understand the whole to
which he belongs. Social science, as the study of things
human, cannot be based on modern science, although
it may jucliciously use, in a strictly subordinate fashion,
both methods and results of modern science. Social
science must rather be taken to contribute to the true
universal science into which modern science will have to
be integrated eventually.•
To summarize, to treat social science in a humanistic
spirit means to return from the abstractions or constructs
of scientistic social science to social reality, to look at social
phenomena primarily in the perspective of the citizen and
the statesman, then in the perspective of the citizen of
the world, in the twofold meaning of "world": the whole
human race and the all-embracing whole.
Humanism, as I have tried to present it, is in itself a
moderate approach. But, looking around me, I find that
it is here and now an extreme version of humanism. Some
of you might think that it would be more proper on the
present occasion to present the median or average opinion of present-day humanistic social scientists rather than
an eccentric one. I feel this obligation, but I cannot comply with it because of the elusive character of that meclian opinion. I shall therefore describe the extreme op·
posite of the view which appeals to me, or, rather, one
particular expression, which is as good as any other, of
that opposite extreme. Median social science humanism
can be defined sufficiently for our purpose by the remark
that it is located somewhere between these two extremes.
The kind of humanism to which I now turn designates
27
�itself as relativistic. It may be called a humanism for two
reasons. First it holds that the social sciences cannot be
modeled on the natural sciences, because the social
sciences deal with man. Second, it is animated, as it were,
by nothing except openness for everything that is human.
According to this view, the methods of science, of natural
science, are adequate to the study of phenomena to which
we have access only by observing them from without and
in detachment. But the social sciences deal with phenomena whose core is indeed inaccessible to detached observation but discloses itself, at least to some extent, to the
scholar who relives or re-enacts the life of the human beings whom he studies or who enters into the perspective of the actors and understands the life of the actors
from their own point of view as distinguished from both
his point of view and the point of view of the outside
observer. Every perspective of active man is constituted
by evaluation or is at any rate inseparable from it.
Therefore, understanding from within means sharing in
the acceptance of the values which are accepted by the
societies or the individuals whom one studies, or accepting these values "histrionically" as the true values, or
recognizing the position taken by the human beings
under consideration as true. If one practices such
understanding often and intensively enough, one realizes
that perspectives or points of view cannot be criticized.
All positions of this kind are equally true or untrue: true
from within, untrue from without. Yet, while they cannot be criticized, they can be understood. However, I
have as much right to my perspective as anyone else has
to his or any society to its. And every perspective being
inseparable from evaluation, I, as an acting man and not
as a mere social scientist, am compelled to criticize other
perspectives and the values on which they are based or
which they posit. We do not end then in moral nihilism,
for our belief in our values gives us strength and direction. Nor do we end in a state of perpetual war of
everybody against everybody, for we are permitted to
"trust to reason and the council table for a peaceful coexistence.''
Let us briefly examine this position which at first glance
recommends itself because of it apparent generosity and
unbounded sympathy for every human position. Against
a perhaps outdated version of relativism one might have
argued as follows. Let us popularly define nihilism as the
inability to take a stand for civilization against cannibalism. The relativist asserts that objectively civilization
is not superior to cannibalism, for the case in favor of
civilization can be matched by an equally strong or an
equally weak case in favor of cannibalism. The fact that
we are opposed to cannibalism is due entirely to our
historical situation. But historical situations change
necessarily into other historical situations. A historical
situation productive of the belief in civilization may give
way to a historical situation productive of belief in cannibalism. Since the relativist holds that civilization is not
intrinsically superior to cannibalism, he will placidly accept the change of civilized society into cannibal society.
Yet the relativism which I am now discussing denies that
28
our values are simply determined by our historical situation: we can transcend our historical situation and enter
into entirely different perspectives. In other words, there
is no reason why, say, an Englishman should not become,
in the decisive respect, a Japanese. Therefore, our believing in certain values cannot be traced beyond our decision or commitment. One might even say that, to the extent to which we are still able to reflect on the relation
of our values to our situation, we are still trying to shirk
the responsibility for our choice. Now, if we commit
ourselves to the values of civilization, our very commitment enables and compels us to take a vigorous stand
against cannibalism and prevents us from placidly accepting a change of our society in the direction of cannibalism.
To stand up for one's commitment means among other
things to defend it against its opponents not only by deed
but by speech as well. Speech is required especially for
fortifying those who waver in their commitments to the
values we cherish. The waverers are not yet decided to
which cause they should commit themselves, or they do
not know whether they should commit themselves to
civilization or to cannibalism. In speaking to them, we
cannot assume the validity of the values of civilization.
And, according to the premise, there is no way to convince them of the truth of those values. Hence the speech
employed for buttressing the cause of civilization will be
not rational discourse but mere "propaganda," a "propaganda" confronted by the equally legitimate and
perhaps more effective "propaganda" in favor of
cannibalism.
This notion of the human situation is said to be arrived
at through the practice of sympathetic understanding.
Only sympathetic understanding is said to make possible valid criticism of other points of view-a criticism
which is based on nothing but our commitment and
which therefore does not deny the right of our opponents
to their commitments. Only sympathetic understanding,
in other words, makes us truly understand the character
of values and the manner in which they are legitimately
adopted. But what is sympathetic understanding? Is it
dependent on our own commitment, or is it independent
of it? If it is independent, I am committed as an acting
man, and I am uncommitted in another compartment of
myself, in my capacity as a social scientist. In that latter
capacity I am, so to speak, completely empty and
therefore completely open to the perception and appreciation of all commitments or value systems. I go through
the process of sympathetic understanding in order to
reach clarity about my commitment, and this process in
no way endangers my commitment, for only a part of my
self is engaged in my sympathetic understanding. This
means, however, that such sympathetic understanding
is not serious or genuine and is, indeed, as it calls itself,
"histrionic." For genuinely to understand the value
system, say, of a given society, means being deeply
moved and indeed gripped by the values to which the
society in question is committed and to expose one's self
in earnest, with a view to one's own whole life, to the
claim of those values to be the true values. Genuine
SPRING 1985
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"
n
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!
l
s
',,
I.
I
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(
l
'
'
.
�understanding of other commitments is then not
necessarily conducive to the reassertion of one's own initial commitment. Apart from this, it follows from the inevitable distinction between serious understanding and
histrionic understanding that only my own commitment,
my own "depth:' can possibly disclose to me the commitment, the "depth:' of other human beings. Hence
my perceptivity is necessarily limited by my commitment.
Universal sympathetic understanding is impossible. To
speak crudely, one cannot have the cake and eat it; one
cannot enjoy both the advantages of universal understanding and those of existentialism.
But perhaps it is wrong to assume that all positions
ultimately rest on commitments, or at any rate on commitments to specific points of view. We all remember the
time when most men believed explicitly or implicitly that
there is one and only one true value system of universal
validity, and there are still societies and inviduals who
cling to this view. They too must be understood sympathetically. Would it not be harsh and even inconsistent to deprive the Bible and Plato of a privilege which
is generously accorded to every savage tribe? And will
sympathetic understanding of Plato not lead us to admit
that absolutism is as true as relativism or that Plato was
as justified in simply condemning other value positions
as the relativist is in never simply condemning any value
position? To this our relativist will reply that. while Plato's
value system is as defensible as any other, provided it
is taken to have no other support than Plato's commitment, Plato's absolutist interpretation of his value system,
as well as any other absolutism, has been refuted unqualifiedly, with finality, absolutely. This means however
that Plato's view as he understood it, as it reveals itself
to us if we enter sympathetically into his perspective, has
been refuted: it has been seen to rest on untrue theoretical
premises. So-called sympathetic understanding necessarily and legitimately ends when rational criticism
reveals the untruth of the position which we are attempting to understand sympathetically; and the possibility of
such rational criticism is necessarily admitted by
relativism, since it claims to reject absolutism on rational
grounds. The example of Plato is not an isolated one.
Where in fact do we find, outside certain circles of
present-day Western society, any value position which
does not rest on theoretical premises of one kind or
another-premises which claim to be simply, absolutely,
universally true, and which as such are legitimately exposed to rational criticism? I fear that the field within
which relativists can practice sympathetic understanding
is restricted to the community of relativists who understand each other with great sympathy because they are
united by identically the same fundamental commitment
or rather by identically the same rational insight into the
truth of relativism. What claims to be the final triumph
over provincialism reveals itself as the most amazing
manifestation of provincialism.
There is a remarkable contrast between the apparent
humility and the hidden arrogance of relativism. The
relativist rejects the absolutism inherent in our great
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
Western tradition-in its belief in the possibility of a rational and universal ethics or of natural right-with indignation or contempt; and he accuses that tradition of
provincialism. His heart goes out to the simple preliterate
people who cherish their values without raising exorbitant claims on their behalf. But these simple people do
not practice histrionic or sympathetic understanding.
Lacking such understanding, they do not adopt their
values in the only legitimate manner, that is, as supported
by nothing except their commitment. They sometimes reject Western values. Therewith they engage in invalid
criticism, for valid criticism presupposes histrionic
understanding. They are then provincial and narrow, as
provincial and narrow as Plato and the Bible. The only
people who are not provincial and narrow are the
Western relativists and their Westernized followers in
other cultures. They alone are right.
It almost goes without saying that relativism, if it were
acted upon, would lead to complete chaos. For to say in
the same breath that our sole protection against war between societies and within society is reason, and that according to reason "Those individuals and societies who
find it congenial to their systems of values to oppress and
subjugate others" are as right as those who love peace
and justice, means to appeal to reason in the very act of
destroying reason.
Many humanistic social scientists are aware of the inadequacy of relativism, but they hesitate to tum to what
is called "absolutism." They may be said to adhere to
a qualified relativism. Whether this qualified relativism
has a solid basis appears to me to the most pressing question for social science today. 9
1. The Political Philosphy of Hobbes, (University of Chicago Press: 1952),
pp. 2-3, 150-155.
2. Natural Right and History, (University of Chicago Press: 1953} Chapter
II, ''Natural Right and The Distinction between Facts and Values."
3. What is Political Philosophy? (The Free Press of Glencoe, fllinois: 1959),
pp. 27-28; and 78·94, "On dassical Political Philosophy."
4. Natural Right and History, pp. 1 2; Liberalism, Ancient and Modem, (Basic
Books: 1968), pp. v~vili, chaps. 1 & 2, "What is Liberal Education,"
4
"Liberal Education and Responsibility;" pp. 23()..231; Political Philosophy:
Six Essays l1y Leo Strauss, ed. Hilail Gildin, (Bobbs~Merrill: 1975), "The
Three Waves of Modernity," p. 98; Natural Right and History, pp. 181~ 186,
"Modem Natural Right," 253-260, 278~290, 294-323; The City and Man,
(Rand McNally: 1964), pp. 1~12, "Introduction."
5. Liberalism, Ancient and Modern, pp. 214-218.
6. Natural Right and History, chapter IV, "Classic Natural Right," esp.
p. 126 ff.; Studies in Platonic Political Philosophy, (University of Chicago
Press: 1983), chapter 6, "On Natural Law."
7. Studies in Platonic Political Philosophy, chapter 7, "Jerusalem and
Athens: Some Preliminary Reflections;" Liberalism, Ancie11t and Modem,
chapters 6, 7, 9, 10; Persecution and the Art of Writing, (The free Press;
1952); SpinoZil's Critique of Religion, (Schocken Books: 1965); W1zat is
Political Philosophy?, Chapters v and vi; Natural Right and History, pp.
78-93; "On the Interpretation of Genesis," L'Homme, Jan.-March, 1981,
XXI(I), pp. 5~20; 'The Mutual Influence of Theology and Philosophy,"
The Independent Journal of Philosophy, vol. III, 1979, pp. 111-118; "Progress or Return? The Contemporary Crisis in Western Civilization,"
Modem Judaism, vol. I, pp. 17--45, Oohns Hopkins University Press: 1981).
8. Natural Right and History, pp. 23-24, 30-32, esp. 121-126; The Cit_11 and
Man, pp. 19-29; esp. What is Political Philosophy? pp. 38-40; "Farabi's
Plato," Louis Ginzburg Jubilee Volume, (American Academy for Jewish
Research: 1945), pp. 364ff. and 389-393.
9. Natural Right and History, p. lff.
29
�Reply to Tertullian
What speech could she make, unadvised,
to explain how the serpent sang
and she listened
and obeyed
because she'd never heard a voice she couldn't trust?
And even now she guards a secret pity for the reptile.
She has not forgotten his punishment.
It seems he did not lose his voice, nor his song,
but only had it altered.
So from dress to dress she goes,
searching for the cover that doesn't by its very presence
recall nakedness.
She envies him who at every season's change
can shed the garment that fails to grow.
Dear brother, whose every hiss
is only a reminder
of long-absent melodies.
M. L. Coughlin
M.L. Coughlin is a graduate of St. John's College, Annapolis now living in Annapolis.
30
SPRING 1985
�Achilles and Hector: The
Homeric Hero (Part I)
Seth Benardete
Achilles and Hector: The Homeric Hero is the Ph.D. dissertation of Dr.
Benardete submitted in 1955 to the Committee on Social Thought at
the University of Chicago.
·
1HE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
31
�T
.
.
i¥
'I
'§
:
CONTENTS
Part I. Style
Introduction .............................................. 33
Chapter
I. Men and Heroes ..................................... 36
IT. Achaeans and Trojans ................................. 38
ill. Achilles and Agamemnon ............................. 42
IV. Ancestral Virtue ...................................... 44
V. The Armour of Agamemnon .......................... 46
VI. Ajax ................................................. 47
VIT. Heroic VIrtue ....................................... .48
VITI. Achilles and Hector ................................... 49
IX. Similes .............................................. 50
X. Achilles' and Hector's Similes .......................... 52
XI. Heroic Ambition ..................................... 53
Part IT. Plot
Introduction
Chapter
I. The Gods
II. The Plot of the iliad
ill. The Embassy
IV. The Deception of Zeus
V. Patroclus
VI. Achilles and Patroclus
vn. The Exploits of Achilles
Vlli. Achilles and Hector
IX. The Funeral Garnes
X. Achilles and Priam
Epilogue
32
SPRING 1985
.
�Part I
Style
Introduction
This essay falls into two parts. The first part analyzes
the style of the Homeric hero, all that the heroes have
most in common; the second formulates the plot of the
Iliad, the tragedy of Achilles. That such a division is possible and even necessary indicates the peculiar nature of
the Iliad. It is a long work. It can neither be surveyed in
a single glance nor remembered in a single hearing. And
yet since it is presented as a whole, it must have a certain style to maintain its unity, and a certain kind of subject that will justify its length. Its subject cannot be merely
the story of Achilles, for otherwise a short tragedy would
suffice, and many of its episodes would be superfluous.
Whatever impression one has of Achilles' character does
not obviously depend on the whole of the Iliad. Many
parts, however excellent in themselves, do not seem to
advance our knowledge of Achilles and his wrath. The
catalogue of ships, the exploits of Diomedes, the deception of Zeus, all seem to reveal Achilles in no clearer light.
Only if its scope were as universal as an ancient commentator suggests it is, would its bulk seem warranted:
Were anyone to ask, noting the worth and excellence of Achilles,
why Homer called his work the fliad and not the Achilleid,-as he
did the Odyssey after Odysseus-we would answer that, in one case,
the story concerned a single man, while in the other, even if Achilles
excelled the rest, yet they too were excellent; and that Homer wished
to show us not only Achilles but also, in a way, all heroes, and what
sort of men they were: so unwilling to call it after one man, he used
the name of a city, which merely suggested the name of Achilles. 1
Achilles is a hero in a world of heroes; he is of the same
cast as they, though we might call him the first impression which has caught each point more finely than later
copies. He holds within himself all the heroic virtues that
are given singly to others, but his excellence is still the
sum of theirs: we do not need a separate rule to measure
his supremacy. Golden he may be, but the others shine
as brilliant and work as much havoc. Before we can come
into the presence of Achilles, and take his measure, we
must first be presented with the common warrior, who
is not just something abstract and mechanical but human,
and with whom Achilles has more in common than he
knows. They are not just gibbering ghosts and mere
trophies: they are the armature on which Achilles is
shaped and the backdrop against which his tragedy is
played. Homer assumes our ignorance of what the heroes
are, and like an historical novelist fills the landscape as
he advances his plot (it is no accident that the Odyssey
A former teacher at St. John's College, Annapolis, Seth Benardete is
professor of classics at New York University. His most recent book is
a translation with commentary of Plato's Theatetus, Sophist and Statesman.
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
is shorter), so that their every aspect belongs to his art,
until the substance of Achilles, not merely its shadow,
can at last be seen and judged; indeed, had not Homer
described all of the heroic world, the tragedians would
have been unable to select a part and still remain
intelligible.
And yet, even if we discover the relevance of the Iliad's parts to one another, many of the details within the
parts would still be thought needless. That the Achaeans
are "well-greaved" and the Trojans "high-spirited" does
not evidently pertain to Achilles or the heroes; but again,
even were they found to be pertinent, why should Homer
have indulged in their repetition? Surely they cannot
strike more than a momentary flash in our imagination?
They might have served as ornaments, were they not so
common: their constant presence makes them tawdry,
the burnt-out sparks of a dead tradition; and even if
repeated epithets were not tedious, similar scenes, formulaic lines, and identical heroes cannot but burden our
memory without improving our knowledge. To answer
these charges and grasp the purpose of repetition, we
must first consider, in a general way, the style of the Iliad.
The Iliad, if it is to maintain its unity, demands repetition, but to avoid strain, it needs as well a relaxed
grandeur. It must be rapid, easy and spacious. To write
like Tacitus, if one wished, like. Livy, to record the entire
history of Rome, would be intolerable; and to adopt a Livian manner, were one to devote an essay to Agricola,
lessens the height of one's opinions. Regardiess of
temperament, if Tacitus had abused his style, contrary
to the needs of the subject itself, and written an universal history, his failure would have been certain; and even
as it is, he employs a "choked" syntax, that departs from
Ciceronian usage, mostly in his portrayal of Tiberius,
whose mastery of dissemblance imposed a similar effort
on Tacitus himself. As a student of Thucydides he attempts only small chapters of history, while Livy (like
Herodotus) imitates the range of his subject. A rambling
work demands a leisurely style;. a constricted view must
regulate more exactly the stride of each sentence.
Density seems to favour shortness as openness length.
A lyric poem is both short and compact; were it longer,
its very brilliance would cloy: even Pindar' s fourth
Pythian, which contains but three hundred lines, is
thought excessive. Aeschylus' trimeters are denser than
Sophocles', and as a consequence his plays are shorter:
not that a single line conveys more matter, but a greater
length would shatter the whole. Vergil and Milton, for
example, by employing the diction of lyric poetry, often
go against the grain of epic. Each line is so overloaded
that its luxury saps the strength of the whole, as if the
lavishness of their genius packed the work so tightly that
it became stunted. The high road of fancy, no matter how
inviting it may appear, is closed to the epic poet, even
as the thoroughfare of prose would betray his calling. He
must steer a middle course between the whirlpool of anarchic invention and the rock of listless monotony; he must
restrain his exuberance in each of the parts as he keeps
33
�his eye on the whole but still illumine the whole by the
light of each part. He cannot adopt a Livian style, containing no limit within itself, whose only virtue is its flexibility, so that it can be stretched to any length; for in
achieving a careless ease, he might abandon all the strictures that should limit its extension. A relaxed style seems
to guarantee its own dissipation, but as soon as it is stiffened, it may lose, in turn, the only virtue that justified
its apparent poverty. And Homer, whether by genius or
by art, hit upon a device, partly traditional and partly his
own, that at once retained the sprezzatura proper to his
work as well as informed it into a whole.
Formulae clearly solve a part of this problem. Their
familiarity does away with the need for continual invention; their strangeness raises them above the common
speech. They will not clutter the work and obscure the
whole, nor will they make it vulgar and weaken the
whole. They are stage directions. They dispose
economically of all the necessary but unimportant actions:
walking, speaking, falling and dying, all of which cannot be omitted, even though they may Jack significance.
Such a diction has great advantages, but it the formulae
are merely the cues and promptings to the action, they
cannot belong to the whole, however much they may be
a part. If they frame the words and deeds, they do not
affect their matter. They have no hold on the vital concern of Homer, Achilles and Hector, nor can they pass
as his own coinage. They would seem an irreducible surd
and a necessary evil. If they are to be fused with the
whole, they must reveal something about the heroes,
something that distinguishes them from everyone else
and from each other, and thus contributes to the theme
of the Iliad. These differences must exist not only in the
large but in the smallest detail, since as Plutarch remarks,
"not in the most glorious actions is there always the truest
indication of virtue and vice, but often a small occasion,
a word, or a gest expresses a man's character more clearly
than great sieges, great armaments, and battles with thousands slain; and just as painters catch a likeness from the
fact and its features, by which character is expressed, and
neglect almost entirely the rest of the body, " 2 so Homer
must not Jose sight of the smallest occasion, put he must
endow each one with a poetic necessity. And yet the
vastness of his plan is a hindrance. To present each hero
diversely would render them distinct but alien to one
another, excessive detail being more likely to break up
the whole than restore its unity. Each particular, in choking the whole, would itself be drowned in the others.
Homer then, forced to obtain depth without density,
realized that the style, which most suited the whole,· also
could be worked to unite it. Formulae could be repeated
without complicating the style: so epithets, were they
suggestive enough, could also recur, and in their very
recurrence enrich the whole. Their repetition would force
us to attend to them and regard them as something more
than baubles; so that, even though they are details by
themselves, they acquire in the mass sufficient bulk to
influence the whole. If, however, they changed their
34
meaning on each occasion, the sum of their ambiguities
would disperse their common significance, and confound
the simplicity of his style; but if they were fixed in meaning, they would not support the otherwise subtle portrait of Achilles: they would be thought the burden of a
tradition Homer could not shake off. Confronted with
these two dangers, infinite variety and idle repetition,
Homer struck a balance: he set aside a certain number
of occurrences of each epithet as a neutral base, by which
the rest are nourished as they reveal its various aspects.
Some are unaffected by the passage in which they stand
(preserving the clarity); others are closely linked with
their context (increasing the depth). The two kinds,
though diverse, do not contradict but supplement one
another: neither can be sacrificed. The first shows us how
essential the epithets are to a hero, the conventions he
must observe before he strikes out on his own; the second illustrates these common attributes in action and
what they imply: how, when raised to the highest degree,
they entail Achilles' tragedy. Neutral epithets indicate
how impossible it is for the heroes to cast off their general
character, even if these virtues are not required at the moment; pregnant epithets, on the other hand, show themselves in action and explain why the heroes must carry
them wherever they go.'
One cannot build a palace out of bricks, nor an epic out
of separate words; the longer the phrase that can be heard
as a unit, the less each part will be swallowed up in the
whole. Although precision cannot be discarded, it must
have a measure far different from a sonnet's. There must
be boldness and dash in epic precision: the broad strokes
of painting rather than the sharp exactness of the engraver's art. Every brush mark, regafded closely, neither
shares in the whole, nor affects its design. All it presents
is a blur of colour, seemingly indifferent to any larger purpose; but as soon as we view the iliad at its proper
distance, what seemed at first superfluous, assumes the
appearance of necessity. Yet how could Homer ensure
that we would observe the correct distance, and not
destroy his work by a too minute inspection? Happily
there was already at hand a measure in recitation. Recitation guaranteed that no one would count the threads in
the fabric, but it still allowed every thread to count. It
separated primary from secondary effects, which, though
indistinguishable to a reader's eye, the ear as readily
keeps apart as unites. One recital may have sufficed to
present the whole, another to explicate the parts, a third
or a fourth would be needed to make intelligible the formulae: so we in this essay have inverted the natural order
of understanding, and explained first what a hearer
would come to appreciate last. The first part cannot stand
by itself; it must be reinforced by the overall design; but
neither is that completely independent, and in one section (Part II, vii) we have tried to bring them together.
Within the framework ofthe epithets Homer "develops"
his heroes, and it would almost not be too rash to assert
that, if all of them were properly understood, the plot
of the Iliad would necessarily follow.
SPRING 1985
�Horner did not invent his formulaic diction: if he had,
a certain residue of unworked elements would be absent.
A swift ship, a black ship, a hollow ship are to him indifferent, metrical convenience alone dictating their use; and
though he was not always careless of things, it was not
until the lyric poets that they were made equal in rank
to persons. He nevertheless transformed the tradition,
for, as we suggested, only a poet extremely conscious of
the whole would have employed so much repetition, to
which no other folk-epic can offer a parallel.• He saw that
the tradition could be exploited so as to turn its supposed
defect into its greatest virtue. It gave him the means to
combine the many and the one; display a massiveness
that did not sacrifice delicacy; and thus achieve a balance
between the generic and the individual, uniformity and
diversity, that has always been the despair of the inferior
poets. A tragedian, it is true, does not face this problem:
he can always join, without intermediaries, the part with
the whole, since his hero occupies all of the canvas, and
every image and figure works directly for a single end.
The details and the design are inseparable, and either immediately leads to the other. To show how successfully
it can be managed, and yet how unlike to Homer, has
prompted us to trace the imagery of Shakespeare's Coriolanus at the end of the second Introduction. There are
other reasons as well that made us examine this play; but
it suffices to refer to it now as an example of the differences inherent in a short and a long work.
Although Vergil more inclined than Homer did to busy
himself with detail (at the expense of the whole), yet he
borrowed from him some of his technique; and before
we exemplify the previous remarks with an Homeric instance, it is instructive to consider a much simpler one
in Vergil. Aeneas is often called "pius."* Sometimes it
is obviously apt, and even if it were not his peculiar
badge, we would understand at once why Vergil employed it. When he has buried his nurse Caieta,
at pius exsequiis Aeneas rite solutis . . .5
(But pius Aeneas, when the funeral rites were duly paid ... )
no one would object to its insertion, since the rites Aeneas
performs clearly demand it; nor even when Aeneas calls
himself "pius," for not only is it right to assert his piety
before Venus, but the rest of the line explains the epithet,
sum pius Aeneas, raptor qui ex hoste penn. tis
classe veJw mecum .
6
(I am pius Aeneas, who cany with me in my fleet my household gods,
snatched from the foe ... )
whoever would think first of his household gods, in a
moment of great danger, eminently deserves such a title. Sometimes, however, it is not at all obvious why
Aeneas should be thus distinguished, and yet it should
*Latin pius has a range of meaning which is wider than "pious" or
"reverent," e.g., "dutiful," "obedient," "upright."
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
not be called even then an idle or an ornamental epithet.
When Aeneas attacks Mezentius, tum pius Aeneas hastam
iacit (then pius Aeneas casts a spear)', not so much
because Mezentius is "comtemptor deum" ("scorner of the
gods") is Aeneas glorified, 8 as because Aeneas must be
shown to be pious even in war. That is what he is no matter what he does. The action does not explain the epithet,
but the epithet is nevertheless its complement. It is the
basis on which Aeneas' prowess rests, and as without
it, he would not be what he is, Vergil employs it in its
most extreme consequences, where it is not visibly effective and yet not wholly powerless. The particular action
and the generic epithet are indissolubly linked, not in
some mechanical way, so that Aeneas will not only be
pius when he pays homage to the gods, but also when
he fights, and especially when he fights an irreligious
man.
As Horner works on an even larger scale than Vergil,
his technique differs radically. He must give more examples of the neutral as well as of the pregnant epithet.
He must impress upon the audience not only how
minimal the virtue in an epithet may be, but also how
much greatness it can, when evoked, suggest. An epithet
that shows an extraordinary range is amymon, which
sometimes means a routine efficiency and sometimes a
moral blamelessness. When Horner says,
For [Achilles] was by far the best, and the horses also, who carried
the blameless (amymlm) son of Peleus, 9
he set its meaning very high: as best of the Achaens,
Achilles is blameless, even as the mortal horse he yokes
in with his immortal horses deserves the same recognition;10 but when in the Odyssey he calls Aegisthus
blameless, 11 he sets its meaning at the very lowest mark.
Great virtue can exist with great baseness: Aegisthus was
of good family, bold (Nestor is partisan when he calls him
a coward), 12 and surely as excellent as Antinous and
Eurymachus, the worst of Penelope's suitors, who yet
excelled all the others in virtue Y Between Achilles and
Aegisthus lies the whole range of virtue, whose indifference to morality the Odyssey makes clear.
When, however, Athena looks for "godlike Pandarus,"
in order that she might urge him to renew the war, and
finds him, the "strong and blameless son of Lycaon,"
the irony in his perfection is obvious: he is an excellent
bowman but a fool." Homer takes care that such a twist
may not be lost on the hearer, for he repeats the same
lines later, when Aeneas reproaches Pandarus for not
employing his skill, and he insists that he did all he could
in vain: he should have left his bow at home .15 It is its
repetition within a changed setting that marks the epithet
as a variant on its common significance. As Pandarus is
a blameless bowman but blameworthy for his attempt o11
Menelaus' life, so he is innocent of Aeneas' accusation,
but he ought never to have brought his bow. And again,
who does not feel it is charged with a different feeling,
when the dying Patroclus predicts that "blameless
35
�Achilles" shall kill Hector? 16 when Patroclus forgives
Achilles for sending him to his death, Patroclus whom
Homer himself calls blameless after his death? 17 To
restrict the epithets to mere efficiency in these scenes, or
to deny that the audience would respond to them,
deprives the Iliad of half its effect and turns it into a
scrapheap.
"Ajax in his blameless heart knew-and shuddered
before-the works of the gods, that Zeus it was who completely thwarted the battle and wished the Trojans victory. " 18 If Ajax now retreats, he cannot be blamed, for
conscious of his courage, he is not ashamed to yield when
Zeus favors the Trojans. Kala thymon amymona is unique
in the Iliad, and hence is proof against all charges of
metrical convenience; and since it agrees so well with the
passage, it cannot be dismissed as accidental. Poulydamas
is often called blameless, 19 and though it seems at first
ornamental, as we watch him in action, the epithet fills
out and is explained. He first obtains it in a list of heroes,
where, though it plays no role, it prepares us for his
blameless advice thereafter; which Hector at first accepts
but later, to his sorrow, ignores. 20 Homer, in fact, goes
out of his way to confer upon him this epithet; for, when
amymon no longer fits the metre, he substitutes another
word (perhaps his own invention) to express the same
thing: "The other Trojans obeyed the plan of blameless
(amomi!toio) Poulydamas, but Asius was unwilling. " 21
Examples could be multiplied, but these suffice to indicate Homer's style and our own method. An epithet
must not be considered a useless relic: each contains a
real part of the Iliad. Each is worked so expertly as to cement the great with the small, and yet never lose its own
identity. Together they give an easy flow to the whole,
even as they add a solid intricacy. No other poet has
reconciled so well the subtle and the massive: we would
have to look to Plato for an equal success; who joined
repetition with variety and the univesal with the particular to an even greater degree; and though in this he
surpasses Homer, he himself acknowledges no worthier
rival.
Chapter I
Men and Heroes
When Hector's challenge to a duel found no takers
among the Achaeans, "as ashamed to ignore as afraid
to accept it," Menelaus, after some time, adopting a
rebuke invented by Thersites, berates them thus:
0 moi apeileteres, Achai"des, ou.ket' Achi011
(Ah me, you boasters, you women, no longer men, of Achaea).
Warriors ought to believe that to be a woman is the worst
calamity; and yet Homer seems to mock their belief, in
making Menelaus, who warred to recover the most
beautiful of women, and Thersites, the ugliest person
36
who came to Troy, the spokesmen for manliness. However this may be, both the Achaeans and Trojans not only
insist on being men as opposed to women, but also on
being andres as distinct from anthropoi.
Anthropoi are men and women collectively, and }lien
or women indifferently: and whatever may be the virtues of an anthropos it cannot be martial courage, which
is the specific virtue of men. Nestor urges the Acheans
to stand their ground:
My friends, be men (aneres), and put shame of other humans (an~
thropoi) in your hearts, and remember, each of you, your children
and wives, your possessions and parents. 2
The Achaeans themselves must be andres*, or ''he-men'';
others, their own children, parents and wives, are anthropoi. "Anthropoi, or "human beings," are others, either
those who lived before-proteroi anthropoi'-or those yet
to come-opsigonoi anthropoi'; and if the heroes employ
it of the living, they are careful not to include themselves.
Agamemnon swears that he has not touched Briseis, and
even if he had, he would not have sinned very much,
doing
he themis anthrOpOn pelei arulron ede gynaikOn 5
(as goes the way of human beings, both men and women).
But Odysseus, though he repeats the rest of Agamemnon's speech almost exactly, changes this one line, when
he addresses Achilles:
he them is estin, anax, e t'and rOn e te gyn11ikOn 6
(as is the way, my Lord, either of men or of women).
Odysseus is aware that Achilles will find that oath more
difficult to believe than Agamemnon's other promises;
and so by a personal appeal, "my Lord," he hopes to
remind Achilles that he too is subject to the same passion, and thus Agamemnon's show of abstinence is all
the more to be admired; but lest he risk Achilles' anger,
were he to number him among human beings, Odysseus
omits anthropoi and distinguishes (by "either/or") between men and women, whom Agememnon had classed
together. That Achilles, in spite of Odysseus' precaution,
does not credit the oath, and that he would have taken
offense had Odysseus called him human, his reply indicates; for he places Menelaus and Agememnon among
meropes anthropoi (literally, humans endowed with
speech) though it can only there mean husbands, and
calls himself aner agathos kili echephron ("a good and sensible man").'
Others are anthropoi, but never is another an anthropos.
If you wish to be an individual, you must be either aner
or gyne, "man" or Woman";_ but if you belong to a
crowd, indistinguishable from your neighbor, you are
both catalogued together under "human beings. " 8 The
singular anthropos occurs but thrice in the Iliad, twice in
11
,. Aner is a singular form; plural forms are andres, aneres.
SPRING 1985
�a general sense and perhaps once of an individual, but
in all three cases Homer speaks in his own name, and
two of them occur in similes.' And not only do humans
in the heroic view lack all uniqueness and belong more
to the past or the future than to the present, but even
Odysseus seems to young Antilochus, as a member of
a prior generation, more anthropos than aner. 10 Old age
is as absolute as death, which deprives Hector and
Patroclus of their "manhood and youthful prime" (androteta kai heben) ," of an heroic manhood that lasts but an
instant. Odysseus is consigned to the world of anthropoi
and Hector to Hades.
Achilles in the ninth book is found "pleasing his heart
with the dear-toned lyre and singing the famous deeds
of men" (klea andron); 12 whereas Aeneas, before declaiming his genealogy to Achilles, remarks that "we know
each other's lineage and have heard the famous words
of mortal human beings" (proklyta epea thneton anthropon).13 Deeds are done by andres, words are spoken by
anthropoi; and if human beings do anything, it is only the
tillage of the fields. 14 The hero's contempt for speeches
is but part of his contempt for anthropoi, 15 and yet they
depend on them for the immortality of their own fame. 16
Anthropoi are the descendants of andres, the shadows, as
it were, that the heroes cast into the future, where these
poor copies of themselves live on; and as the adulation
they will give would seem to justify their own existence,
it is proper that these later generations, extolling the
heroes beyond their worth, should look on them as
demigods: so the word hemitheoi, "demigods," occurs
but once, in a passage on the future destruction of the
Achaeans' wall, and not accidentally it is coupled there
with andres (hemitheon genos and ron)."
Under one condition are the heroes willing to regard
themselves as anthropoi if they refer at the same time to
the gods. Achilles makes the two heralds, Talthybius and
Eurybates, witnesses to his oath:
pros te theon makaron pros te thrlCton anthrOpOn 18
(before the blessed gods and mortal men).
The gods are blessed and immortal, while anthropoi are
mortal, and it is only their weakness, when confronted
with the splendid power of the gods, that makes the
heroes resign themselves to being human. "Shall there
be evil war and dread strife," ask the Achaeans and Trojans, "or does Zeus bind us in friendship, Zeus who
dispenses war to anthropoi?"19 Whenever the heroes feel
the oppressive weight of their mortality, they become,
in their own opinion, like other men, who are always
human beings; 20 and the gods also, if they wish to insist
on their own superiority, or no longer wish to take care
of the heroes, call them in turn anthrapoi; as Athena does,
in calming Ares, who has just heard of his son's death:
For ere now some other, better in his strength and hands than he,
has been slain or will yet be slain, for it is hard to save the generation and offspring of all men (anthrOpoi). 21
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
If anyone had the right to be called a hero, surely this
Ascalaphus, a son of Ares, had; but Athena wishes to
point out his worthlessness and deprive him of any divine
status, so that Ares' regret at his loss might be diminished. For the gods are not concerned with men insofar
as they are mortal, but on the condition of their possible
divinity.
How far apart the Achaeans and Trojans are from ordinary men, the word "~hero"* shows; Homer identifies
it with aner (the phrase heroes andres thrice occurs), 22 and
it clearly has nothing to do with anth ropoi, for even we
can feel how jarring the union heroes anthropoi would
have been." But in what consists the heroic distinction?
First, in lineage: the heroes are either sons of gods or can
easily find, within a few generations, a divine ancestor;
and second, in providence: the gods are concerned with
their fate. Zeus is a father to them-"father of men (andron) and gods" -who pities them and saves them from
death, while he is not the father but the king of mortal
creations-has te theoisi kai anthropoisi anassei ("who is lord
over gods and men"). 24 Zeus acts toward the heroes as
Odysseus was said to treat his subjects-"he was gentle
as a father" 25-and he acts toward us as Agamemnon
toward his men: distant, haughty, indifferent. As the providence extended over human beings is unbenevolent,
Zeus dispenses war to anthropoi, himself careless of its
consequences; but it is a "father Zeus" who, Agamemnon believes, will aid the Achaens and defeat the perfidious Trojans; and as father Zeus he later pities
Agamemnon and sends an eagle for an omen. 26
Andres and theoi (gods) belong to the same order: they
may be built on different scales, but they are commensurate with one another. 27 Achilles is a theios aner: 28 theios
anthropos would be unthinkable. The direct intervention
of the gods seems to elevate man to aner, whereas the
flux of fortune, in which no caring providence can be
seen, degrades him to anthropos. "Of all the things that
breathe and move upon the earth," Odysseus tells Amphinomus, "the earth nurtures nothing weaker than a
human being (akidnoteron anthropoio); for as long as the
gods grant him virtue and his limbs are strong, he thinks
he will meet with no evil in the future; but whenever the
blessed gods assign him sorrows, then he bears them,
though struck with grief, with a steadfast heart."" When,
however, Zeus pities the horses of Achilles, who weep
for Patroclus, he regrets that he gave to mortal Peleus
horses ageless and immortal, for "of all the things that
breathe and move upon the earth, nothing is more pitiful
than a he-man (oizyroteron andros). " 30 Odysseus talks of
anlhropoi; Zeus is concerned only with andres, those
among us whom the gods favour and try to raise above
the common lot of mankind. It is not the uncertainty in
man's life which seems to Zeus man's sorrow; for the
gods can put an end to chance and ensure his success:
but even the gods are powerless to change man's fate,
*Greek, heros (singular), herOes (plural).
37
�no matter how many gifts they might lavish on him. Mortality and mortality alone makes for the misery of man.
Odysseus, on the other hand, did not find man's burden
in mortality (already implied in anthropos) but in his inability to guarantee, as long as he lives, his happiness.
Not his necessary death, in spite of the gods' attention,
but his necessary helplessness, because of the gods' wilful
despotism, seems to Odysseus the weakness of man.
Although Zeus and Odysseus here state the human and
divine opinions about man's nature, they also reflect, in
a more general way, the difference between the Iliad and
the Odyssey. Zeus spoke in one, Odysseus in the other.
The Iliad is an image of a war-torn world, and as such
is but a partial view of the world around us. This deficiency the Odysset; corrects, for it more accurately depicts
the simply human things. Not man protected by the gods
(man at war), but man without the gods, is the subject
of the Odyssey. Odysseus indeed is an exception in his
own world, and carries with him some of the providence
that was so universal in the Iliad. Both Achaeans and Trojans obtained divine assistance there: but not one of the
gods now favours the suitors; so that, even if providence
still works for Odysseus (who must especially be helped
against the suitors, andres hyperphialoi-"overweening hemen" -that they are), 31 it leaves the rest of the world intact, little affected by the gods' presence: and this is the
world of human beings-"
Even as the word anlhropos is more frequent in the
Odyssey than in the Iliad, while the word heros occurs
almost twice as often in the Iliad, 33 so Odysseus saw the
cities of many men (anthropoi), and Achilles cast into
Hades the lives of many heroes. 34 The Odyssey takes place
after the Trojan war, when those, upon whom the heroes
had relied for their fame, are living and remember in song
the deeds of the past. 35 Phemius among the suitors and
Demodocus among the Phaeacians celebrate an almost
dead heroic world; and Odysseus also, since he shared
in that past but never belonged to it, recounts rather than
acts out his own adventures. As Odysseus' deeds are
only mythoi so he himself is an anthropos 36 not only as opposed to the gods, which even Achilles might allow to
be true of himself, but absolutely so. 37 War is the business
of heroes andres, peace of anthropoi; and as Odysseus
never did quite fit into the Iliad and was an obscure figure
(his greatest exploit occurred at night), 38 he becomes in
the Odyssey preeminent, while the former great are mere
ghosts in Hades, and depend on Odysseus for their
power of speech.
The heroes are survivors in the Odyssey; they no longer
dominate the stage, they are old-fashioned and out of
favor. Menelaus is a hero (and often uses the word),"
but Telemachus becomes a hero only at his court, 40 where
the spell of the past still lingers. Laertes is a hero, or rather
"hero-oldman" (geron heros), 41 who putters about in his
garden. Other old men are heroes: Aegyptius,
Halitherses, Echeneus 42 and Eumaeus calls Odysseus,
when disguised as an old man, hero." The word has been
preserved in the country and remains on the lips of a
38
swineherd. It has become an empty title, without any
suggestion of force, nor even as an indication of rank,
for Moulius, a servant of Amphinomus, can now l~y claim
to it. 44
Chapter II
Achaeans and Trojans
To Agamemnon's demand for an equal prize in return,
were he to give Chryseis back to her father, Achilles objects: "Most worthy Atreides-most rapacious of all!how will the magnanimous Achaeans give you a prize?" 1
The phrase megathymoi Achaioi would not at first draw
us to examine it, though we might doubt its suitability,
were it not that, after Amemenon has used it (in echoing
Achilles), it never again occurs in the Iliad. 2 Not the
Achaeans but the Trojans are megathymoi. 3 Why then did
Achilles employ it? Megathymos bears here two senses:
"great-spirited" and "greatly generous." Achilles asks
Agememnon, on the one hand, how the Achaeans,
generous though they are, could give him a prize, when
all the spoils are already divided. And he asks him, on
the other, how they, indignant at Agememnon's greed,
could grant him anything more. As Achilles himself is
often megathymos, 4 he transfers his own epithet to all the
Achaeans, in the hope that, as his anger rises against
Agememnon, the Achaens, carried along by his rhetoric,
will side with him. "Great-spirited" is, as the BT Scholiast
remarks, demagogic. The Achaeans should be as indignant as himself; they too should revile Agamemnon's
presumption; but Agememnon twists Achilles' phrase to
his own end:
... but if the megathymoi Acha_eans give [me] a prize, suiting it to
my heart, so as to be worth as much- 5
Had not Agmemnon wished to echo Achilles' line, the
apodosis would have been expressed (e.g. essonlai
megathymoi, "they will be magnanimous"); but proleptically, as it were, he puts his conclusion in the protasis.
Disregarding megathymoi as "great-spirited" (which
Achilles the more intended), he assumes it means, ignoring Achilles' irony, "greatly generous": The Achaeans
will give him adequate recompense because they are
magnanimous, and know how to prepare a gift agreeable
to the spirit of a king. 6 The thymos of Agamemnon will
find a sympathetic response in the megas thymos of the
Achaeans. He will have nothing to fear from so liberal
an army.
The Trojans are megathymoi not in generosity but in
martial temper, for their leaders use it as an exhortation, 7
even as Hector urges them, as hyperthymoi ("overspirited") to fight in his absence, or not to let Achilles
frighten them' They are "over-spirited" as well as "highspirited" in Homer's opinion.' Their spirit is not only
grand but excessive; their exurberance in war turns eas-
ily into pure fury-" They are in the opinion of others,
SPRING 1985
�though not in Homer's, hyperphialoi, "over-proud" and
"arrogant," 11 a vice that Homer attributes to Penelope's
suitors, 12 whom he also calls agenores, "super-men," as
it were, or "muscle-bound"; and this the Trojans also
are. 13 Magnanimity may be a vice or a virtue. It contains
for example, the intransigence as well as the fearlessness
of Achilles." It recognizes no obstacles and knows no
bounds. It is so high-keyed that the slightest jar untunes
it; it has no slack to take up, nor any reserve to expend.
It is all action and no recoil. Thus the Trojans are "highspirited" both when they see the blood of Odysseus, and
when they see one son of Dares killed and the other in
flight. 15 In one case, they are spurred to charge and cluster
round Odysseus, while in the other they are crestfallen.
Men who are high-spirited flourish on success but cannot withstand adversity. "Their courage rises and falls
with their animal spirits. It is sustained on the field of
battle by the excitement of action, by the hope of victory,
by the strange influence of sympathy"" whereas those
more reserved and less outwardly spirited (menea
pneiontes,-Homerically, "breathing furious courage")17
might accomplish less in victory, but would not fall off
so much in defeat. They would possess a resilience and
a steadiness the Trojans lack.
Nestor in the Doloneia asks whether anyone would be
willing to spy on the Trojans, but he begins by assuming
no one would: "Friends, no man, trusting to his bold and
steadfast heart (thymos tolmeeis), would go among the
high-spirited Trojans." 18 Whoever might have a thymos
tolmeeis would be not only thymodes ("high-spirited") but
tlemon ("stout-hearted") as well. He would be
megathymos and megaletrJr, "high-spirited" and "greathearted," combined. The thymos would bestow daring,
the etor ("heart") endurance:" the one would match the
high spirit of the Trojans, "deaf as the sea, hasty as fire";
the other would keep him steady and patient. Thus Diomedes who is "high-spirited" and "over-spirited" picks
as his companion "much-enduring" and "great-hearted"
Odysseus:" for as he kills Dolan and other Trojans, so
Odysseus calms the horses of Rhesus, lest they be unnerved at the sight of Hood and corpses 21 Were then
Odysseus' and Diomedes' virtues united in the same person, he would be the best: so Achilles has a megaletora
thymon as often as he is megathymos. 22 To be able to suffer qtrietly and act qtrickly are complementary virtues that
in Achilles seem to coalesce. But the Trojans are not, except twice, megaletores: once Hector, who is himself
"great-hearted,"" urges the Trojans to be so; and once
Achilles is surprised that they are. 24
The Trojans are not only megathymoi but also hippodamoi,
''tamers of horses'': one word refers to their spirit in war,
the other to their peaceful occupation. They exhibit,
however, two aspects of the same character. Their temper
in war reflects the temper of the horses they tame in
peace: we must think of cavalry officers rather than of
trainers and grooms: as if the quick, restive, and irritable
humours they subdue in horses rubbed off on themselves.25 Pandarus calls to the Trojans: "Arise, high-
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
spirited Trojams, goaders of horses. " 26 He exhorts them
in their martial qualities, both in the nature they inherited
and the skill they acquired: they would engage their
whole person. In another passage, the "over-spirited Trojans" keep pressing in on Ajax, who sometimes turns to
flee and sometimes checks the ranks of "Trojans tamers
of horses. " 27 Had Homer not wished to indicate how
close these two epithets are in meaning, he could have
easily found another word or phrase. At any rate, it is
one of the few instances where hippodamoi occurs in a battle scene, and the only time Homer uses it while there
is fighting. 28
After Menelaus and Paris have finished arming themselves, "they walked into the space between the
Achaeans and Trojans, and their glances were fearful:
wonder held those who beheld them, Trojans tamers of
horses and well-greaved Achaeans.""' Achaeans and Trojans both lack an epithet, when Homer sees them merely
as two groups of men; 30 but as soon as Paris and
Menelaus impress them with their look, and Homer turns
to describe their feelings, they become distinguishable.
The Trojans are tamers of horses as the Achaeans are wellgreaved: but the epithets are not of the same order. If
you see the Trojans, you cannot tell that they train horses;
if you see the Achaeans, you know they are well-greaved.
They appear well-armed: they may or may not be brave
warriors: but the Trojans, all of them, are high-spirited
in war. They show, even in their wonder, all of their
spirit-as if their surprise, though momentary, stirred
them completely and declared their profession, while the
suprise of the Achaeans glanced off their greaves. 31 The
Trojans are more readily affected than the Achaeans, who
can remove their armour and be different in peace than
in war: but the Trojans cannot so easily shake off their
temper. Their epithets are general and do not particularly
belong to an army. If we saw them in peacetime, they
would be still "high-spirited" and "tamers of horses."
But the Achaeans' epithets describe only their military
aspect and offer no clue to their peaceful appearance. We
know at once more about the Trojans than about the
Achaeans, who are, as it were, many-sided and polytropoi,
"of many turns": 32 there is no Odysseus among the Trojans. Not their outward show but the Trojans' inner fibre
impresses Horner; he sees it immediately. The Achaeans,
however, wear long hair, are well-greaved and bronzeclad, and their eyes flash; while the Trojans, though no
doubt they too are bronze-clad and shielded, display
more of themselves, and have a kind of openness in their
nature that the Achaeans lack. 33 The Trojans' epithets tell
us what they are, those of the Achaeans only hint at what
they are.
We learn about the Achaeans-what kind of men they
are-before we ever meet the Trojans, whom we first get
to know but briefly at the end of the second book; and
yet we may say that our knowledge of them both is almost
complete by the tenth: for it is remarkable how seldom
their distinctive epithets appear in the later books.
Although the most sustained and violent engagements
39
�take place in Books 11-17, it is not in these books that the
epithets of the Trojans and Achaeans are most frequently
found; they abound instead in the early books, of which
only the fifth and eighth books include great battles, and
cluster round interludes in the war rather than in the war
itself. Euknemides ("well-greaved") for example, occurs
nineteen times in Books 1-10, but only twelve in Books
11-24; chalkochitoncm ("bronze-coated") seventeen times
in Books 1-10, eight afterwards; and kare komoiintes
("long-haired") twenty-two times in Books 2-9, four later.
In the case of the Trojans, whose high and excessive spirit
has more of a place in war (and hence megathymoi and
hyperthymoi occur throughout the Iliad), only hippodamoi
suffers a like decline: seventeen times in Books 2-10,
seven afterwards. When the epithets have served their
purpose-to introduce us to the Achaeans and Trojansand Homer becomes increasingly concerned with
Achilles, they are more sparingly used. Another reason
why hippodamoi is used less frequently is that Homer
assigns to the Trojans many more similes (which both
supplement and replace the epithet) after the tenth book
than before: they obtain two in the first half (one in Book
3 and one in Book 4, but fourteen from Books 13 to 22.
Of joint similes-those shared equally with the
Achaeans-there are four before Book 10 and nine after.
For the Achaeans the opposite holds true: eighteen
similes occur in Books 2-9, nine in Books 11-19. The
similes complete Homer's description of the Achaeans
and Trojans, and as we start from the Achaean side and
slowly move across the lines to the Trojan (the plague
of the Achaeans turns into the funeral of Hector), so the
number of the Achaeans' similes diminishes, while that
of the Trojans' increases. We must start then (like Homer)
with the Achaean host, which is first presented in the second book, where almost half of its similes occur.
When the Achaeans first assemble, at Agamemnon's
command, they seem like a mass of bees that issue in constant stream from a smooth rock and then fly in grapelike clusters to spring flowers: so the Achaeans at first
make the earth groan when they come from their tents,
and a hum pervades the host, but then, once seated in
serious concentration, they are perfectly quiet. 34 But as
soon as Agamemnon has finished his disastrous speech,
they seem like long waves of the sea that east and south
winds agitate-they are disturbed contradictorily, and as
thick-set wheat, the shrill west wind shakes them-they
are pliant and disordered; and with shouts and cries,
whose din reaches up to heaven, they drag their ships
down to the sea. 35 In their desire to return home, they
forget all discipline: no longer distinguishable as individuals as they were as bees when gathering (slight
though that individuality might have been), they become
the riot and chaos of wheatfield and sea. So much have
they been stirred up, that even after Odysseus has
checked them, they return to the assembly as they left
it, shouting like the tumultuous ocean which breaks
against a shore. 36 Later, when they scatter to their tents,
their shout is the crash of waves against a high-jutting
40
rock, that waves never leave; 37 yet they are now more
singly resolved than before, for only the east wind (no
east, south, and west as before) moves them, and they
center round one object-Troy's capture- like waves that
always drench one rock."
The individuality of the Achaeans, lost after Agememnon' s speech, is slowly restored in the succeeding similes,
when they are marshalled and turned once again into
disciplined troops. The glint of their arms is like fire; the
stamp of their feet like the swelling crash of geese, cranes,
and swans; the number of their host like leaves, flowers,
and flies in spring. 39 They regain in these animal identities their former status, although they are not yet distinct
until the next simile: as shepherds easily recognize their
own flock in a pasture, so the leaders ranked the
Achaeans for battle. 40 Then the catalogue is made, which
completes their ranking, and they seem like fire spread
across the whole plain of the Scamander, and the earth
quakes like thunder." The Achaeans are marshalled
noiselessly: the necessary clang of their weapons and
tramp of their feet alone are heard; as if their high spirits
had been purged in the assembly and nothing remained
but a quiet resolution.
Fortissimus in ipso discrimine exerdtus est, qui ante discrimen
quietissimus. 42
(That army is bravest in the struggle itself, which before the struggle is more quiet.)
Homer made all of the second book as a contrast to the
Trojans, who as noisily prepare for war as they advance
with cries against the silent Achaeans. 43 And later when
the truce is broken, while the Achaeans, in fear of their
commanders, silently move like the continuous roll of
waves, and the only sounds are commands, "nor would
you say they had speech"; the Trojans shouted, like ewes
bleating ceaselessly, "nor was their clamour in concert,
for the voices were mixed, as the men had been called
from many lands."" As the Achaeans are silent, they can
obey the orders they hear; but the Trojans would drown
in their own clamour any command. The simile of the
Achaeans is deliberately inexact, for the echoing shore,
against which the waves break, has no counterpart in
themselves. No sooner are they compared to the sea, than
they are dintinguished from it. They are, what is inconceivable in nature, an ordered series of silent waves.
The Trojans, however, exactly correspond to their simile:
myriads of eyes pent up together in confusion. Of the
Trojans' other similes in the midst of battle, four single
out the clamour they make, as waves, or winds, or
storm:" but the noise of the Achaeans, even when they
do shout, 46 only warrants a simile if the Trojans join in, 47
and they are compared to water but once in battle: when
their spirit, not any outward sign, shows vexation. 48
It is not difficult to see how the epithets of the Trojans
are connected with their disorder, nor how those of the
Achaeans indicate their discipline. The high-spiritedness
of the Trojans would naturally express itself in cries, and
the fine greaves of the Achaeans would indicate a deeper
SPRJNG 1985
�efficiency. The ranks of the Trojans never equal in
closeness those of the Achaeans, whose spears and
shields form a solid wall, shield and helmet of one resting
on helmet and shield of another, 49 Nor do the Achaeans,
on the other hand, ever retreat like the Trojans:
paptenen de hekastos hopei phygoi aipytr alethron90
(and each looked about, how he might escape sheer destruction).
The Trojans flee, as they attack, in disorder, and more
by thymos than by epistemi! ("knowledge," "skill") are
they warriors. 51 They are, in the later Greek vocabulary,
barbarians. Thucydides' Brasidas, in urging his troops to
face bravely the lllyrians, could be describing the Trojans,
who "by the loudness of their clamour are insupportable,
and whose vain brandishing of weapons appears menacing, but who are unequal in combat to those who resist
them; for, lacking all order, they would not be ashamed,
when forced, to desert any position, and a battle, wherein
each man is master of himself, would give a fine excuse
to all for saving their own skins. " 52
How then are we to explain the silent efficiency of the
Achaeans and the noisy disorder of the Trojans? Has
Homer given a reason for this difference? Is there one
principle whose presence would force the Achaeans into discipline, and whose absence would let the Trojans
sink into anarchy? Aidos, "shame," seems to distinguish
them. There are two kinds of aidos: one we may call a
mutual or military shame, the other an individual or civil
shame. 53 The first induces respect for those who are you
equals; or, if fear also is present, your superiors; 54 the second entails respect for those weaker than yourself. The
first is in the domain of andres, the second of anthropoi. 55
Hector shows civil shame when, in speaking to Andromache, he says: "I am terribly ashamed before the
Trojans, men and women both, if I cringe like someone
ignoble and shun battle. " 56 And Hector is killed because
he would be ashamed to admit his error (of keeping the
Trojans in the field after Achilles' reappearance), ashamed
lest someone baser than himself might Bay, "Hector,
trusting to his strength, destroyed his people."" As commander of his troops, with no one set above him, Hector
must either feel the lash of public opinion, or become as
disobedient as Achilles, who at first lacks all respect for
Agamemnon and later all respect for Hector's corpse. 58
When, however, the Achaeans silently advance against
the Trojans, they show another kind of shame, "desirous
in their hearts to defend one another." 59 Their respect
is not for others but for themselves. Neither those
stronger nor those weaker than themselves urge them to
fight, but each wishes to help the other, knowing that
in "concerted virtue" resides their own safety. 60 Be
ashamed before one another," shouts Agamemnon (and
later Ajax), "in fierce contentions: when men feel shame,
more are saved than killed; but when they flee, neither
is fame nor any strength acquired. " 61 And even when
the Achaeans retreat, they do not scatter like the Trojans,
but stay by their tents, held by "shame and fear, for they
call to one another continuously. " 62 Whatever fear they
11
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
have before their leaders is tempered by their shame
before one another; and as, according to Brasidas, three
things make men good soldiers-will, shame, and
obedience-•3so the Achaeans show their will in prefering war to peace, 64 their shame in mutual respect, 65 and
their obedience in the fear of their leaders. 66
Agamemnon as a good king and Ajax as a brave warrior appeal to military shame, when they incite the
Achaeans; but aged Nestor urges them in the name of
civil virtue: "Friends, be men (andres) and place in your
spirit shame of other human beings (anthropoi), and let
each of you remember your children, your wives, possessions, and your parents, whether they still live or now
are dead; for the sake of those who are not here I beseech
you to stand your ground. " 67 Even as Nestor has placed
his worst troops in the middle, so that they will be forced, though unwilling, to fight, 68 so there he wishes to
regard all the Achaeans as caught between the Trojans
in front and their own families behind them; and he
hopes by this necessity, of avoiding death at the hands
of one and humiliation in the eyes of the other, they will
resist. Nestor leaves nothing to personal courage: it is of
a piece to rely on necessity and to appeal to civil shame;
for to a man who has outlived two generations the bonds
of society would seem stronger than those of an anny,
nor would his own weakness give him any confidence
in others' strength. As a very old man he has no peers,
and all relations seem to him the relation of the young
to the old, so that in making the Achaeans respect their
parents, he covertly makes them respect himself. Unable
to inspire his men by fear of himself and unwilling to trust
to military discipline, Nestor falls back on the rehearsal
of his own past prowess and on his soldiers' recollection
of those absent. 69
Military shame never once arouses the Trojans, whom
the cry "Be men!" always encourages; and once, when
Sarpedon tries to rally the Lycians-aidas, o Lykioi, pose
pheygete; nyn thooi este ("Shame, you Lycians, whither are
you fleeing? Be vigorous now!")-the appeal is to civil
shame: for as warriors they are urged to be "vigorous,"
and shame is only invoked to check their flight. 70
The Trojans rely more on their leaders than on their
troops, 71 for we always read of the "Trojans' and Hector's" attacking," as if the single virtue of Hector more
than equaled the mass effort of his men. 73 If the Trojans
act in concert, it is rather by the example of one man than
by any bravery in themselves; and Hector himself resembles Xenophon's Proxenus, who "was able to rule those
who were noble and brave, but unable to instill shame
or fear into his own troops, since he actually was more
ashamed before his men than they before him. " 74 Aeneas,
for example, can rouse Hector and the other captains by
an appeal to shame, but it would be unthinkable to
employ the same argument before all. 75 Though Nestor's
call to the Achaeans does appeal to a kind of civil shame,
theirs differs in this from the civil shame of the Trojans,
which affects only their greatest warriors.
How little the Trojans as a whole are affected by honor
41
�or shame, Homer shows us in the Doloneia, where under
the secrecy of night the basest motives and the most
cowardly actions prevai\. 76 Nestor asks an Achaean to
volunteer for a night patrol, and as reward he offers great
fame under heaven, a black ewe with her lamb from each
of the chiefs, and the perpetual right of being present at
banquets and feasts. n The two last inducements are mere
tokens, deliberately intended to be insufficient by themselves; so that the real emphasis might fall on the desire
for fame, which would animate only the noblest heroes.
When, however, Hector tries to provoke a Trojan to the
same exploit, he offers a considerable prize: the best
horses and chariot of the Achaeans." The consideration
of honor barely obtains mention. Hector does not even
think that fame would be an incentive at all, while Nestor
makes the material gain so little that fame alone must suffice. The cupidity of Dolon (though his being the only
male among five sisters somewhat pardons it) is the extreme example of Trojan shamelessness, while the honorable ambitions of Diomedes, though slightly depreciated
by his hesitation, is but the kind of nobility in which all
the Achaeans share.
Lessing grasped very well the difference between the
Achaeans and Trojans, when he wrote that "what in barbarians springs from fury and hardness, works in the
Greeks by principle, in whom heroism, like the spark concealed in flint, sleeps quietly, and as long as no outer force
awakens it, robs it of neither its clearness nor its coldness;
while barbaric heroism is a clear, devouring flame which
always consumes (or at least blackens) every other good
quality. If Homer leads the Trojans to battle with wild
cries, but the Greeks in resolute silence, the commentators are quite right to observe, that the poet wishes to
depict one side as barbarians and the other as a civilized
people. I am surprised, however, that another passage,
where there is a similar contrast of character, has not been
noticed. The enemy leaders have made a truce, and are
engaged in the cremation of their dead, which on both
sides takes place with much weeping. But Priam forbids
the Trojans to weep.79 'He forbids them to weep,' says
Mme. Dacier, 'because he fears they may become soft,
and in the morning go into battle with less ardour.' Quite
true; but still I ask: Why must Priam alone be afraid of
this? Why did not Agamemnon also give the same order?
The meaning of the poet goes deeper. He wishes to teach
us, that only the civilized Greeks can both weep and be
brave, while the barbarous Trojans, in order to be brave,
had to stifle all their humanity. " 80
Chapter III·
Achilles and Agamemnon
forces us to find other traits peculiar to themselves. Who
then is Achilles? Homer begs a goddess to sing the wrath
of "Peleides Achilles.'' 1 Achilles is the son of Peleus. he
is marked off from all other men because of his father:
as an only son, without brothers, he was entirely Peleus'
heir. 2 And were we to ask, Who is Peleus? we would be
told: "Aeacides," the son of Aeacus. And if we persisted,
and wanted to know who he was, Achilles himself boasts
it: "Aeacus was from Zeus. " 3 Achilles then is "Zeusborn," "Zeus-nurtured," or "dear to Zeus." In three
generations he goes back to Zeus, and beyond him it
would be foolish to go. To ask him who he is means to
ask him his lineage; and as he can only define himself
in terms of his past, were his ancestors unknown, he
would be a non-entity. 4 In Achilles' patronymic is
summed up part of his own greatness. He is partly the
work of generations.
Achilles has so much the springs of all his actions in
the past, that Homer can call him "Peleides" without
adding "Achilles," though it is Agamemnon, who even
more than he depends on his ancestors, that first addresses him so; while Homer calls him "Peleion" for the
first time only after Agamemnon has mocked and
doubted his divine ancestry. 5
Achilles, however, is not only the son of Peleus but the
grandson of Aeacus; and yet to be called "Aeacides,"
when he is actually "Peleides," means that he has inherited something that was common to all his ancestors.
Achilles is called the son of Aeacus first in the Trojan
catalogue: Ennomus and Amphimachus were both killed
by Achilles in the guise of "swift-footed Aeacides."'
Achilles resembles his grandfather in his ability to kill.
As a warrior he is indistinguishable from his forefathers:
killing is a family profession.' During the embassy, when
Achilles is most idle, though ironically most Achilles (for
his wrath makes up a great part of him), no one calls him
the son of Peleus; rather they point out to him how much
he has failed to follow his father's precepts.' When,
however, he returns to the fighting, his father's name is
almost as common as his own; and as he assumes his
ancestral name, he takes up his father's spear, which no
more could be hurled by another than "Peleides" be said
of another;' while again, in the last book, where his own
name occurs more frequently than anywhere else, his
patronymic hardly appears,· and he is never called to his
face the son of Peleus. Somehow he has outlived it.
As Hector had many brothers, to tell us at first that he
is the son of Priam would mean little: so Achilles, who
first mentions him, calls him "Hector the man-slayer. " 10
Paris, contrariwise, does not even deserve his father's
name, for his only distinction lies in his theft: he is most
of all the "husband of Helen, " 11 although in his braver
moments, which do not last very long, he earns the right,
that other heroes have without question, to be called
''Priamides.'' 12
Achilles and Hector are heroes, one an Achaean, the
other a Trojan: but to know them better, so that even
away from their camps, we would not mistake them,
42
But when we ask, "Who is Odysseus?" and tum to the
first lines of the Odyssey, the answer is quite different:
"Tell me of the man, Muse, of many wiles who wandered
SPRING 1985
�very far:" Odysseus is a clever man who wandered very
far. He 1s not made distinct from other men because he
is the only son of Laertes, but because he traveled. His
genealogy is contained in what he himself did and not
in what his father might have been. Laertes' father is
known, but his grandfather is unmentioned: tradition indeed gave him two family stems. 13 Homer in the Iliad
never calls him anything but Odysseus, though other
heroes address him as if he were like themselves-"Zeusborn Laertiades, very-crafty Odysseus" -but even here
his subtlety belongs to himself, while his divine origins
(whatever they may have been) belong to his father.
Homer in the Odyssey calls him "Laertiades," except in
a special case, 14 only after he has returned to Ithaca. 15 For
twenty years he is merely Odysseus, but he reassumes
his lineage as soon as he lays claim to his kingdom. His
patrimony gives him back his piety .16 Ovid understood
Odysseus when he made him say:
Nam genus et proavus et quae non fecimus ipsi, /Vix ea nostra voco. 17
(Race and ancestors and what we ourselves have not done, I hardly
call ours.)
I
Even the shift from the plural "fecimus" to the singular
"voco'' reflects his uniqueness. 18
Odysseus' adventures are his lineage, making his very
name superfluous. He is a traveler, who "saw the cities
of many men and knew their mind"; and his name, put
almost as an afterthought (without his patronymic), 19 cannot make clearer his identity, nor add much lustre to his
eminence. He is like Thersites, whose father and country are not given, 20 his deformity and outspokenness being title enough; so that to have Odysseus, Thersites'
closest rival in anonymity, answer his abuses was a
master-stroke. Their resemblance is so close that
Sophocles' Neoptolemus, when Philoctetes asks about a
man "clever and skilled in speaking," thinks he must
mean Odysseus, whereas he actually means Thersites. 21
Moreover, Philoctetes, believing it to be a truer lineage,
can even call Odysseus the son of Sisyphus; and
Odysseus can tell Eurnaeus that he is illegitirnate.U
When Odysseus tells the Cyclops his name-"No-one
is my name: my father, my mother, and all my companions call me No-one" 23-he is speaking more truthfully
than when he tells Alcinous that he is the son of Laertes. 24
His anonymity is the result of his guile, for Homer has
him pun* on the likeness of outis and metis. 25 His wisdom
made him no one, and cut all his ties with the past.
Although Achilles, if opposed to Odysseus, seems to
consist in nothing but his past, yet when opposed to
Agamemnon, he becomes more an individual. Indeed,
he stands somewhere in between Agamemnon and
*The Cyclopes confuse Odysseus' assumed name, Outis, with outis,
"no one" (Od. 9. 366, 408, 410). Odysseus' pun is based on the
resemblance of the alternative word for "no one," mi!tis, to m~tis,
"guile," "cunning" (9. 410, 414).
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
Odysseus. Agamemnon does not even appear at first
as himself, but as" Atreides lord of men," whil; Achille~
is "divine" in comparison. 26 Not until he differs from the
rest of the Achaeans (":ho wish to restore Chryseis),
though he has been mentioned thrice before, does Horner
call hun Agamemnon;" even so does Achilles call him
"Atreides" after he has convened the assembly, but
''Agamemnon'' when he wishes to single him out for his
crime 18 Agamemnon rises to rebut Achilles, but Homer
first clothes him in all possible authority: "Hero Atreides,
wide-ruling Agamemnon."" This majesty fails to impress
Achilles, who begms h1s reply, however, as if he agreed
with him: "Most worthy Atreides," but instead of ending the line, as we later realise he should have, he cruelly inserts: "Most rapacious of all!" 30 The proper endtag ("Lord of men Agamemnon") often occurs, mostly
spoken by Nestor, who, old man that he is, knows what
loyalty and respect must be shown to a king. When the
Achaeans are about to be catalogued, Agamemnon must
have full power. He must be not only the "most worthy" because of his lineage, but also the "King of men"
in his own name. 31 Later, when the fortunes of the
Achaeans are lowest, Nestor again bolsters Agamemnon
with his titles; and the other kings also, after the embassy
to Achilles fails, subscribe in the same way their loyalty. 32
Achilles only much later, when he has sloughed off his
rage, addresses him properly 33
Not until, however, Achilles swears an oath by
Agamemnon's sceptre, does the conflict between them
come out in the open: "Yes, by this sceptre, which never
again shall grow branches or leaves, since it first left its
stump on the mountain, not shall it bloom again, for the
bronze blade has stripped it of its leaves and its bark: and
now in turn the sons of the Achaeans, the wielders of
justice, carry it, those who protect the laws that come
from Zeus .... " 34 Then he flings down the sceptre, "studded with golden nails." We learn the true origin of this
sceptre much later, just before Agamemnon, doing "what
is right, " 35 tries the Achaeans, fearful that Achilles'
refusal to fight and his desire to return home have infected the army: "Up stood strong Agamemnon with the
sceptre, which Hephaestus artfully had made:
Hephaestus gave it to Zeus lord Cronion, and Zeus gave
it to the Treasurer of Riches (who kills with his brilliance),
and lord Hermes gave it to Pelops the goader of horses,
and Pelops in turn to Atreus the shepherd of his people;
and Atreus when he died left it to wealthy Thyestes, and
he in turn left it for Agernemnon to wield-to rule over
many islands and all Argos." 36 Lessing has beautifully
brought out the reason why the one sceptre receives these
two descriptions: "This was the work of Hephaestus;
that, an unknown hand hewed on a mountain: this belonged of old to a noble house; that to him whose fist
first grasped it: this to a king whose rule extended over
many islands and all Argos; that, wielded by a man in
the midst of the Greeks, to whom was entrusted, with
others, the defense of the laws. Here was the real difference between Agamemnon and Achilles, a difference
43
�which Achilles himself, in all his blind rage, could not
but admit. " 37 The conflict between them is between
authority and power, between the gifts of nature and
those of an heritage. Agamemnon's authority consists in
mere words (in the fame of his ancestry), and were
Achilles to yield to them, as if they were deeds, he would
be thought weak and cowardly." Briseis is only the
pretext for this more serious difference, which must
always exist, wherever power and position (potentia and
potestas) do not coincide. The usurper Bolingbroke and
King Richard II, for example, as made by Shakespeare,
work out in more tragic fashion the dispute between
Achilles and Agamemnon: for Richard relies as much on
his divine appointment as Agamemnon; and Bolingbroke, like Achilles, trusts more to "blood and bone"
than to ancestral right."
Achilles swears by the authority of Agamemnon in
terms of his own power. He swears by the sceptre as he
swears by the gods: and only Achilles swears. 40 Agamemnon calls upon the gods more cautiously, as witnesses
(as those who know);" whereas the gods to Achilles are
no more than this sceptre, which is but the extension of
his own power, losing all its force as soon as he casts it
aside. Though "studded with golden nails," he holds it
in no esteem. Any branch at all-" a palmer's walkingstaff" -would serve him as well. He does not need the
past to rally the present. But Agamemnon, who has little confidence in his own strength, must lean upon his
sceptre; unlike Hector, Achilles' equal, who leans upon
a spear while he speaks." Hector's spear is replaceable,
while Agamemnon's sceptre is unique: were it broken,
Agamemnon would be doomed to obscurity. He swears
neither by sceptre nor by gods, but rather he holds up
the sceptre to all the gods. 43 His lineage, embodied in the
sceptre, connects him with the gods. He looks to them:
Achilles looks to himself.
Odysseus alone knows how to combine, in the sceptre, the rank of Agememnon and the force of Achilles.
He stops the general rout of the Achaeans, which
Agamemnon's speech had caused, by making a distinction that Achilles would not, and Agamemnon could not,
employ. 44 Taking the ancestral sceptre in his hand, he
speaks to the kings thus: "If you disobey Agamemnon,
he shall oppress you; the wrath of a Zeus-nurtured king
is great; his honour comes from Zeus, and counseling
Zeus loves him. 45 He uses the sceptre as an emblem of
power, threatening the kings, who would be unimpressed by mere lineage, with divine vengeance. Authority lies in power. But against anyone of the rank-and-file,
Agamemnon's sceptre turns into a weapon: Odysseus
drives them before him with it. 46 He speaks to them quite
differently: "Sit down without a murmur, and listen to
others, who have more authority: many-headed rule is
bad; let there be one head, one king, to whom the son
of Cronus gave rule. " 47 Power lies in authority. As Zeus
is Zeus to the kings, but to the common warrior the son
of Cronus, 48 so Agamemnon must appear to the kings
44
as authoritative might, but to the warriors as powerful
authority.
Chapter IV
Ancestral Virtue
It is important that we do not learn the true nature of
the charges that Achilles had made against Agamemnon
until the second book; that the lineage of the sceptre is
not disclosed until then; and that we are kept in suspense
about his accusations against Agamemnon-who neither
risked his life in ambush, he said, nor ever entered into
the battle1 -until Achilles is no longer present, and his
one defender is Thersites. 2 Only in retrospect is Achilles
justified.
Homer throughout the first book keeps underlining the
struggle between them. Agamemnon scornfully remarks
to Achilles: "If you are, in fact, stronger, a god (I suppose) gave it to you." 3 He sees what Achilles is aiming
at, and, desperately, points out to him that, even though
Achilles is stronger, a god gave him his strength, so that
he really is no different from himself, to whose ancestor
Zeus gave the sceptre. Not only does he deny the superiority of Achilles in birth (the source of Agamemnon's
strength is Zeus, who is superior to any other god), but
he wishes to prove that the gulf between them is not very
great, since neither his own authority nor Achilles'
strength is properly their own. It is a last-minute stopgap,
and naturally it fails to work. But Agamemnon, confident
that he has been persuasive, merely asserts what Achilles
refuses to acknowledge: "so that you might know how
much more powerful [authoritative] I am."' Nestor, when
he tries to calm them both, adopts Agamemnon's argument. He calls Achilles "Peleides," hoping to remind him
of his ancestry, and then: "If you are stronger, a goddess was your mother; but he has more authority, for he
rules over more people. " 5 He does not insult Achilles by
doubting his divine parentage, as Agamemnon had, but
he insists on the same point. Agamemnon has greater
preponderance because his kingdom is larger. The size
of his empire, not the massiveness of his fist, exacts
obedience.
Horner seems to have arranged the catalogue in accordance with the conflict of Achilles and Agamemnon.
Odysseus holds the center, just as he does in the camp. 6
but Ajax and Achilles, who occupy the camp's extreme
wings, are here out of place. There are fourteen groups
on either side of Odysseus: Achilles and Agamemnon are
equally six places away from him. The number of ships
is far greater on Agamemnon's than on Achilles' side (732
to 442); so that Homer emphasizes the wealth rather than
the prowess which surrounds Agamemnon (placenames
are double those on Achilles' side, and even the epithets
suggest prosperity); while he neglects to list the cities of
Achilles' partisans and recounts instead stories about the
heroes themselves. We learn why Thoas is leader of the
SPRING 1985
�Aetolians, why Tiepolemus came from Rhodes, why
Nireus brought so few ships, why Achilles stayed away
from the war, how Protesilaus died, and why Philoctetes
is absent: 7 but with Agamemnon none of the commanders are replacements and little is said about any of
them. Thus the catalogue itself reflects the individual
power of Achilles and the ancestral authority of
Agamemnon. 8
The catalogue is also intended to recover Agamemnon's
prestige, which Achilles' attack had so greatly damaged:
as if the number of his ships and of his followers would
blot out his poor showing in front of Achilles, and dazzle us into acceptance of his sovereignty. Zeus also is willing, at least for a single day, to help out Nestor's plan,
making Agamemnon tower over the many and superior
to the heroes: "He excelled all the heroes because he was
the best and led the most people." 9 Yet no one contested
Achilles, when he stated that he was the best, and that
Agamemnon could only boast (or pray for) such a distinction.10 And Homer's agreement, in the catalogue, with
that boast is only a sop to Agamemnon's real humiliation: for no sooner has this providential superiority consoled him, than it is taken away: the Muses tell us that
Ajax was the best as long as blameless Achilles remained
angry .11 For this reason Ajax, in the catalogue proper, is
only given a line or two, 12 and his own excellence with
the spear is assigned to his namesake Oilean Ajax, who
is much smaller than himself and thus no rival to
Agamemnon. 13
Helen, ignorant of the dispute in the first book, sees
Agamemnon enhanced by the catalogue, and unconsciously takes his part. In pointing him out to Priam"That is Atreides, wide-ruling Agamemnon, who is both
a good king and a strong warrior" - 14she assigns him the
virtues Achilles had claimed for himself and denied to
Agamemnon. Helen settles everything in Agamemnon's
favor, giving him power and authority, which Diomedes,
after the Achaeans have suffered great loses, could not
possibly bring himself to admit. It is impetuous
Diomedes, susceptible to Achilles' rhetoric, who finally
declares Agamemnon's weakness: "The son of Cronus
gave you the sceptre to be honoured above all others, but
he did not give you strength which is the greatest
power." 15 Why Diomedes, however, can say in the ninth
book what had caused the rift between Agamemnon and
Achilles in the first, we must postpone answering until
later.
Diomedes himself in the fifth book gives us the best
example of ancestral virtue; and if we look at the first hundred lines, we can understand both its strength and its
weakness: how it is the main source of his prowess and,
for that very reason, how inadequate it is by itself. Athena
begins by putting strength and boldness into "Tydeides
Diomedes. " 16 Diomedes and his father are almost identical. For over one hundred lines, while he works destruction everywhere-it is even unclear whose side he is
on-1
70iomedes' own name never recurs. He acts bravely
and hence in the name of his father .18 But when Sthenelus
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
draws out the arrow, with which Pandarus had wounded
him, and the blood spurts through his shirt of mail, as
Diomedes, not as Tydeides, he prays to Athena. 19 His
paternal impetus once checked, he must summon help
in his own name: he begs Athena to stand by him even
as she once stood by his father. 20 Athena responds, calls
him simply "Diomedes," and promises aid . Thus
restored to favour, he becomes once again Tydeides. 21
Diomedes as an individual is weak, but as the son of his
father he is irresistible. Not in himself but in his lineage,
of which he is very conscious, 22 resides most of his own
greatness. It is ironic, however, that it should be
Diomedes, a hero so narrowly bound to the past, who
challenges the authority of Agamemnon.
Agamemnon, as we have seen, knows how important
ancestry is. When he wishes to rebuke Diomedes, who
has not yet rejected his right to do so, he praises his
father's courage and slights his own; and Athena herself
incites Diomedes by the same argument, concluding:
"Therefore you are not the offspring of Tydeus, warlike
Oeneides. " 23 Athena, in denying that Diomedes is the
son of Tydeus, says at the same time that Tydeus was
the son of Oeneus. Not to be the son of one's father is
the greatest shame: to surpass one's father unthinkable.
When Sthenelus attempts to rank Diomedes and himself
above their fathers, Diomedes silences hirn. 24 One must
be content with "ancestral strength," which Athena in
fact grants Diomedes: beyond that a hero cannot go. 25
Yet Odysseus, far from imitating his father, calls himself
after Telemachus; 26 for he is not only, in a sense, the
author of himself but the author of another. He is the
beginning of a new Iine.27
The absence of Achilles makes Agamemnon more and
more aware of his false position; so that he is at last forced
to concede him everything except a superiority in age,
upon which he now bases his greater royalty. 28 It is a concession, however, which Odysseus, in repeating
Agamemnon's promises to Achilles, prudently omits. 29
After the embassy fails, Agamemnon's despair increases still further. He fears that Diomedes might pick,
as his companion on a night patrol, Menelaus: "Nor you
in shame leave behind the better, and yielding to shame
choose the worse, looking at a lineage, not even if the
worse is more royal." 30 Diomedes' sense of shame must
not interfere with his knowledge. He must judge
Menelaus stripped of his titles, which is so much easier
to do under the cover of night. Agamemnon now affirms,
what he just as strongly before denied, that rank and birth
are no guarantee of virtue. He realizes now how wrong
he had been: it takes Achilles much longer to
acknowledge his guilt.
At the funeral games the struggle between innate and
inherited virtue reappears. It is staged for Achilles'
benefit. Menelaus becomes very angry with Antilochus,
because he had tricked him into yielding his advantage.
The trick made him third instead of second: "You have
shamed my virtue arete, you have blasted my horses, putting your own in front, which you know are much worse
45
�[Let the Argives judge between us], lest one of them
say, 'Menelaus by lies and by force worsted Antilochus,
and he takes the horse as his prize, because his horses
were much worse, but he himself stronger, in virtue and
strength (aretei te biei te). " 31 It has been usual to translate
arete differently each time: first as skill, then as dignity: 32
but the point is lost unless Menelaus refers twice to the
same virtue. "Better" has as its correlate "worse": the
horses of Menelaus will be thought worse, and Menelaus
himself better, in "virtue and strength," Menelaus would
on the one hand be lying, if he said his horses were better and they were not, 33 and on the other he would be
using "virtue and strength" to gain the prize. Menelaus
can mean only one thing by virtue:
,•,/ Ill 11/l~'IILI> , CSI Ill CtJIIIS
(There
IS
palrll/11 vir/1/S
in bullocks, there is in horses, the virtue of their fathers) .
Virtue and lineage are for Menelaus interchangeable.
"You have shamed my virtue," he says, but he means
his family "The Achaeans will say my horses were inferior in virtue and strength, while I won by superior virtue and strength"· Menelaus means in both cases family As his horses are good, so are they of good family:
as he himself is of good family, so is he virtuous. Family
and virtue are the same. Laertes in the Odyssey similarly
confounds them. Odysseus begs Telemachus not to
shame the race of his fathers, and after Telemachus promises he will not, Laertes, who has overheard them, rejoices because "his son and his grandson contested about
virtue. " 34 Laertes and Menelaus are agreed: a virtue
always descends from father to son. But what we would
call skill (namely, Antilochus' device for getting ahead),
and what Nestor calls "craft," Menelaus can only think
of as guile. 35 Virtue is family, art is base deception.
Menelaus reunites what Achilles had taken apart: he
holds, like Agamemnon, the sceptre while speaking. 36
Chapter V
The Armour of Agamemnon
Many readers must have noticed that Agamemnon,
though he plays a great part in the Iliad, po~<;esses few
epithets. His honorifics scarcely match his honour. He
is regularly adorned with five: Menelaus can claim at least
twelve. But were these five peculiar to himself, perhaps
they would prove no less illustrious for being few. This
however is not the case. Anax and ron, "lord of men," he
is allowed to enjoy by himself, until we meet the enemy
and find that Anchises and Aeneas also have it; 1 or
Nestor, in his garrulity, bestows it on Augeias. 2 These
somehow may be thought worthy enough to be ranked
with Agamemnon: but when Euphetes, about whom
nothing is known, and worse still Eumelus, an Achaean
who led but eleven ships, obtain it,3 Agamemnon's glory
is stolen from him. Likewise he shares poimen laon,
"shepherd of the people," not only with Dryas, whom
Nestor numbers among the former great, but with the
obscure Bias, Hypeiron, and Thrasymedes. 4 It is even
46
twice applied to his enemy Achilles. 5 Dios, "brilliant,"
needs no comment, for it adorns almost all heroes. Only
eury kreion, wide-ruling, which Poseidon once us,urps, 6
and kydistos, "most glorious," which often describes
Zeus, may be considered Agamemnon's own. His consolation, of course, may be that others are called
"shepherd of the people" or "lord of men" only on
special occasions, while he constantly enjoys them: but
these few occasions are sufficient to lower his rank. Having so few distinctions, he must be more jealous of their
use than Achilles, who, in the abundance of his store,
can afford to be prodigal.7
To marshal his troops Agamemnon's epithets suffice:
but to wage war with them would be folly. The enemy
cannot be expected to consider, in the midst of battle, the
extent of his sway. He stands almost naked for the
business of war: he must be armed, before entering it,
more carefully than anyone else. His arming of himself
begins his aristeia. Piece by piece Agamemnon is put
together and made a hero. The effort is so great that
Athena and Hera must make "loud clamour in order to
honour the king of wealthy Mycenae. " 8 His careful fitting contrasts sharply with Hector, who needs no time
to arm himself, but he is shown at once bearing his shield
among the front ranks. 9 Moreover, Hector fires the imagination of Homer: his essence can be caught in a simile:
he is like a baleful star, sometimes flashing through the
clouds, sometimes ducking behind them. 10 But Agamemnon cannot be fused into a single image: he remains in
fragments. His armour clothes, it does not transform him.
It is his breastplate, not himself, that calls for a simile;
whose snakes gleam "like the rainbow Zeus sticks in a
cloud, a portent for mankind. " 11 Not Agamemnon but
his breastplate is more than the sum of its parts; not
Agamemnon but his well-wrought shield is "furious. " 12
Though the bronze of his armour flashed far into the
heavens, the wonder of it fails to impress us: we suspect
that Hera and Athena have intervened. The statement
is too literal. He is unpoetic. But Hector's bronze "shone
like the lightning of Father Zeus the aegis-bearer. " 13 His
armour is as miraculous as his own person.
Armour makes the man: it covers his fears and his
cowardice. When Paris agrees to fight Menelaus, he dons
his armour, as the husband of fair-haired Helen, just as
methodically as Agamemnon. Indeed, his breastplate is
borrowed, and, Homer adds, "he adjusted it to fit
himself." 14 And having completed Paris, as it were,
Homer does not go through it again for Menelaus; who,
though not much of a warrior, is so much better than
Paris, that it suffices to say, "so in the same way warlike
Menelaus put on his armour. " 15 Menelaus is already
armed with his epithet "warlike": but Paris needs more
protection than the epithet "godlike" (theoeides) can
afford.
Nestor and Odysseus find Diomedes sleeping outside
his tent, still clothed in all of his armour, while his companions rest their heads on their shields. 16 Not even in
sleep can Diomedes the man peel off Diomedes the war-
SPRING 1985
�rior. Man means: armed man. Armour is a promise of
power; it is, like a hero's patronymic, a proof of his
eminence. If he is deprived of this emblem, which is
sometimes handed down from his father, he might be
mistaken for a common warrior and lose his claim to
ancestral virtue-" When Hector thinks of appealing to
Achilles, having taken off his helmet, laid down his
shield, and rested his spear against a wall, he suddenly
stops himself: "He will kill me even though I am naked
and as if I were a woman. " 18 A hero becomes like a
woman and thinks of himself as naked, as soon as he is
deprived of spear, helmet and shield. 19 Not the force in
his limbs but the force in his armour transmutes a man
into a hero. He acts as if he were the instrument of his
own weapons and subject to them. How elaborately the
Achaeans prepare in the Doloneia, merely to attend a
meeting! Agamemnon puts on a coat of mail and takes
a spear; Nestor does the same; and neither helmeted
Menelaus nor armed Diomedes forgets his spear-'0 Only
Odysseus forgets and takes but a shield: for his part in
the patrol is defensive, and Diomedes does the killing. 21
When Patroclus is stripped of Achilles' armour, Achilles
knows that he cannot go into battle unarmed, and yet
he feels that the armour of no one else would suit him:
only the shield of Ajax would accord with his dignity/2
as if the arms of another would make him lose his own
identity." When Zeus, on the other hand, fitted the arms
of Achilles to Hector, at once "great Ares crept into him,
and his limbs were filled with strength. " 24 Zeus no doubt
partly inspires him, but it is equally the arms themselves,
made by Hephaestus, that lend him support. Here is not
just the flash of bronze, which dazzles the enemy and
leaves him unchanged: but here is an inner sympathy between Hector and his armour that creates a single implement of war. Even the heroes acknowledge the partial
identity of arms and the man, anna virumque. 25 Pandarus
speaks thus to Aeneas, when he asks him who the
Achaean warrior is who slays so many Trojans: "I liken
him in all respects to warlike Tydeides, knowing him by
his shield and his helmet, and seeing his horses. " 26
Diomedes is known by his shield, his horses, and his
helmet. To lose them would be to lose the best part of
himself, 27 so that every hero is as intent on capturing
pieces of armour as he is on killing their owner: for should
he fail to despoil his victim, he has no record of the deed.
Trophies bear witness to his prowess: they guarantee his
fame.
Patroclus fills perfectly the armour of Achilles, and
when he first appears, he is mistaken for him; 28 but it is
his inability to wield Achilles' spear that tells the difference between them. 29 Had Patroclus been able to wield
it, we would have had two Achilles.
Chapter VI
Ajax
Nireus was the most beautiful man, after Achilles, who
came to Troy: but he was weak and few people followed
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
him.' Lacking both the ancestral authority of Agamemnon and the inborn power of Achilles, he showed up so
poorly in the war that, outside the catalogue, he never
is mentioned. That beauty does not carry with it any
strength, we know already from Paris; 2 but strength can
yet draw a man into beauty. Although Ajax at first is only
the best warrior among the Achaeans after Achilles,' he
assumes, in the stress and strain of war, when the Trojans are about to drag away Patroclus' corpse, a greater
likeness to him: "Ajax, who in beauty as in deeds surpassed all the Danaans except the son of Peleus. " 4 His
deeds shed a lustre over his appearance, so that he usurps
the place of Nireus, whose peacetime beauty counts as
nothing in battle.' The parents of Nireus gave him a
superficial beauty, that reflected, as it were, the glorious
bravery of their own names (Aglaie and Charopus:
"Splendour" and "Flash"), but that yielded to brute Ajax
in the shock of war.
We know the war-mettle of Ajax before Achilles', and
that he imperfectly copies heroic virtue; but his very imperfection serves as our only possible guide to Achilles.
Were we to witness Achilles' valour in the seventh book,
instead of Ajax', we could form no just idea of his
greatness: but after having before us his inferior, though
he is apparently flawless, the peculiar virtues of Achilles
become something clear and precise.
He doth permit the base contagious douds
To smother up his beauty from the world,
That, when he please again to be himself,
Being wanted, he may be more wonder'd at,
By breaking through the foul and ugly mists
Of vapours that did seem to strangle him.
We must look then more closely at Ajax. A hundred
lines of the eleventh book, in which he displays more of
himself than elsewhere, are the best place to begin. The
Trojans have tracked down the wounded Odysseus; and
Ajax, summoned by Menelaus, enters the fray, as is his
custom, without a word. 6 Homer aptly compares him to
a lion, who chases off jackals from a stag: "then devours
it himself.'' These last words seem not only inexact (common enough in similes) but inapplicable: for Ajax has
come to defend and not to kill Odysseus. Yet Homer
wished to indicate, in the aside of his simile, that Ajax'
excellence does not include his loyalty. He is a warrior
first, an Achaean second: he could have been as readily
a Trojan. 8
Ajax is all head and shoulders, and carries his shield
like a turret: even in motion he seems to stand still. 9 He
plays a large part in the defense of the wall: when its
tower is threatened, Menestheus prefers him before
others; and Tencer, just as if Ajax were a battlement,
shoots his arrows from behind him and his shield. 10
As Ajax wounds one Trojan after another, Homer likens
him to a river swollen by winter rains: "Many flourishing
oaks and many pines it carries away, and casts much
trash into the sea.'' 11 The river sweeps away not only oaks
and pines (trees to which falling warriors are often com-
47
�pared) but trash: so Ajax wounded Lysandrus and
Pyrasus, whose names occur nowhere else; and Pylartes,
whom Patroclus later killed; and even his noblest victim,
Doryclus the son of Priam, is illegitimate." He lacks
discrimination in his slaughter of horses and men. 13
Ajax is hard-pressed but retreats reluctantly, like a lion
driven away from cattle. The simile would have little
point (it is used elsewhere of Menelaus), 14 were it not for
what follows: an ass he seems, glutted on corn, whom
children beat out of a field. 15 He is a beast (ther), the word
Homer employs in bringing together these two similes.1•
Aristotle must have had this passage in mind, when after
showing how Homer made Hector and Diomedes possess
a kind of noble courage, he continues: "Honour and the
noble incite the brave to action, and spirit (thymos) works
with them; but pain incites animals, ... who are not
courageous, since pain and spirit alone goad them to face
dangers they fail to foresee; for even asses, if they are
hungry, would be brave, and, though they are beaten,
refuse to budge from pasture." 17 Whatever nobility, then,
Ajax has, he shares with Menelaus (it is of the most
general kind): but what makes him unique, his stubbornness, lacks all nobility. He is a glutton in war: insatiate.t8
When Ajax is called the best, after Achilles, both in
deeds and in beauty, he is at once compared to a wild
boar, an animal which Achilles himself never seems to
imitate. 19 Ajax after all, Homer admits, even if ennobled
by war, is quite ugly. In short, as lion, boar, and ass, we
may call him: thymodes ("quick-tempered") but eleutherios
("noble"), enstatikos ("ferocious") but andreios
("courageous"), arnathes ("unmanageable") but eugenes
("well-born"). 20
Chapter VII
Heroic Virtue
"To no man would Telamonian Ajax yield ... nor
would he retreat before Achilles the man-smasher, if they
fought hand-to-hand; but in swiftness he cannot rival
him. " 1 ldomeneus very exactly describes Ajax thus: only in swiftness does Achilles excel him, for in pitched battle Ajax would be his equal. Achilles is better than Ajax
because he is faster, and if we wish to find someone like
him in this respect, we need only look to Ajax' namesake:
"Ajax slew the most, the fast son of Oileus; for no one
was his equal in following up a rout, whenever Zeus put
fear into them. " 2 Speed is needed to follow up a rout,
bulkiness to cover a retreat. That two men, who would
almost match Achilles if combined (they often appear
together), should bear the same name is a brilliant stroke-'
Achilles is Telamonian, added to Oilean, Ajax: the
shoulders belong to one, the legs to the other.' We see
in each of them separately some of Achilles' vices which,
because he contains both their virtues, are in himself
concealed.
We have come round at last to Achilles' most frequent
48
epithet, "swift-footed," which seems to occur in such
reckless profusion throughout the Iliad; but Homer
manages its use more finely than many suppose.
Although swiftness of foot does not in itself sum tlp all
virtues, for ugly Dolon has it (has de toi eidos men een kakos,
alia podokes,-"who was ill-favored in looks, but swiftfooted"),' yet, if someone is more beautiful than Nireus
and as bulky as Ajax, 6 it suffices to set him apart from
all others. 7 It seals the doom of Hector when he tries to
flee.'lt is the most obvious proof of Achilles' power, so
that even his eloquence seems based upon it. He assumes
it first when he addresses Agamemnon: swift-footed
Achilles is pitted against the son of Atreus.• It assures
Calchas, uncertain whether he may speak the truth or
not: it convinces him that Achilles is stronger than
Atreides, and hence he has nothing to fear 10 And
Achilles, as long as he irritates Agamemnon (illustrating
in his speech his power), is swift-footed, but when
Athena persuades him not to use his strength, and he
replaces his sword in its sheath, he becomes "Peleides. " 11
His piety, gaining for the moment the upper hand, lets
him reassume his father's name.
Achilles receives the epithet "swift-footed" more than
any other man, but one animal has it almost as often.
Horses are okypodes. They resemble Achilles in his proudest virtue, and only if we discover how the horse and the
hero are related, shall we see Achilles in a true perspective. The word arete, "virtue," occurs, all told, sixteen
times in the Iliad. 12 It is used exclusively of horses and
men. 13 But what is equine virtue?" A horse must be both
strong and beautiful: its strength resides in the legs, its
beauty in the head. " 14 Thus it is the perfect image for
Achilles, the swiftest and most beautiful of the heroes.
What is more Aristotle assigns to the horse two virtues
(among others) which, we have seen, characterize
Achilles: "The virtue of a horse makes him both run
quickly and abide the enemy.ts It is, therefore, right and
proper that Achilles should have the best horses. 16
That Achilles harmoniously unites two virtues that
usually cannot even fit together, stamina and speed, constitutes the miracle of his excellence; for what Lady Wentworth says of racehorses, that "it is doubtful whether extreme sprinting speed can be combined with extreme
staying power" -no less doubtful than that "a weightlifter [can be] built like an acrobat" 17-holds true for heroic
virtue. Oilean Ajax is much smaller than his namesake: 18
but Achilles did not sacrifice the swiftness of one to acquire the turret-like stolidity of the other. He is, in a real
sense, more than the sum of his parts.
Paris dons his armour and comes to join the fight.
Homer describes him brilliantly: "And he, when he had
put on his famous armout:, curiously wrought in bronze,
rushed through the city, confident in his swift feet: as
when some stabled horse, fed in its stall, breaks its bonds
and rushes over the plain, striking the earth with his
hooves, accustomed to bathe in the fair-flowing river, rejoicing: it holds its head high, and its mane streams from
the shoulders (confident in its splendour), its swift legs
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�bring it to the pastures and the herd of horses: so the son
of Priam, Paris, brilliant in his arms, came like the sun
from the top of Pergamun, smiling with self-satisfaction,
and his swift legs brought him. " 19 Critics have been annoyed that Hector obtains the same simile-"So Apollo
said and breathed strength into the shepherd of his people, as when etc." - 20 and yet the reason for the repetition is not hard to find. Both are equally swift but exultant differently. Paris, godlike in his beauty, flashing like
the sun and "smiling with self-satisfaction," 21 puts on
beautiful armour; while Hector returns to the fight, after
being almost mortally wounded, with renewed strength.
Paris is beautiful like Nireus, Hector like Ajax: even in
war Paris has the glitter of peace, even in a lull Hector
terrifies his son. 22 Paris' brilliance will fade in battle, Hector's force will increase. They stand at the two poles of
heroic excellence, beauty and power, which are fused in
Achilles (and only these three heroes are compared to
horses): "As a triumphant horse with his chariot rushes,
who easily in the stretch runs over the plain, so Achilles
managed his swift feet and knees. " 23 Achilles then is a
mixture, among the Achaens, of the two Ajax; among the
Trojans, of Paris and Hector.
This general resemblance of men and horses Homer
pursues even to small particulars. He tells us what is the
most fatal spot for horse and man alone (they are not the
same);" and he implies that, in the eyes of the gods, there
is no difference between the providence extended to
horses and men: Zeus pities the immortal horses of
Achilles, who weep for Patroclus, even as he pities Hector, prancing in the arms of Achilles." Achilles' arms and
Achilles' horses would be the two greatest prizes for Hector." That he captures one, while the other eludes him,
spells out his doom. Zeus allowed him the one and refused him the other: mortal Patroclus he can kill, Xanthus and Balius he cannot. Achilles survives to kill him,
they to humiliate his corpse.
Virtue shows itself in foot and hand: to have both in
the highest degree is to be Achilles. Yet virtue consists
in another element which Achilles is slow to demonstrate:
the willingness to use what one has. Horses have it almost
everywhere: (to auk aekonte petesthen-"but not unwillingly the two flew forward.") 27 Obedience to the lash of
his driver suffices for a horse; but in the case of a hero,
though he sometimes fails to realize it, his obedience must
come from within. Willingness must accompany a hero's
knowledge and efficiency. Hence only the Achaeans as
a body, and never the Trojans (who defend themselves
by necessity)," fight with arete."
Eumaeus complains to Odysseus that nothing runs
smoothly any more, ever since his master went away; not
even the dog Argus was cared for: "And the servants,
as soon as their masters no longer stand over them, are
unwilling to do what they ought; for half of virtue Zeus
takes away from a man, when the day of slavery overtakes him. " 30 A man does not lose in slavery his skill but
his willingness to perform enaisima ("just things" -with
the sense of having been decreed by the gods), which are
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
the things one should do if one knows them. "No one
who is just," says Hector to Paris, "would ever blame
your work in battle, since you are strong; but willingly
you hold off and do not wish to fight. " 31 To be strong
is not enough: one must wish to use one's strength: one
must be willing to die."
Chapter VIII
Achilles and Hector
When Hector sees Paris retreating before Menelaus' advance, he rebukes him sharply; Paris humbly submits but,
almost as an aside, complains of Hector's ruthlessness:
"Your heart is always like an unwearying axe, by which
a man cuts through a ship's plank with the help of his
art (techni!), and the axe increases his force (eroen). " 1
Paris' simile is unique in many ways. Nowhere else is
a hero compared to a man-made thing; nor does the word
techni! recur in the Iliad (common enough though it is in
the Odyssey);' nor is eroi! used commonly of a man but
of a spear's cast. 3 Hector is not the woodsman but the
axe, or rather woodsman and axe; his heart multiplies
his strength; he is self-sufficient. He carries within himself
the means to greater power. He is all weapon.
Hector does not stand alone in being a mere instrument
of himself. Ni!li!s, "merciless," often describes two
things: to avoid death is to ward off ni!lees i!mar, a merciless day; to be slain is sometimes to be cut ni!lei' chalkoi,
with merciless bronze. 4 A day of death is merciless but
perhaps bronze would be better called indifferent. Yet
Achilles and no one else is neles. 5 His spirit is iron. 6 He
is a thing, indifferent and merciless: as inevitable as
death; as unfeeling as bronze. "Made by some other
divinity than nature," Hector and Achilles embody the
ultimate ambition of a hero: to be no man at all.
That for Achilles' image stood his spear
Gripped in an armed hand; himself behind
Was left unseen, save to the eye of mind:
A hand, a foot, a face, a leg, a head,
Stood for the whole to be imagined. 7
Patroclus, who understands Achilles, begs him to
return to the war; and feeling, while he speaks, that
Achilles stiffens himself to refuse him, denies what
seemed Achilles' inalienable possession: "Pitiless
horseman Peleus was not your father, nor Thetis your
mother; but the grey-green sea and steep rocks bore you,
for your mind is harsh."• Thetis and Peleus could never
have been the parents of Achilles: sea and rocks must
have begot him. Patroclus has chosen his image carefully.
Achilles' mother, instead of being a Nereid, is the sea
itself; and Achilles' father, instead of being a grandson
of Zeus, is a fabulous rock. "Tell me your ancestry,"
Penelope says to the disguised Odysseus, "for you are
not from fabled oak or rock. " 9 Achilles' divine lineage,
known to be but three generations, becomes uncountable
and formless. He is as anonymous as Odysseus.
49
�If we compare Patroclus' bitter words with a similar
passage, Achilles' uniqueness will appear more clearly.
Hector cannot break through the lines of Achaeans who
defend the ships, holding him back "like a great steep
rock, set near the iron-grey sea, that resists the swift
onrush of shrill winds and foaming waves, which break,
crash and roar against it. " 10 The Trojans as waves and
winds beat vainly against the Achaeans, a steep rock.
Achilles may seem at first, as the offspring of rock and
sea, to be nothing more than "half-Trojan and halfGreek": but he is more. Achilles is what others only seem
to be. Whereas the Achaeans and Trojans are rock and
sea by Horner's fiat, their identity to be changed as the
scene itself changes, Achilles' character is more permanent. He is the son, however unnatural, of sea and stone,
and as such beyond the whims of Horner. The harshness
of Achilles resides in his elemental lineage, that of the
Achaeans and Trojans in a likeness; just as the mild
temper of Patroclus, when he beseeches Achilles, is
shown in his weeping like a spring, "which pours its dark
waters down a precipice ." 11 Patroclus' grief evokes a com-
parison in which he does not become, as Achilles does,
the objects in the simile but merely resembles their outer
appearance. Not abandoning himself in the image, he
assumes only its manner; while Achilles is the very
substance of Patroclus' aspect, as if the sea were the
source of every spring and the steep cliffs of every
precipice. He is the reality that lies behind the accidental
and the momentary, and hence he cannot change his being and his origins as others change their attributes. He
wears no disguises.
Chapter IX
Similes
Hephaestus divided Achilles' shield into three parts:
sky, earth and sea. 1 Sun, moon, and stars, which seem
to make up the whole of heaven, are done in a few lines;
and the sea; which surrounds the shield, even more
quickly; but the earth, or rather man's business on earth,
takes up most of Horner's description.' The city at war
requires more time to depict than the city at peace: but
the peaceful tasks of men predominate over both. 3
Horner made the shield as an image of his two works,
but his picture of war, the Iliad, is explained by similes
taken over from the peaceful scenes of the shield; while
his picture of peace, the Odyssey, merely repeats the same
scene.• The ocean on which Odysseus travels is the real
ocean, while the storms and tempests in the Iliad are borrowed images. War cannot explain itself. It needs to be
glossed by peace. It is an abstract of peace, unable to make
full use of its richness, so that the similes are restricted
and, except for one detail, sometimes fail to correspond.
Only the idea or sentiment that lies behind a simile can
be shared with the bleakness of war.' Peace needs no
similes, it is what everyone knows. A simile would merely
50
duplicate our own vision and add nothing to it. War, the
unfamiliar, must be shown in terms of the familiar, so
that only through the Odyssey can we understand the Iliad. The simile puts the heroes in the perspective of peace,
of what they resemble in the world around us. Indeed
it is because war seems more desirable than peace-to stay
at Troy more desirable than to return horne-that Horner
can use peaceful similes. 6 But can counterparts to the
heroes be found in our world? or must peace be distorted
to fit them? We must look more closely at the similes to
find Homer's answer. The twelfth and thirteenth books
are perhaps the clearest examples; for the heroes are
restricted to the battlefield, so that the series of similes
are uninterrupted and contribute to a single idea.
What Hector is compared to at first sets up an opposition that Horner repeats and enlarges upon in the succeeding similes. Hector leads the charge like a lion and
a whirlwind. 7 He is both animate and inanimate nature:
animal and thing. 8 As a whirlwind he is absolute; his opponents are not described. As a boar or lion he becomes
contentious and forms but part of the scene: hemmed in
by dogs and huntsmen, his eyes gleaming with strength,
the lion tries to make his way out, and not fear but
rashness finally kills him.' As whirlwind, Hector is alone,
and
Runs rushing o'er the lines of men, as if 'twere
A perpetual spoil;
as lion, Hector finds himself surrounded, his liberty
chained to a narrow circle, within which he must move
and die.
Then Asius makes his diversionary sally against the
wall of the Achaeans, which Polypoetes and Leonteus,
fixed like two oaks (their long roots unmoved by wind
and rain), defend. 10 Here the whirlwind of Hector has
become the wind and rain of Asius, who meets his first
resistance in the oaken Lapiths. The absolute rush and
motion of the winds encounter two oaks, which are, just
as absolutely, obstinate and immobile. But as soon as they
charge and engage in combat, they do not differ from the
boarlike Hector. Now the Trojans under Asius are the
dogs and huntsmen which the Achaeans before had represented.11 The roles of attacker and defender are reversed, but the reversal has brought no real change in
the similes. They are still the same two aspects of nature:
animal and thing.
As Achaeans and Trojans are now equal in the eyes of
Homer, the simile shifts to their weapons. The stones
they hurl against one another are like the snowflakes that
cover, indifferently, the fertile earth. 12 We are at war and
so in the dead of winter, when nothing grows, but a
blanket of snow hides every aspect of life. We are reminded now that the world of war and the world of peace
do not jibe; that the winter of war has no sequel like the
winter of nature; and that no spring will come after the
death of heroes.
Asius frets at the sudden check, which the La piths have
given, to his high expectations. He compares them to bees
SPRING 1985
�or wasps which stand in the way of hunters intent on
bigger game 13 To Homer, Leonteus and Polypoetes are
the hunters, but to Asius, naturally, the advance is all
on his side. He does not acknowledge the reversal but
thinks of them as a slight bother in his way. Thus again,
as Asius drew an image from animate, so Homer drew
his from inanimate nature: snow and bees continue the
comparison of animal and thing. Even Zeus follows
Homer's lead, sending first an eagle and then a whirlwind as omens: 14 but whereas Homer gives us images,
Zeus gives the heroes the things themselves. Omens spell
out before their eyes what Homer's similes spell out for
us.
After Zeus has shown his presence, Homer adapts his
simile of snowflakes to this divine interference. Zeus now
makes it snow, and the earth no longer seems a simple
entity: Homer picks out mountain-tops, plains, steep
headlands, and the worked fields of men. 15 With the entrance of Zeus, civil man also enters: he becomes part of
the landscape. Men have been so far only huntsmen; now
they are farmers as well.
Zeus rouses Sarpedon his son, who charges like a lion
among cows or sheep. 16 Men are now cowherds and
shepherds. The peaceful world fills out. As the war itself
is elaborated, more and more elements are seen in its mirror. Every aspect of war refracts an aspect of peace. The
heroes are shadowed, in whatever they do, by the world
they left behind. But Sarpedon not only is lionlike, he
also is, with Glaucus, a black hurricane.l7 Never can the
heroes escape from being both animal and thing.
Achaeans and Trojans have exhausted the animal
world. Their counterparts exist now only among men.
They fight like two men squabbling over a boundary."
War becomes a conventional dispute, that no longer is
similar to the natural conflict between lion and sheep 19
It is man-made and arbitrary, without a true reflection
in nature. The similes become more petty. After being
like wind and lions, they seem to be like a woman who
weighs out wool barely sufficient for her children. 2 ' For
her wool she receives a wdge, even as eternal fame is the
reward for the Achaeans and Trojans, that they will hand
down to their children. But her wage is mean and
unseemly, while they think fame glorious. They deceive
themselves, she is an honest woman: gyne chernetis ale. thes. Seen by the eyes of peace, their war is foolish and
of little worth.
Hector raises a stone against the Achaean gate, carrying it as easily as a shepherd carries fleece. 21 His stone is
as light as wool, and he himself but a shepherd. Neither
the purpose of the war, nor the heroes themselves find
any glory in peace. If we wish to be impressed by them,
we must keep our eye on inanimate nahlre. So Hector is
likened to swift-coming night, and on this note of dead
nature the book ends. 22
We have followed the hero through a series of similes,
which shifted back and forth between animal and thing;
but this alternation was not simply repetitive: for it emphasized always more openly, in each successive image,
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
how little ad~pted the hero was to peace; how only wind,
snow, and mght really smted h1m; and how little in common have men and human beings. Man at war is half
thing and half beast, but there is no nobility, no greatness
in him, if we think on peace. Homer does not glorify war.
As we become involved in the destinies of his heroes, he
whispers more and more insistently, "there is a world
elsewhere."
In the thirteenth book the similes are more concerned
with the battle itself than with the heroes; and as neither
side overwhelms the other, the similes reflect this
stalemate, animating the inanimate and stilling the force
and motion in animals. Thus it is built on a series of
paradoxical images. The Trojans, massed like fire or a
whirlwind, advance behind Hector: the fire contains all
of their flashy persistence (most evident in Hector), while
the wind is their inevitable march, whose bluster belongs
less to Hector than to his troops. 23 Hector himself is then
compared to a boulder, that, breaking loose from a crag,
rolls until it comes to the plain, where it can proceed no
farther "however much it desires. " 24 A thing is granted
life unnaturally, until its course is finally checked and it
is brought back to its nahlral state; while in the death of
Imbrius, who falls like an ash cut down by an axe, the
reverse takes place: what should naturally stand upright
is laid low, and its "delicate foliage," that once was held
high on a conspicuous mountain, draws near the earth. 25
And again, once Imbrius lies upon the ground, the two
Ajax raise him up, like lions which grasp in their jaws a
goat. 26
Idomeneus rehlrns to his tent and puts on his armour:
he resembles a lightning-flash sent by Zeus but unlike his
image he runs back to the war." The steady streak of his
brilliance has been set in motion, and thus preserves the
double aspect of motion and rest with which the book
started. His companion Meriones is compared to "swift
Ares," while both together are like Ares and Phobos, who
arm now the Ephyroi, now the Phlegyae: so impetus is
united with impartiality, their loyalty to the Achaeans with
their indifference (as warriors) to either side. 28 And having decided where they should lend their aid, Meriones
again is compared to "swift Ares" and Idomeneus to fire. 29
The battle itself is next likened to the rush of shrill winds
that raise a great cloud of dust, which in tum hovers over
the earth. 30 Achaeans and Trojans are brought to a stillstand, their opposed desires endeavouring to move (like
the boulder of Hector), but their equality resulting in a stationary cloud (like the level plain that stopped Hector).
Asius comes up to protect the corpse of Othoneus, and
he is cut down like an oak or a white poplar or a tall
pine. 31 Asius dies like Imbrius, and what is naturally erect
carpenters will fashion into a ship. Idomeneus attacks
Alcathous, whom, although he wishes to flee, Poseidon
charms to the spot; and he stands as rigidly as a tree or
a stele." Thus he who wished to stand falls, and he who
wished to move remains. War has inverted the world of
nature and of men.
Aeneas advances against Idomeneus, who, instead of
51
�flight, only thinks of holding his ground, and now, when
the image of a tree would be appropriate, 33 Homer likens
him to a boar, that bristles its back at the approach of men,
its eyes flashing fire in defiance'' What should be permanent changes, and what should be in motion holds
fast. Aeneas, on the other hand, is like a ram who waits
for the sheep to follow him. 35 He retains the stationary
fire of Hector, while his men continue the first image of
the wind. So when he and Idomeneus stand before one
another, they seem like Ares, as if their conflict has been
cancelled, and they are found together in a single image.
Meriones returns to prominence as ''swift Ares," even
though Achaeans and Trojans are drawn closely together
about the dead Ascalaphus; but he soon becomes a
vulture, as he snatches the spear he cast and falls back
among his troops."
Adamas attacks Antilochus and, though he launches
his spear with energy, it fails to penetrate the shield but
remains there like a burnt stake: Poseidon has checked
it and deprived it of its strength. 37 As Adamas retreats,
Meriones hits him and, like an unwilling ox bound by
ropes, he struggles gaspingly but in vain. 38 His forceful
spear becomes a lifeless stake and he himself a bound ox:
the purposes both of weapon and of man have vanished.
Helenus shoots an arrow at Menelaus, but his breastplate deflects it, as if it were a winnowing-fan, from which
beans or peas bounce off in a light wind. 39 All the force
in the arrow is transferred into a harmless pea, while the
solid breastplate becomes a moving fan. Again the reality has been reversed in the simile.
Meriones kills Harpalion, who lies stretched upon the
earth like a worm. 40 just as the arrow of Helenus lost its
swiftness in a contemptible simile, so Harpalion loses all
his dignity as the poor worm. The heroic world has
almost stopped.
Achaeans and Trojans fight like blazing fire, and the
Achaeans try to push back flamelike Hector. 41 Though
a mass of fire, Hector moves, and all the motion of the
Achaeans is spent in vain. The two Ajax stand by one
another like two yoked oxen, who with a single spirit drag
the plow: but unlike the simile they do not move 42 Thus
Hector like fire advances and the Ajax like oxen stand
firm.
What has been up to now a concealed paradox at last
is revealed in Hector's penultimate simile: he charges like
a snow-covered mountain. 43 No amount of ingenuity can
explain that away; but if the sequence of similes is followed, it fits the tenor of the whole book. The correspondence between animate nature and the hero has
long broken down, and now not even the inanimate
world can be twisted to suit him. The Trojans fight like
savage winds and stir up the sea, and as crest of wave
follows wave, so they move in a perpetual order, though
they effect no breech in the Achaean ranks; 44 and Hector
is at last compared to "mortal-destroying Ares," who,
though he tries everywhere, cannot make the enemy
yield. 45
. In the twelfth book the heroes were alternately animal
52
and thing; in the thirteenth they acquire a new dimension - they sometimes are compared to gods." The
reason for this is obvious: Poseidon has disguised himself
as a man and is present among them 47 Once the gods
actively interfere, the merely natural world no longer suffices as a source for Homer's imagery. He must transcend
the bounds of everyday life and compare the heroes not
to what we see and know, but to that which is beyond
our knowledge. The heroes at first were made familiar
to us, but now only the supernatural can make intelligible their superhuman virtues. As they take on the
semblance of what is above them, they become more
remote and retreat farther away from us; and such a
transformation entails a kind of perversion of the oncenatural world. All the motion in the hero and his arms
is brought to a halt, even as their fixity is set in motion:
a tall pine falls, a wild boar stands still. Thus Homer, in
elevating the heroes to a divine status, has been forced
to alienate them from nature.
Chapter X
Achilles' and Hector's Similes
Heroes are not given much to poetry: they rarely see
their enemies as anything other than men to be killed.
They leave to Homer the beautifying of their world.'
Asius likens the Lapiths to wasps or bees, because his
disappointment is so great at being thwarted; he is irritated and chagrined by the insignificance of the enemy. 2
So when Menelaus described Hector metaphorically"he has the terrible force of fire" -we can imagine how
frightened he feels.' But that was only a prelude to Hector's own image for Achilles: "I shall go against him, even
if his hands are like fire, if his hands are like fire, and
his force burning iron."' In. the very repetition of the
phrase we can feel the power of Achilles: he is something
unquenchable. That Achilles, to be adequately conceived
of, demands a simile, is the greatest tribute Hector could
pay him; but that Hector summons up such a description only to dismiss it, gives us an index as well to his
own greatness.
Although Achilles and Hector are often compared to
animals-eagles, hawks, lions and dogs-their largest
group of similes concerns fire. Fire is unlike all other
elements, for its contains within itself its own destruction: as it burns it is consumed, and it dies with the end
of its opponent. It is an exact image for wrath.
Sometimes Hector's (or Achilles') armour is likened to
fire,' but more often they themselves are fire, which
flashes from their eyes. 6 And this fury lives not just in
their faces, but even more in their work: "As portentous
fire rages through deep mountain-glens, and the forests,
thickly-set and flourishing on the mountain, are burnt,
and the wind charging everywhere fans the flame, so
Achilles, armed with his sword, rushed everywhere like
a god. " 7 Achilles as fire seems equal to a god; and Hector might equally be either Ares or fire.' But Homer has
another name for fire besides pyr or phlox: Hephaestus
SPRING 1985
�is not only his divine blacksmith, who made Agamemnon's sceptre and Achilles' armour, but he uses his name
for fire itself.' Hephaestus both makes and destroys: the
heroes burn with his fire as they wield his weapons. Their
armour and their persons show the dual aspect of
Hephaestus. To be his work and to work with his fire
would seem the aim of heroic ambition. He is their all.
Although Hector numerically rivals Achilles in similes
of fire, he cannot claim "he is pure air and fire, and the
dull elements of earth and water never appear in him."
He is in fact often like a storm, or a river, or the sea, to
all of which Achilles is never compared.'" He has more
bluster in his nature than Achilles; his energies are more
widely scattered. He is not as concentrated in his person,
nor does he plunge as headlong toward his fate. His violence rages on the surface; he is not everywhere pure
flame. He has other sentiments than fury. He is
''watered-down.''
Achilles has a fear of drowning. The thought that he
might be drowned by the Xanthus, like a young swineherd whom a winter torrent sweeps away, provokes his
bitterest complaints against his mother Thetis. 11 As fire
and light, fanned by his ambition, he trembles before all
obscurity. To be quenched, as it were, and returned to
"earth and water" is the most shameful doom: deprived
of all distinction and confounded with a swineherd. 12
Achilles ridicules the lineage of Asteropaeus, whose
ancestor was the river Axius: "As Zeus is stronger than
rivers that flow into the sea, so the generation of Zeus
is stronger than that of a river . . . nothing can fight
against Zeus the son of Cronus, not even the strong
Achelous is his equal, from whence all rivers and every
sea and all fountains and springs arise: but even he fears
the lightning and terrible thunder of great Zeus,
whenever he makes it crash in the heavens." 13 Zeus the
hurler of lightning and thunder is greater than water:
Achilles boasts his descent from fire and forgets that his
own mother is a sea-goddess-" If he is more closely
related to the gods on his mother's side, Achilles prefers
to emphasize the divine lineage of his father: for there
is something womanish dnd humane about Thetis that
does not fit in with Achilles' image of himself.
When Zeus makes the gods take sides, the river Xanthus is pitted against Hephaestus. 15 Water defends the
Trojans, fire Achilles: and fire triumphs. As Achilles surpasses Asteropaeus in ancestry (as fire does water), so
Hephaestus destroys Xanthus. It is the triumph of art over
nature.
Chapter XI
Heroic Ambition
Hector is bold enough to declare the ultimate end of
his ambition; he would assign to himself all the prerogatives of the gods: "Would that I might be in this way
honoured as Athena and Apollo are honoured, as surely
as this day brings evil to the Argives." 1 Hector does not
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
contrast the impossibility of his wish with the certainty
of his success, but rather his success colours his desire.
Victory is so certain, it is so much a foregone conclusion,
that he presents the impossible as something tangible and
real. "My concern," he says to the Trojans, "is not for
the outcome of tomorrow's battle- that is as good as
ours-but for my immortality." His ambition overleaps
the present and reaches out beyond the immediate. Even
if to become immortal is unlikely, to be honoured like
Apollo and Athena is not: so that, as his certainty about
the morrow gives him assurance of divine honours, these
honours in turn strengthen his hope for immortality.
Since Hector will win on the morrow, he deserves to
be honoured like Athena and Apollo. He picks the foremost gods on each side: he does not wish partisan honour
but true honour, based on something that even the
enemy's gods must acknowledge.' His excellence would
force their admiration. So Homer, when he wishes to
praise the excellence of the Achaeans' battle-order,
invokes Ares as well as Athena;' and not just because
they are the gods of battle, 4 for when the battle is fiercest
over Patroclus' corpse, "neither Ares nor Athena, beholding it, blame their fighting, not even if wrath came into
them."' If the gods were angry, they could not find fault:
no passion, which might warp their judgment, could
diminish their praise.
Hector wants to be immortal and ageless: it is his final
goal. The end of his action, to destroy the Achaeans,
should issue in the perfection of his being, immortality.
But he wants even more: "Would that I might be the son
of aegis-bearing Zeus, and would that awesome Hera had
borne me."' To be the son of Zeus and of Hera is his ambition: to be in fact what Homer grants him in simile
pushes him on. If he could break through the simile, and
become what he resembles; if he could change "like to
a mortal-destroying Ares" to Ares himself, he would be
satisfied. According to Poseidon he believes that he is. 7
To affirm, to boast, to pray (they are the same verb
euchesthai) means the same thing to Hector. Both in the
past of his lineage and in the future of his desire stand
the gods. If he could return to his origins, he would
achieve his end. In the inability of Hector and Achilles
to come full circle lies their tragedy.
We must not think that Achilles and Hector are alone
in this wish: even lesser heroes are compared to a divinity
or honoured by their people like a god. But Hector is not
content with the praise of his own fellow citizens: he wants
all men, any man, to praise him.' Universal praise, which
does not perish, is the closest he can approach to immortality. Fame is its substitute. If Sarpedon were fated to
be immortal and ageless, he would not stay in battle; but
as he cannot remain alive forever, he must nobly act and
die, so that he may stay alive in the memory of others'
The love of fame animates not only the hero but also
his horse, and if we just glance at how the classics
described and exploited the horse, we can see more readily why Homer bound them together, and gave to
Achilles immortal horses.
53
�And Achilles' horse
Makes many Thetis' sons. 10
The horse, of all animals, is the most naturally ambitious.
It has thymos ("spiritedness"), matching man in this as
in almost all other things." Xenophon speaks as if in his
time thymos was the proper name for a horse's spirit and
orgC for a man's; Parmenides likens his own desire to
mares'; Socrates compares the good appetites of the soul
to a noble horse: "upright, well-knit, high-arched neck,
aquiline nose, white, black eyes, a lover of honour; " 12
and as the horse is the most erotic of creatures after man
(his eros is both sexual and ambitious), 13 Vergil in the
third Georgie, as part of his theme, shifts from the warhorse to love and from love to the love of glory,
tarJtus amor laudem, ta11tae est victoria curac.t4
( ... so great is their love of praise, victory is so great a care.)
When Dolon offers to spy on the Achaeans, he makes
Hector swear to give him, on the condition of his success, the chariot and the horses of Achilles. 15 He can think
of no greater glory than that: they are at the height of
his ambition. To possess Achilles' immortal horses is to
become almost immortal oneself; for as they would be
forever, they would always keep flourishing one's fame.
They would be a more lasting monument than a grave,
that may either be mistaken for something else or completely washed away. 16 They are, however, beyond
Dolan's capacities, and not even Hector could manage
them. 17
Nothing indicates more exactly the difference between
the Iliad and the Odyssey than Achilles' horses and
Odysseus' dog." The horses weep for Patroclus but will
outlast Achilles and all men; while Argus, who was
beautiful and swift, dies at the sight of Odysseus. 19 His
life is so closely bound up with his master's that he cannot live well without him: but Achilles' horses will continue to be both beautiful and swift forever. Their immortality prevents their affection from ever being serious; 20
they do not really belong to any man, nor are they ever
domesticated. They stand even beyond Achilles, and
represent the futility of his end.
Achilles' horses, having all the qualities desired in a
horse, mixed, so to speak, with no corruptible matter,
are quite naturally divine. Immortality and agelessness
seem to be the reward for their virtue; and if man's perfection were the same as a horse's, then Achilles, who equals
them in swiftness as in beauty, would be a god. That his
virtues do not secure for him immortality points to the
only flaw in his nature.
When Achilles has cut through Hector's throat, Hector is still able to speak. 21 Homer makes it almost grotesquely clear; for Achilles' javelin seems to have gone
out of its way to allow Hector speech: "The bronze-heavy
javelin did not sever his wind-pipe, so that he might tell
him something and reply in words." It is Hector's very
act of speaking, not so much what he says, that should
54
instruct Achilles. Man is an animal that speaks even on
the verge of death, while Achilles' horses, perfect though
they are, can only speak when Hera has given, them
voice." The will of a god makes them the spokesmen of
Achilles' fate: but Hector needs no divine aid to foretell,
even more precisely, Achilles' death. 23 The horse is the
measure of man's humanity. For not to Achilles, who is
all action, but to Odysseus, whose speech is like the
winter's snow, is immortality offered. 24 Calypso promises
to make Odysseus immortal and ageless; but he refuses
on the very grounds which Achilles would have given
for acceptance.
When Odysseus walks through the palace of Alcinous,
he sees bronze walls, gold doors, silver jambs, and last,
"gold and silver hounds were on each side, which
Hephaestus had cleverly made to be the guardians of
great-hearted Alcinous' palace, immortal and ageless
forever. " 25 Here is what Calypso had promised: here is
what Odysseus rejected. To be like a golden hound, a
work of art, a thing forged on the anvil of Hephaestus,
is immortality. Why Odysseus prefers Penelope to Calypso, toil and trouble to heart-ease, his own rocky kingdom
to a kind of paradise, the golden hounds of Hephaestus
explain. He prefers to remain mortal and human: to be
a person and not a thing.
PART 1, STYLE
Introduction
1. Prophyry, Quaestiones Homericae.
2. Alexander I.
3. [twas Milman Parry's error not to realize that the inapplicability
of an epithet in some instances did not preclude its relevance in others,
and that both kinds were necessary.
4. C. M. Bowra, Heroic Poetry, pp_. 233ff.
5. Aeneid 7. 5.
6. Ibid. 1. 378-379.
7. Ibid. 10. 783.
8. Ibid. B. 7; cf. 10. 812 and Servius ad loc., 826.
9. Iliad 2. 769-770.
10. Ibid. 16. 152.
11. Odyssey 1. 29.
12. Ibid. 3. 310.
13. Ibid. 4. 628-629; d. 17. 381; 22. 241-245.
14. Iliad 4. 89, 104.
15. Ibid. 5. 169-216.
16. Ibid. 16. 854.
17. Ibid. 17. 10, 379; cf. 11. 654.
18. Ibid. 16. 119-121; Odyssey 10. 46-54.
19. Ibid. 11. 57; 12, 88; 13. 790; 14. 469.
20. Ibid. 18. 249-252; 22. 99-103.
21. Ibid. 12. 108-110.
Chapter I: Men and Heroes
1. Iliad 7. 96; cf. 2. 235; 7. 235-236; 11. 389; 23. 409.
2. Ibid. 15. 661-663.
3. Ibid. 5. 637; 23. 332, 790; ef. 1. 250; 6. 202; 20. 217, 220, 233; 24. 535.
4. Ibid. 3. 287, 353, 460; 6. 358; 7. 87.
5. Ibid. 9. 134; cf. BT Scholiast.
6. Ibid. 9. 276.
7. Ibid. 9. 335-337,340-341. Cf. Hesiod, Theogony416-436; Tyrtaeus fr.
9, 13-14; Aristophanes, Knights 1276-1277, 1304; Thucydides viii. 73.3,
92.2; Xenophon, Hiero viL 3.
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�8~3~9~-~~mme~~mma
342; 20. 204, 357; 24. 202.
9. Ibid. 16. 263, 315; 17. 572.
10. Ibid. 23. 787-791.
11. Ibid. 16. 857; 22. 363; d. 24. 6. The v.1. ha(a)droteta is a corruption
of androteta (cf. Chantraine, Grammaire Home'rique, I, 110) and is not to
be confounded with adrosyne (Hesiod, Works and Days 474).
12. Ibid. 9. 189; cf. 524-527.
13. Ibid. 20. 203-204.
14. Cf. Iliad 16. 392; 17. 549-550; 19. 131; but cf. Hesiod, Theogony 100.
15. Cf. Iliad 15. 741; 16. 620-630; 20. 356-368, 248-257.
16. Iliad 6. 357-358; 7. 78-91; cf. Odyssey 8. 579-580.
17. Ibid. 12. 23; cf. W. Schadewaldt, Iliasstudien, p. 118, n. 1. The heroes
seem in strength more than twice an ordinary man, for they perform
deeds which hardly two mortals "such as they now are" could do (Iliad 5. 303-304; 12. 447-449; 20. 286-287; d. 12. 381-383); and at the same
time they possess half the strength of the gods, for, though unwilling
to resist alone a god-inspired enemy, they think themselves equal if
another joins them (13. SS-58, 235-238; 17. 102-104). It would seem that,
while the heroes are half-gods, mortals are at most a quarter; and hence
the greater frequency of dyo ("two") with the dual in the Iliad than in
the Odyssey well accords with its theme, as if two sons or two warriors
together (taken as a unity) reacquire a divine status (e.g., the two Ajax
or the two Atreidae; d. 2. 679, 822; 4. 393-395; 5. 10, 572). Cf. J. Gonda, Reflections on the Numerals "One" and "Two" in Ancient I-E Umguages,
pp. 15-20.
18. Ibid. 1. 339.
19. Ibid. 4. 82-84; 19. 224.
20. Ibid. 1. 339; 3. 279; 4. 84, 320; 6. 123, 180; 9. 460, 500, 507; 18. 107;
19. 94, 131, 224, 260; 21. 566, 569; 23. 788.
21. Ibid. 15. 139-141; cf. 4. 45; 5. 442; 24. 49.
22. Ibid. 5. 746-747; 9. 524-525; 13. 346; d. Hesiod, Works and Days 159.
23. Hesiod, in his five ages of man, never calls the heroes, unlike the
other four ages, anthrOpoi (Works and Days 109, 137, 143, 180)
24. Iliad 2. 669; d. Vergil, Aeneid 1. 65 passim: divum pater atque hominum
rex ("father of gods and king of men").
25. Odyssey 2. 47, 234; 5. 12; cf. Iliad 8. 40; 22. 184.
26. Iliad 4. 84; 19. 224; 4. 235; 8. 245; cf. 5. 33; 8. 132, 397; 11. 80, 201;
16. 250; 17. 630.
27. Cf. Iliad 19. 95-96.
28. Iliad 16. 798; cf. 5. 184-185, 331-332, 839, and how in Pindar theos
and anlr are linked: Py. 4. 21-23; 5. 123; 12. 22; Ne. 1. 8-9; 3. 23; fr. 224,
225 (Schroeder).
29. Odyssey 18. 130-135; cf. Iliad 24. 49.
30. Iliad 17. 446-447; cf. 20. 21.
31. Cf. Odyssey 23. 302-307.
32. We can easily measure the difference between the Iliad and Odyssey
if we remember that, when Odysseus tells Eumaeus about his exploits
in war~how he loved not the working of the soil nor the care for his
household, but always ships and wars and well-polished lances were
dear to him-it is told as part of a lie (Odyssey 14. 211-228).
33. AnthrOpos: 118 in Odyssey, 70 in Iliad; herOs: 73 in Iliad, 40 in Odyssey;
the same applies to anir, phOs, brotos.
34. Iliad 1. 3-4, Odyssey 1. 3; cf. Odyssey 4. 267-268.
35. Cf. Odyssey 1. 347-352; 8. 479-480; Iliad 8. 492-493, with Odyssey 1.
358-359; 21. 352-353.
36. Odyssey 1. 219, 236; 7. 212, 307; 8. 552; 11. 363-366; 22. 414-415.
37. Cf. Seiler, H., Glotta xxxii. 3/4, p. 233, who notes that the expressed
opposition of anthrOpoi-theoi is more common in the Iliad than in the
. Odyssey.
38. Cf. Ovid, Metamorphoses xlii. 9-15.
39. Odyssey 4. 268, 312, 423, 617; 15. 117, 121.
40. Ibid. 4. 21, 303, 312; 15. 62.
41. Ibid. 1. 189; 2. 99; 19. 144; 22. 185; 24. 134.
42. Ibid. 2. 15, 157; 7. 155; 11. 342; 24. 451.
43. Ibid. 14. 97. It is in line with this that Eumaeus himself obtains the
once proud title orchamos and ron, "file-leader of he-men."
44. Odyssey 18. 423; d. Eustathius ad loc.
Chapter II: Achaeans and Trojans
1. Iliad 1. 122-123.
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
2. Ibid 1. 135; d. Odyssey 24. 57.
3. Ibid. 5. 27, 102; 8. 155; 10. 205; 11. 294, 459; 13. 456, 737; 17. 420;
23. 175, 181.
4./bid. 17. 214; 18. 226; 19. 75; 20. 498; 21. 153; 23. 168; cf. 9. 184, 496.
5. Ibid. 5. 135-136.
6. Cf. Iliad 2. 53, 196.
7. Iliad 5. 102.
8. Ibid. 6. 111; 20. 366.
9. Ibid. 9. 233; 11. 564; 14. 15; 15. 135; 17. 276.
10. Cf. Iliad 13. 620-639.
11. Iliad 3. 106; 13. 621; 21. 224, 414, 459.
12. Odyssey 1. 134; cf. 20. 291-292; 21. 289.
13. Iliad 10. 299; cf. 4. 176; Odyssey 1. 106 passim; d. 0. Hoffman, G/otta
xxvili, p. 32.
14. Ibid. 9. 496; 20. 498.
15. Ibid. 11. 459; 5. 27-29.
16. I borrow these lines from Macaulay's portrait of Monmouth, History of England, I, 464 (Everyman's ed.).
17. Iliad 3. 8; 11. 508; 24. 364; but cf. 2. 536, 541.
18. Ibid. 10. 204-206.
19. Cf. Iliad 19. 164-170.
20. Diomedes: Iliad 5. 25, 235, 335; 6. 145; 10. 509; cf. 4. 365; 5. 376,
881; Odysseus: 5. 674 (cf. 670); 10. 232, 248, 498; 11. 403; only once is
he megathymos (Odyssey 15. 2).
21. Iliad 10. 476-481, 488-493.
22. Ibid. 9. 255, 629, 675; 18. 5; 20. 343; 21. 53.
23. Ibid. 22. 98.
24. Ibid. 8. 523; 21. 55.
25. Cf. Sophocles Ajax 548-549; Odyssey 18. 261-264.
26. Iliad 5. 102; cf. 4. 509; 12. 440.
27. Ibid. 11. 564-568.
28. Ibid. 4. 355, 509; 8.110; 12. 440; 17. 230, 418; all in speeches. Similarly, knre komoOtJtes Achaioi ("long-haired Achaeans"), which we may
say is opposed to hippodamoi ("tamers of horse"), rarely occurs in bat~
tie scenes (Iliad. 3. 79; 8. 341).
29. Ibid. 3. 341-343.
30. Cf. Iliad 2. 123; 3. 111, 274, 297, 319; 15. 390; 16. 564, 770; 20. 2-3.
31. Cf. Iliad 19. 74.
32. Cf. Odyssey 1. 1.
33. Even the epithet tachypOloi, "with swift horses" (of the Danaans),
is more "obvious" than the Trojans' hippodamoi.
34. Iliad 2. 87-100.
35. Ibid. 2. 144-154.
36. Ibid. 2. 209-210.
37. Ibid. 2. 394-397.
38. Cf. H. Fraenkel, Die Homeriscl!en Gleichnisse, p. 20.
39. Iliad 2. 455-473; cf. 469 with 87.
40. Ibid. 2. 474-477.
41. Ibid. 2. 780-785.
42. Tacitus Hist. i. 84.
43. Iliad. 2. 810; 3. 1~9; cf. Thucydides ii. 89. 9.
44. Ibid. 4. 422-438; cf. 2. 804, 867; Aeschylus Pers. 401-407; Polybius
xv. 12. 8-9; Plutarch de aud. poet. 10; Milton Paradise Lost i. 549-562.
45. Ibid. 13. 795-800; 15. 381-384; 16. 364-366; 17. 263-266; cf. 12. 138;
16. 78, 373; 21. 10. Once the Trojans attack without shouting (abromoi
auiachoiJ and only then are they compared to fire (13, 39-41); cf. C. Robert,
Sudien zur !lias, pp. 124-125; U. Wilamowitz, Die !lias und Homer, p. 252,
n. 2.
46. Ibid. 11. 50; 18. 149.
47. Ibid. 4. 452-456; 14. 393-401; 17. 736-740 .
48. Ibid. 9. 4-8.
49. Ibid. 13. 128-133; 16. 212-217.
50. Ibid. 14. 507; 16. 283.
51. Cf. Th.ucydides i. 49. 3; ii. 11. 8, 87. 4·5, 89. 5·8.
52. iv. 126. 5; d. Herodotus vii. 211. 3, 212. 2; viii. 86. One might say
that what distinguishes the Achaeans and Trojans persists in Herodotus as the difference between Greeks and Persians, and in Thucydides,
on a much higher level, as the difference between Athenia.ns and
Spartans.
53. Consider how in Thucydides virtue and shame are coupled: i. 37.
2, 84. 3; ii. 51. 5; iv. 19. 3; v. 9. 9, 101.
55
�54. Cf. Sophocles Ajax 1075-1080; Plato Euthyphro 12a7-12c8, Amatores
135a3-135a5 with Odyssey 21. 285-286, 323-329.
55. Cf. Aeschylus Agamemnon 937-938.
56. Iliad 6. 441-443; cf. 8. 147-156; 12. 310-321; 17. 90-95.
57. Ibid. 22. 104-107; cf. Aristotle MM 1191a5-1191a13, EE 1230a161230a26.
58. Ibid. 24. 44-45.
59. Iliad 3. 9; d. 2. 362-363.
60. [bid. 13. 237.
61. Ibid. 5. 529-532; 15. 561-564.
62. [bid. 15. 657-658; cf. 8. 345-346; 17. 357-365.
63. Thucydides v. 9. 9; d. i. 84. 3.
64. Iliad 2. 453-454; 11. 13-14.
65. [bid. 5. 787; 8. 228; 13. 95, 122; 15. 502, 561.
66. Ibid. 4. 431; cf. 1. 331; 4. 402; 24. 435.
67. Ibid. 15. 661-666; d. Tacitus Hist. iv. 18. 4; Germania 7-8.
68. [bid. 4. 297-300; cf. Xenophon Memorabilia ill. i. 8; Polybius xv. 16. 1-4.
69. Cf. Iliad 4. 303-309.
70. Iliad 16. 422-430; cf. BT Scholiast 13. 95; 15. 502.
71. Cf. Tacitus Gemwnia 30. 2.
72. Iliad 13. 1, 129; 15. 42, 304, 327, 449 passim.
73. Cf. Iliad 13. 49-54.
74. Xenophon A11abasis ii. vi. 19.
75. Iliad 17. 335-341. It is noteworthy how both here and elsewhere (5.
787; 8. 228; 13. 95, 122) the appeal to shame is either said or inspired
by a god.
76. Cf. Xenophon Cyropaedeia viii. i. 31.
77. Iliad !0. 212-217.
78. Ibid. 10. 303-307; cf. BT Scholiast 10. 303; 17. 220.
79. Ibid. 7. 427 (consider 430); cf. 19. 295-299.
80. Lessing Laokoo11 I.
Chapter III: Achilles and Agamemnon
1. Whether "Peleides," "Atreides," etc., are patronymica or gentilica has been much disputed; d. K. Meister, Die Homerische Kuntsprache,
pp. 149-150; P. Chantraine, op. cit., I, 105-106.
2. Iliad 24. 538-540.
3. Ibid. 21. 189.
4. Cf. Iliad 6. 123 with 145-146; 21. 150 with 153.
5. Iliad 1. 146, 188, d. 178.
6. Ibid. 2. 860, 874, but cf. A. Scholiast.
7. Cf. the way each side exhorts their troops in Thucydides, e.g., iv.
92. 7, 95. 3; see also Herodotus vi. 14. 3; viii. 90. 4.
8. Iliad 9. 252-259, 438-443.
9. Ibid. 19. 387-391; cf. 14. 9-11; 16. 140-144; 21. 174-178; 20.2.
10. Ibid. 1. 242.
11. Ibid. 3. 329; 7. 355; 8. 82; 13. 766.
12. Ibid. 3. 356; 6. 512.
13. Cf. Paulys Realet~cyclopiidie vxii, 2 col. 1918.
14. Odyssey 8. 18.
15. Ibid. 16. 455; 17. 361; 18. 348; 20. 286; 22. 191, 339.
16. Cf. Odyssey 24. 270. Thucydides refers to himself only once as the
son of Oro! us: when he is in command of Athenian forces (iv. 104.4);
elsewhere, as an historian, he is plain Thucydides or Thucydides the
Athenian.
17. Metamorphoses xiii. 140-141.
18. Cf. lliad 6. 150-151; 20. 213-214.
19. Odyssey 1. 21.
20. Cf. BT Scholiast 2. 212.
21. Sophocles Pltiloctetes 440-442.
22. Ibid. 417 (cf. Ajax 190); Odyssey 14. 202-203.
23. Odyssey 9. 366-367.
24. Ibid. 9. 19; cf. 10. 325-330.
25. Ibid. 9. 414, cf. 408.
26. Iliad 1. 7.
27. Ibid. 1. 24.
28. Ibid. 1. 59, 90, cf. 94.
29. Ibid. 1. 102; d. 7. 322; 13. 112.
30. Ibid. 1. 122.
31. Ibid. 2. 434, but note 2. 362.
56
32. Ibid. 9. 96, 163, 677, 697 with which cf. 8. 293.
33. Ibid. 19. 146, 199; cf. 23. 49.
34. Ibid. 1. 234-239.
35./bid. 2. 73; cf. B Scholiast (Porphyry); jacoby, F. SBPAW 1932, pp.
586-594.
36. Ibid. 2. 100-108.
37. L:wkoon xvi.
38. Cf. 1. 293-294.
39. Cf. Rich"'d ll 3. 2. 54-62; 3. 3. 39-53, 72-90.
40. Iliad 1. 86, 339; 23. 43.
41. Ibid. 3. 276-280; 19. 258-260.
42. Ibid. 2. 109; 8. 496.
43.
44.
45.
46.
47.
48.
Ibid. 7. 412; d. Aristotle Politica 1285b3-1285b12.
Cf. Xenophon Memorabilia i. ii. 58; iv. vi. 13-15.
Iliad 2. 185-197; cf. 1. 174-175; ABT Scholiast 2. 186.
Ibid. 2. 199, cf. 265-266.
Ibid. 2. 200-205.
Cf. lliad 1. 175; 9. 37, 98, 608.
Chapter IV: Ancestral Virtue
1. lliad 1. 226-228.
2. Ibid. 2. 239-241.
3. Ibid. 1. 178.
4. Ibid. 1. 185-186, cf. 169.
5. Ibid. 1. 280-281; cf. 11. 786-787; Odyssey 15. 533-534.
6. Ibid. 2. 631-637; 11. 5-9.
7. [bid. 2. 641-643, 657-670, 673-675, 687-694, 698-703, 721-725.
8. Odysseus' ships are the only ones called miltopareioi, ''red cheeked,''
(2. 637), an indication to the hearers that his position is central (d.
Eustathius ad lac.); and likewise the importance of Achilles is indicated
by nun au (681, d. Eustathius).
9. Iliad 2. 579-580, cf. 481-483, Eustathius ad loc.
10. Cf. lliad 1. 91 with 244, 2. 82.
11. Iliad 2. 768-770, cf. 769, 7. 289.
12. Ibid. 2. 557-558.
13. Ibid. 2. 527-530.
14. Ibid. 3. 178-179.
15. Ibid. 9. 37-39; cf. 1. 231, 293.
16. Ibid. 5. 1.
17. Ibid. 5. 86.
18. Ibid. 5. 16, 18, 25, 85, 93, 97.
19. Ibid. 5. 114.
20. Ibid. 5. 116-117.
21. Ibid. 5. 134.
22. Ibid. 14. 110-127.
23. lbid. 4. 370-400; 5. 8U-813. It is not accidental that Agamemnon alone
calls Odysseus "Laertiades," without adding his proper name (9. 185);
nor that he bids Menelaus "call each man by his lineage and patronymic,
glorifying all" (10. 68-69; cf. 5. 635-639; 7. 125-128; 8. 282-283). Nicias,
Thucydides' Agamemnon, does the same (vii. 69. 2.), Cf. Xenophon
Oecmwmicus vii. 3.
24. Ibid. 4. 404-412.
25. Ibid. 5. 125; d. 6. 479; 15. 641-642; Odyssey 2. 276-277; Horace C,
i. XV. 27-28.
26. Ibid. 4. 354; 2. 260.
27. C( Meyer, de Homen· patrot~ymicis, pp. 61-66, who points out the
rarity of patronymics in the Odyssey: but he wrongly infers from this
its more recent origin, whereas it actually indicates the intended difference between the two works.
28. Iliad 9. 160-161, cf. 69.
29. Cf. Iliad 9. 392.
30. lliad 10. 237-239.
31. Ibid. 23. 571-585.
32. So Leaf ad 571.
33. Iliad 23. 572.
34. Odyssey 24. 508-515, d. Iliad 6. 209-211; Pindar Namea11 xi. 37-38.
35. lliad 23. 322, 515, 585, cf. 415.
36. Ibid. 23, 568, cf. 587-588; 1. 260; 2. 707.
Chapter V: The Armour of Agamemnon
1. Iliad 5. 268, 311.
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2. Ibid. 11. 701.
3. Ibid. 15. 532; 23. 288; cf. 2. 713.
4. Ibid. 1. 263; 4. 296; 5. 144; 9. 81.
5. Ibid. 16. 2; 19. 386.
6. Ibid. 11. 751.
7. Achilles bears approximately 28 epithets, Hector 17, Odysseus 1~
Menelaus 13, Ajax 17; and of them Odysseus alone has several that are
shared with no one else, mostly compounds with poly-.
8. Iliad 11. 45-46.
9. Ibid. 11. 61.
10. Ibid. 11. 62-63.
11. Ibid. 11. 27-28.
12. Ibid. 11. 32.
13. Ibid. 11. 65-66.
14. Ibid. 3. 333.
15. Ibid. 3. 339; cf. 10. 121-123; 17. 588.
16. Ibid. 10. 150-152 ..
17. Cf. Iliad 17. 195-197.
18. Iliad 22. 124-125; cf. Odyssey 10. 300-301.
19. Cf. Iliad 21. 50.
20. Iliad 10. 21-24, 31, 131-135, 178; cf. 29-30 with 3. 17.
21. Ibid. 10. 149; cf. BT Scholiast.
22. Ibid. 18. 192-195.
23. Cf. Vergil Aen. ii. 396.
24. Iliad 17. 210-212; cf. 19. 384-386.
25. Xenophon Anabasis ii. i. 12.
26. Iliad 5. 181-183.
27. Cf. iliad 7. 424; 11. 613-614.
28. Iliad 16. 278-282.
29. Ibid. 16. 141-144; cf. Eustathius ad 140.
Chapter VI: Ajax
1. Iliad 2. 671-675; d. Aristotle Rhetoric 1414a2-1414a7; Lucian Dial.Jyforl.
XXV.
2. But cf. niad 6. 522.
3. Iliad 2. 768.
4. Ibid. 17. 279-280.
5. Cf. Iliad 6. 156, where Bellerophon has "lovely manliness," i!norein
ereteinin, a unique collocation: erateini! is used of a country or Helen's
daughter (Iliad 3. 175, 239, 401; Odyssey 4. 13) and i!noree of strength
(Iliad 4. 303; 11. 9; 17. 329; Odyssey 24. 509).
6. Iliad 11. 465-472; d. his silence in Book 10 and 3. 292.
7. Ibid. 11. 474-481; cf. 15. 271-180 of Hector; Aristotle HA 610a13-610a14.
More than any other Achaean, Ajax (in Homer's eyes) is a lion: Iliad
7. 256; 11. 548-557; 13. 197-202; 17. 132-137; cf. Plato Republic 620b1-620b2.
8. Cf. Iliad B. 570-571.
9. lliad 3. 227; 7. 219; 11. 485; 17. 128; cf. 11. 526-527.
10. Ibid. 12. 330-350; 8. 266-268; cf. 17. 128-137.
11. Ibid. 11. 494-495.
12. Ibid. 11. 489-490.
13. Ibid. 11. 496-497.
14. Ibid. 11. 548-557; 17. 657-667.
15. Ibid. 11. 558-562, d. 67-69, its source.
16. Ibid. 11. 546.
17. Aristotle EN 1116a21-1116a35, 1116b30-1117a1.
18. lliad 12. 335.
19. Ibid. 17. 281-283.
20. Cf. Aristotle HA 488b15-488b17.
Chapter Vll: Heroic Virtue
1. niad 13. 321-325.
2. Ibid. 14. 520-522.
3. Cf. Iliad 17. 718-721.
4. Cf. Iliad 13. 75-79.
5. Iliad 10. 316.
6. Ibid. 21. 527; 22. 92; cf. 5. 395; 7. 208.
7. Cf. Uvy ix. 16. 11-19.
8. Iliad 22. 161 ..
9. Ibid. 1. 54, 58.
10. Ibid. 1, 84, cf. 80.
11. Ibid. 1. 121, 148 (cf. 215), 223-224.
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
12. Ibid. B. 535; 11. 90; 13. 237, 275, 277; 14. 118 (cf. 15. 642); 20. 242,
411; 22. 268. 11. 763 and 9. 498 are used of Achilles; 23. 276, 374 of horses;
d. Pindar Pythian x, 23; Herodotus iii. 88. 3, i. 216; Iliad 20. 411 refers
only to swiftness.
13. Iliad 9. 498 is an apparent exception.
14. Theomnestus in Hippiatrica Cant. xciii. 93 (ed. Oder-Hoppe).
15. Aristotle EN 1106a19-1106a21; d.lliad 5. 222-223, 230-234; 10. 491-493;
16. 808-809; Odyssey 4. 202.
16. Iliad 2. 769-770.
17. British Horses and Ponies, pp. 23-24.
18. Iliad 2. 527-529.
19. Ibid. 6. 504-514, cf. 513 with 19. 398.
20. Ibid. 15. 262-270 (264-268~ 6. 507-511).
21. S. Leaf ad l/iad 6. 514; cf. 3. 43; 11. 378.
22. lliad 6. 466-470, cf. 318-322.
23. Ibid. 22. 22-24, cf. 162-165.
24. Ibid. 8. 83-84, 325-326; it is curious that Paris should hit the horse,
Hector the man; d. 22. 324-325; 8. 85; 13. 568-569.
25. Ibid. 17. 198-208, 441-450; consider 8. 186-190; d. Eustathius ad
188-189.
26. Cf. Iliad 10. 305-306, 322-323, 402-404 ( ~ 17. 76-78).
Chapter VIII: Achilles and Hector
1. Iliad 3. 60-63.
2. Cf. Iliad 23. 415.
3. Iliad 4. 542; 15. 358; 21. 251; 23. 529; 14. 488 of a man.
4. W. Schulze, Quaestiones Epicae, pp. 289-290, derives nelees of nelees
emar from aleomai ("shun"), and E. Risch, Wortbildung der Homerischen
Sprache, p. 76, n. 1, thinks both adjectives may come originally from
aleomai, but that later both were derived from eleos ("pity"}. In any case,
Homer, I think, did not distinguish them.
5. Iliad 9. 497, 632; 16. 33, 204; cf. 19. 229; Pindar Pythian I. 95-96.
6. Ibid. 22. 357. If we set aside its occurrence in lists (e.g., 5. 723), iron
mostly indicates horror, savagery, or indifference: 4. 123, 510; 7. 141,
144; 8. 15; 17. 424, 565; 18. 34; 22. 357; 23. 30; cf. Odyssey 16. 294. Iron
and bronze are related one to the other in Homer like steel and gold
in Shakespeare's line: ''To lift shrewd steel against our golden crown''
(Richard II 3. 2. 59).
7. Shakespeare Rape of Lucrece 1424-1428.
8. Iliad 16. 323-35; cf. Aeschylus Prometheus Bound 242, 299·302.
9. Odyssey 19. 162-163; cf. Ilzad 21. 190-199; 22. 126-128.
10. Iliad 15. 618-621.
11. Ibid. 16. 3-4; d. Eustathius 16.31.
Chapter IX: Similes
1. Iliad 18. 483; cf. 15. 187-193.
2. Ibid. 484-489, 607-608.
3. Ibid. 18. 491-508, 509-540, 541-606; BT Scholiast 490.
4. Cf. Iliad 18, 550-557 with 11. 67-70; all the similes of lions are derived,
as it were, from 18. 577-586; but see Iliad 605-606 and Odyssey 4. 17-18;
d. Odyssey 4. 1-7 with Iliad 18. 491-496.
5. Cf. Fraenkel, Dichtung a11d Philosophic der Fruehen Griechentum, pp.
58-59.
6. Cf. Iliad 2. 453-454; 11. 13-14.
7. Iliad 12. 40-50.
8. Cf. BT Scholiast 13. 39, 137.
9. Cf. Iliad 6. 407.
10. Iliad 12. 131-136.
11. Ibid. 12. 146-152.
12. Ibid. 12. 156-160.
13. Ibid. 12. 167-172 (cf. BT Scholiast). So 0. Becker interprets it: Das
Bild des Weges, pp. 44-45 (Hermes Einselschrift, Heft 4, 1937).
14. Ibid. 12. 200-207, 252-255.
15. Ibid. 12. 278-289; cf. 5. 557.
16. Ibid. 12. 293, 299-308.
17. Ibid. 12. 375-376.
18. Ibid. 12. 421-424.
19. Cf. Iliad 22. 261-264.
20. Iliad 12. 433-436.
21. Ibid. 12. 451-455.
22. Ibid. 12. 463.
57
�23.
24.
25.
26.
27.
28.
29.
30.
31.
32.
33.
34.
35.
36.
37.
38.
39.
40.
41.
42.
43.
44.
45.
46.
47.
Ibid. 13.
Ibid. 13.
Ibid. 13.
Ibid. 13.
Ibid. 13.
Ibid. 13.
Ibid. 13.
Ibid. 13.
Ibid. 13.
Ibid. 13.
Cf. Iliad
Iliad 13.
Ibid. 13.
Ibid. 13.
Ibid. 13.
Ibid. 13.
Ibid. 13.
Ibid. 13.
Ibid. 13.
Ibid. 13.
Ibid. 13.
Ibid. 13.
Ibid. 13.
Cf. Iliad
Cf. Iliad
39, 53.
137-142.
178-181.
198-202.
242-245.
295-303.
328, 330.
334-338.
389-391.
434-438.
12. 132-136, 146-150.
471-475.
487-495.
526-533.
560-565.
570-575.
588-592.
653-655.
673, 687-688.
703-708.
754-755.
795-801.
802-808.
12. 130, 188.
12. 465-466.
Chapter X: Achilles' and Hector's Virtues
1. The poetic gifts of Achilles are by no means common; d. Iliad 1.
225; 9. 189, 323-325; 16. 7-11; 21. 280-283; 22. 261-265.
2. Iliad 12. 167-172.
3. Ibid. 17. 565.
4. Ibid. 20. 371-372.
5. Ibid. 11. 65-66; 22. 134-135; 19. 373-382; cf. 22. 317-319.
6. Ibid. 15. 605-610; 19. 16-17, 365-366.
7. Ibid. 20. 490-493; cf. 13. 53, 688; 17. 88-89; 18. 154; 20. 423; 21. 12-16.
8. Ibid. 15. 605; cf. 13. 53-54.
9. Ibid. 2. 426; 9. 468; 17. 88; 23. 33.
10. Storm: Iliad 11. 297, 305; 12. 40; river: 5. 597-599; waves: 11. 307;
15. 624.
11. Iliad 21. 273-283.
12. Cf. lliad 7. 99-100; Tacitus Annales i. 70. 1-3.
13. Iliad 21. 190-199; cf. 124-132; 20. 390-392; 14. 244-246. 21. 195 is interpolated; cf. G. Bolling, Extemal Evidence, pp. 188-189; Pasquali, G.,
Storia della Tradizione, pp. 225-227. Note that Achilles does not know
the power of Oceanus: only the gods and Homer know.
14. Cf. Iliad 20. 104-107.
15. Iliad 20. 73-74.
58
Chapter XI; Heroic Ambition
1. Iliad 8. 538-541.
2. Cf. Iliad 2. 371-372; 4. 288-289; Odyssey 11. 543-547.
3. Iliad 13. 126-128.
4. Ibid. 18. 516.
5. Ibid. 17. 397-399; cf. 20. 358-359.
6. Ibid. 13. 825-826.
7. Ibid. 13. 54, 802; cf. 7. 298; 14. 388-391; 24. 258-259.
8. Ibid. 7. 87-91.
9. Ibid. 12. 322-328.
10. Ibid. 16. 154; 23. 277.
11. Thymos of a horse: Iliad 8, 189; 10. 492, 531; 11. 520; 16. 382, 469;
23. 468. Neither the horse nor any other animal has phrenes: for the difference between them, cf 2. 371-372 with 4. 288-289; 13. 493-494. The phrase
kilta ph rena kai kata thymon usually expresses indecision: the hero is inclined one way by thymos, another way by phren: it is not tautological
(1. 193; 11. 411; 17. 106; 18. 15; d. 10. 507). Homer seems to distinguish
between singular phrin and plural phrenes: the singular is never used
in a bad sense, but often of pleasure, rarely of grief; the plural is often
in a bad sense, rarely of pleasure, often of grief and other violent passions. "Pure" passions are entitled to the singular, "impure" to the
plural; the pure ones seem to be fear for others and pleasure for oneself (of fear: 1. 555; 9. 244; 10. 538; of pleasure; 6. 285; 8. 559; 9. 186
(d. 184), passim). Zeus' undivided will is singular (2. 3; 10. 45-46; 12.
173; 19. 125; 20. 23), but it becomes plural when perturbed and divided
(8. 360, 446; 13. 631; 14, 165, 294; 16. 435, 444; 19. 121, 127) Consider
the beautiful uses of phren in the Odyssey (6. 147; 19. 471), the only instances, I believe, of the singular used of anger and of grief.
12. Xenophon de re equestri ix. 2; Parmenides fr. 1, 1; Plato Phaedrus
253d3-253e1; cf. Iliad 10. 436-437.
13. Aristotle HA 575b31-474b33, d. 604b25-604b27; Vergil Georgica iii.
266; Shakespeare Henry V 3. 7. 1-88; Venus and Adonis 259-324, 385-396.
14. Georgica ill. 112.
15. Iliad 10. 322-323, cf. 305-306.
16. Cf. Iliad 7. 86-91, 446-451; 12. 13-33, 326-333.
17. Iliad 10. 401-404; 17. 75-78.
18. Cf. Geddes, The Problem of the Homeric Poems, pp. 205-235.
19. Odyssey 17, 291-323.
20. Cf. Iliad 1. 573-574; 15. 138-141; 21. 379-380.
21. Iliad 22. 328-329.
22. Ibid. 19. 407.
23. Ibid. 19. 416-417; 22. 358-360; d. Xenophon de re equestri viii. 13.
24. Odyssey 5. 136; 7. 257; 23. 336; lliad 18. 105-106; 19. 217-219; 3. 216-224;
cf. 15. 741; 16. 630-631.
25. Odyssey 7. 91-94.
SPRING 1985
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With an Introduction by Dorothee Soelle. Translated from the German by Arthur
R. Schultz.
(Middleton, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press, 1984)
The Short Life of Sophie Scholl by Hermann Vinke
With an Interview with lise Aichinger. Translated ... by Hedwig Pachter.
(New York: Harper & Row, 1984)
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During the escalation of the controversy about President Reagan's intended visit to the German war cemetery
at Bitburg, when, after the "discovery" that there were
no graves of American soldiers there, it was discovered
that there were 49 graves of men of the Waffen-SS among
or beside the roughly 2000 graves of soldiers of the German army, the German government made attempts to
co-opt Germans with ''resistential" credentials to counteract the outrage and to demonstrate unity in the matter. Berthold von Stauffenberg, a son of the man who
tried in vain to kill Hitler on 20 July 1944, was willing to
go, though with a marked lack of enthusiasm. He is, as
his father was, a professional soldier, a colonel in the Bundeswehr. He felt that this was not a matter of conscience;
so that he would not refuse an order or request to attend.
His brother, who is a member of parliament, had told his
staff not to accept any such invitation. Their cousin Alfred
von Hofacker, son of the man who played a pivotal role
in the one-day anti-Nazi takeover in Paris in July 1944,
felt that the next-of-kin of the men and women whoopposed the Nazis at the cost of their lives should not serve
as figleaves to hide someone's embarrassment (Washington Post, 4 May 1985).
Much could be said about the Figleaf-And-Oiive-Branch
Function-ever since the founding of the Federal Republic-of the names associated with the German opposition
to Hitler. There would be nothing wrong with the use
of these people, their names and their memories, to build
bridges and foster friendly relations between the new
German republic and Germany's erstwhile enemies-if
it had not tended to be a trifle too purposeful, almost a
mechanism, and therefore suspect, as well as demeaning to the people thus called upon to perform this
function.
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
It is a pity, because in our epoch any example of
resistance to the prevailing trend or to a totalitarian regime is of great interest precisely because it is so rare.
For such exemplars to be used for propaganda or for public relations is all too likely to be a misuse. But such misuse is widespread; and it is by no means confined to one
side. Some of the very concentration camp sites now have
"Left" and "Right" associations. Commemorations are
often accompanied by tensions among the commemorators.
Dr. Michael Probst, the son of Christoph Probst, a
member of the White Rose group who was put to death
with Hans and Sophie Scholl, attended a recent commemorative gathering at the cemetery at Munich-Perlach
where they are buried. (Most of the people executed later
in connection with the July '44 plot were denied graves
by a regime bent on revenge.) The ceremony attracted
representatives of many groups, including the American
Jewish Congress. Probst wrote an open letter to Professor Michael Wyschogrod of that organization in which
he expressed his concern at the politicisation of the event.
American Jews wanted to pay demonstrative honour to
the White Rose for being the first to denounce the mass
murder of Jews publicly, in one of their leaflets. But the
gesture was also intended as a demonstrative corrective
to President Reagan's visit to Bitburg; indeed, in Probst's
view, it lent support to "people in Germany who oppose
your President and those who elected him, who think
they can thereby promote the interests of disarmament."
He considers their assumption misguided and support
for the tyrants of our day. "My father and his friends
aimed at the spiritual renewal of the German people after the ... liberation from the Hitler regime, not their
confusion. They paid for this with their lives. The dead
59
�should not be dragged into the political discussions of
the day." (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 6 May 1985;
my translation.)
On the other hand the ubiquitous media had tracked
down Inge Scholl at the graveside and recorded her misgivings about Bitburg. But it did not take that television
news item to show disagreements even between the families of the White Rose, this tiny group in the context
of the German opposition to Hitler, perhaps even within
families.
just as the liberal father, Robert Scholl, had not been
able to convince his children of the menace and wickedness of the Nazi regime until they had discovered it for
themselves, so too he failed, 35 years later, to prevail with
the young firebrands of the Left who were determined
to break up a commemoration of the White Rose in the
disturbed 1960s, because they objected to the conserva,
tive views of some who took part. The father's plea to
let the gathering proceed without disturbance was of no
avail.
That was in February 1968. (See, for instance, Die Zeit,
5 March 1968.) One year later Inge Scholl wrote some
Concluding Remarks for her little book about the White
Rose, which had become a classic since its first publication, but had now to contend with the criticisms of latterday perfectionists and pragmatists-which were, of
course, often mutually contradictory. This postscript appears again in the American second edition. But the book
now has an additional Introduction by the prominent theologian Dorothee Soelle. Aha, one might think: she will
say something about the part played by Christianity in
the lives and deaths of the White Rose group. (Christoph
Probst, for instance, asked to be received into the Catholic
church before he died.) Far from it: there is not a word
about it, nor even about what Dietrich Bonhoeffer called
"religionless Christianity." Instead there is a diatribe
against NATO, the Pentagon, the arms race, and Ronald
Reagan. Mrs. Soelle packs powerful punches. She says
that she does not believe the people who say they did
not know about the systematic mass murder of the jews
while it was going on. She ends her Introduction with
this nightmare-"that my children will later approach
[reproach?] me and ask, 'Mom, what did you do when
Ronald Reagan laid the groundwork for the nuclear
Holocaust?' No matter what, I would not be able to say
that I did not know. All of us know, and we have to act
in one way or another. That is the legacy of the White
Rose" (White Rose, p. XIV).
Is it? Is it that simple? The contents of the book speak
against it. Even Inge Scholl's 1969 Postscript harclly points
that way. And I would say that even-and especially-if
one has grave misgivings about President Reagan and
what he stands for, one must, surely, discountenance
such an Introduction which, instead of introducing the
reader to the White Rose, uses it for political purposeshowever heartfelt.
The book itself is nonetheless still valuable, consisting,
as it does, of Inge Scholl's first and fundamental account
60
and an appendbc of 10 documents, such as the text of the
Indictment and Sentences, a moving account by her cellmate of Sophie's last days and nights in prison, some
newspaper announcements of the executions, and iln excerpt from a letter by the Norwegian Bishop Berggrav
describing the scene when Helmuth james von Moltke
told him about the White Rose at a secret meeting in Oslo
in spring 1943.
Inge Scholl's Postscript of 1969 explains that her book
was originally written in 1947, for use in schools, for
adolescents from the age of thirteen to eighteen-some
of whom had still served in the Hitler Youth, many of
whom could not understand how their parents could be
taken in by the Nazis. She wanted to correct what she
now saw as a political deficiency in that early book as well
as the misconception that the Munich resistance of 1943
was little more than an action arising out of moral outrage without much regard for its political aspects.
The Munich student rebels realized that only force
could overthrow the regime. Since force was not available, they spread information and called for passive
resistance. Some of them did collect what arms they
could. By their leaflets they also hoped to create a sense
of solidarity among individuals opposed to the regime.
They hoped "to win over the hesitant, to move the uncommitted to a decision, to cast doubt in the minds of
Nazi followers, to induce questioning in the minds of
Nazi enthusiasts" (p. 95). They also had, and they
wanted to foster, a sense of solidarity with the other European resistance groups. The third of the White Rose
leaflets clearly states that "A victory of fascist Germany
in this war would have immeasurable, frightful consequences." How could the regime be fought? By sabotage
everywhere, by convincing everyone of the senselessness
and hopelessness of the war, ''of our intellectual and economic enslavement at the hands of the National Socialists; of the destruction of all moral and religious values
... " (pp. 97-8).
Politically they favoured parliamentary democracy but
concentrated more on the rejection of National Socialism
and of nationalism. They were appalled by the failure of
the German intellectuals. In the autumn of 1942 Hans
harangued them in his diary: "It is the very negation of
the intellect that you serve in this desperate hour. You
do not see the despair. You are rich, you do not see the
poor. Your soul is dried up because you did not want to
heed its call. You apply your intellect to the refinement
of a machine gun, but even in your young years you
brushed aside the simplest, the primary questions: Why?
and Whither?" (p. 101).
He felt that the educated classes were most to blame
and most confused-more than, say, the workers or the
dergy-and he pleaded with the educated to become politically engaged.
Inge Scholl is convinced that her brother's and sister's
rigor of thought was closely related to their discovery of
Christianity, which "paralleled the development of their
independent political stand"-helped by such older
SPRING 1985
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I
friends as Carl Muth and Theodor Haecker. She also
stresses the importance of personal contact with such
thinkers as well as with other forbidden writers and
artists.
She ends her Postscript with a warning against the easy
drawing of false parallels. "It is my view that one should
let what happened then stand as it was. Practical applications do not exist; we should look upon it as a singular
instance. It was an instance in which 5 or 6 students took
it upon themselves to act while the dictatorship was totally in control; in which they accepted the lonely burden of not even being able to discuss these matters with
their families; in which they took action even though the
omnipotent state allowed them no room for maneuver;
in which they acted in spite of the fact that they could
do no more than tear small rifts in the structure of that
state-much less blast out the corner stones." She ends:
"It is rare that a man [ein Mensch?] is prepared to pay with
his life for such a minimal achievement as causing cracks
in the edifice of the existing order" (p. 103).
J
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Hermann Vinke' s Short Life of Sophie Scholl is a marvellous book. The author modestly describes it as a collage
of reports, letters, documents, testimonies and photos.
Again it is written for the young, from the age of twelve
up; and it got the German prize for a juvenile book. In
fact it is a book for all ages and much more adult than
many books for "grown-ups." It is much more concrete,
more detailed, more specific and circumstantial, than Inge
Scholl's trailblazing story. The author works in television,
but seems quite free from the temptations of one who
writes with a film or a "docudrama" in mind. He lets
the word speak, though he has many pictures too. He
has used Inge Scholl's book, interviews with her and with
Fritz Hartnagel, Sophie's friend, and he was given photographs which at last get away from the joan of Arc images and show the little girl with her siblings, with a
friend playing with dolls, in her Hitler Youth blouse and
skirt, in a bathing suit by the water. Some. show her with
hair cut so short that one can almost understand the
police arresting her in 1937 thinking she was a boy-when
she was 16 and they were cracking down on illegal youth
movements. Some of the best happy snaps were taken
by her younger brother Werner. The wartime photos look
less happy. There is a rather miserable one of her in a
boisterous and bovine group of Labor Service girls in
striped pyjamas; and the previously published worriedlooking one with her brother Hans and Christoph Probst
when they were leaving for Russia; and the last pensive
one, a blown-up passport photograph. There are also
some reproductions of her drawings.
Vinke reproduces long quotations from her letters and
diaries. Here she does indeed speak for herself. Vinke
respects her and, while presenting and interpreting her,
never foists anything on her that is not warranted by the
evidence. He just seems to make all the arrangements to
allow her to live again.
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
How extraordinarily alive she was! How happy, how
richly endowed, as a child, a girl, an adolescent, a young
adult. She was eleven when Hitler came to power and
twenty-one when she died. She was eighteen in September 1939 when the war broke out and left school in
March 1940. Then came the separation from her family,
labor service, war service. She trained as a Montessori
teacher, worked with children, then on the land and in
a factory. Shortly after her twenty-first, her last, birthday in May 1942, she was free at last to go to the university. She joined her elder brother Hans in Munich and
met his friends, solcliers who were allowed to study medicine and to do medical work in the army. She studied
biology and philosophy and took part in their political
discussions and activities. She helped with the clandestine distribution of their leaflets and was finally arrested
with her brother, tried and sentenced and executed with
him and Christoph Probst, all in a matter of four days
in February 1943. Her parents came to the trial and were
thrown out, but were able to see her once more before
she went to her death. Then her family were arrested.
Her brother Werner died serving in Russia. Her friend
Fritz Hartnagel had managed to survive Stalingrad, later
married her sister Elisabeth, studied law, and became a
judge. He was reluctant to talk to Hermann Vinke, but
was finally persuaded by his son, a history teacher.
Fritz Hartnagel was four years older than Sophie who,
however, even in her teens, was the one who set the tone
politically and involved him in stern cliscussions. He was
an army officer and slow to see that Germany had to lose
the war. Sophie was quite clear and consistent about it.
Her final break with the Nazis seems to have come in
1938-9, after the arrest of the young Scholls for illegal activities in late 1937. Her father, a liberal and pacifist even
in the first world war, a mayor after the war and later,
under the Nazis, a private economic consultant, had jewish clients in Ulm, and so the family was aware of the
repercussions and sequel of the pogrom of November
1938. And after Munich, after Prague, the relentless drive
to war was all too clear. The father, too, served time in
jail, during the war-which made it doubly hard for his
eldest son and youngest daughter to go ahead with their
oppositional activities; they had to fear that they would
endanger him even more. It was he who, in the first Nazi
years, tried to restrain his children's enthusiasm for the
new regime and its lies about progress and the People's
Community. Once they saw the light he may have worried about the risks they took; but he was proud of them.
The five Scholl children grew up in a loving, liberal,
educated and educative home. They enjoyed much freedom-even, despite the parents' misgivings, the freedom
to join the Hitler Youth before it was compulsory and to
become leaders in it. The children roamed the Suabian
and Bavarian countryside, and Sophle, in particular,
loved nature passionately-and poetically.
There was a great intensity about her life, an intensity
which enabled her to face death calmly when it came.
61
�Even the Gestapo were impressed-and probably at a loss
for an explanation.
The faith that animated her, and which she was able
to put in words-though quiet, she was a very articulate
person-was probably at first the faith of her mother, who
had been a Protestant nurse, a Diakonisse, before she married. But it was also acquired and deepened by Sophie
herself, by her whole-hearted response to what went on
around her, a response that made her withdraw to serious reading whenever she could, even as a labor conscript, and glad to join with Hans and his friends and
mentors when she had at last escaped to Munich.
But Munich brought its clandestine work and Sophie
once commented herself on how carefree and childlike
she was during a brief spell at home and how she became grown-up and careworn again during the short train
journey back from Ulm. She was not plagued by doubts.
She knew what she wanted to do, what she was doing,
and why. Such wholeness, such integrity, is exceedingly
rare.
Else Gebel, her cell-mate between her final arrest and
execution, marvelled at her serenity and her considerateness, at how concerned Sophie was not to endanger her
and at how well Sophie slept even the last night before
her trial and execution.
There is a great "legacy" in the Vinke book-but not
in the sense of Mrs. Soelle. It is so effective because it
is informative, straightforward and plain-dealing and free
from both polemic and unctuousness.
It, too, has a kind of postscript, an interview with the
writer lise Aichinger, who describes what the news of
the White Rose meant to her during the war when she
and her mother lived in fear and were "racially" at risk.
It gave her hope and restored her faith in humanity; it
gave her strength to survive. She surely shared that leg-
62
acy with many others. Many more now have cause to be
grateful to Hermann Vinke for concentrating on the life
of Sophie Scholl and presenting her as a person,•as an
individual. This is doubly welcome after the Bitburg incident has once more shown the power of thinking in
terms of collectives and the need to get away from it. The
young people of the White Rose were emphatic about the
importance and the responsibility of the individual.
They knew the likely cost of taking responsible action
under a totalitarian regime. During their last Christmas
holidays at horne Hans told Inge about a recent execution of fourteen Communists and Social Democrats and
added: "It is high time that Christians, too, start doing
something" (p. 138). Wilhelm Geyer, a painter an.d friend
of the Scholls, remembers that two days before their last
leaflet action and arrest Sophie said: "With all those people dying for the regime, it is high time that someone died
against it" (pp. 163-4).
There were and were to be others, who paid the same
price. Michael Probst, writing to Michael Wyschogrod,
quotes the farewell letter of a farmer's son called up to
serve in the 55 in early.:J.944. He and a friend had refused
to sign and were sentenced to death. He thanks his parents for all they had done for him since his childhood.
They had told him not to join the 55. He asks for his parents' forgiveness and asks them to pray for him.
It took heroic virtue to make such decisions.
Beale Ruhm von Oppen
Beate Ruhm von Oppen is a tutor at St. John's College, Annapolis. Her
article about the White Rose, Student Rebellion and the Nazis, appeared
in the Winter 1984 issue of The SL John's Revieu1.
SPRING 1985
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A Lover's Afterthought
Trotsky resisted the idea of death,
was scandalized by the notion of
an ice-pick in the skull
that someone might thus question
the integrity of his skin. He called upon
the whole available arsenal, tooth and claw,
he gnashed and bit and kicked and screamed and scratched,
did all he could to unzip his assailantbut to no avail-poor Trotsky,
he was obviously incapable of intimacy.
The slave in your Persian carving,
who is about to be devoured by a lion,
he knows better. He casts his head back cavalier
as the lion leans on him,
feels the beast's warm breath, the intentness of
its heartbeat, the seering potential of its
unsocialized behavior. He casts his head
back to reveal the neck, extends the curve,
even exaggerates it a bit to make the
vulnerability more palpable to the
animal-the way lovers sometimes do.
The stage thus set the rampager cannot
help but act, and there are only two possibilities
in the face of such desperate vulnerability.
1) contract the steely jaws and break and shred
the unresisting skin; 2) or not. Murder or not.
Both are acts of enormous intimacy, murder and forgiveness
are both very romantic, but murder is a one-time act,
it trivializes all the other scenes that follow but forgiveness,
forgiveness is the greatest intimacy
Max Dublin
Max Dublin is a tutor at St. John's College, Annapolis.
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
63
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l
The Effects of Gravity
on Health
Almost everyone passed out at the meeting today,
only the smokers & joggers stayed awakeall that extra energy stolen from the air.
Me, I was still asleep when I arrived,
even though I'd shaved already:
I shaved today, I know I did,
but did it by touch, with my eyes closed,
so as not to disturb my repose.
I know what it would take for me to awaken again
but I'm unwilling to make the sacrifice,
just as my sister, under different circumstances,
said on her suicide tape, blithely clinging to her wounds,
'There may be some sacrifices I am unwilling to make
in order to get better." Very good old girl,
you always had a way with words. So much meaning
and so much precision in such a compact statement,
as the reviewers might say. I wonder, will we
ever have suicide reviews?
In the end, however, what killed her, besides gravity,
was the unremitting and increasing ordinariness of
the world which, being a romantic, she could hardly forgiveand a single sentence which she finally got right.
I lived out of town in Cambridge then;
today I pass the spot daily as I walk to work,
there is no more stain on the pavement to mark the place,
but surely one macromolecule of her physical being
has survived the ravages of scrubbers and time and
weather and lingers on, quietly living its macromolecular
existence, quietly betokening to this day
that last pronouncement,
the steely sentence of her relentless unbecoming.
Max Dublin
64
SPRING 1985
�
Dublin Core
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Title
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<em>The St. John's Review</em>
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An account of the resource
<em>The St. John's Review</em><span> is published by the Office of the Dean, St. John's College. All manuscripts are subject to blind review. Address correspondence to </span><em>The St. John's Review</em><span>, St. John's College, 60 College Avenue, Annapolis, MD 21401 or via e-mail at </span><a class="obfuscated_link" href="mailto:review@sjc.edu"><span class="obfuscated_link_text">review@sjc.edu</span></a><span>.</span><br /><br /><em>The St. John's Review</em> exemplifies, encourages, and enhances the disciplined reflection that is nurtured by the St. John's Program. It does so both through the character most in common among its contributors — their familiarity with the Program and their respect for it — and through the style and content of their contributions. As it represents the St. John's Program, The St. John's Review espouses no philosophical, religious, or political doctrine beyond a dedication to liberal learning, and its readers may expect to find diversity of thought represented in its pages.<br /><br /><em>The St. John's Review</em> was first published in 1974. It merged with <em>The College </em>beginning with the July 1980 issue. From that date forward, the numbering of <em>The St. John's Review</em> continues that of <em>The College</em>. <br /><br />Click on <a title="The St. John's Review" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=13"><strong>Items in the The St. John's Review Collection</strong></a> to view and sort all items in the collection.
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Office of the Dean
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St. John's College
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ISSN 0277-4720
thestjohnsreview
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St. John's College Greenfield Library
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64 pages
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paper
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Office of the Dean
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The St. John's Review (formerly The College), Spring 1985
Date
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1985-04
Contributor
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Sterling, J. Walter
Kronsberg, Anita
Freis, Richard
Freis, S. Richard
Sachs, Joe
Stickney, Cary
Wilson, Curtis A.
Sachs, Joe
Brann, Eva T. H.
Zuckerman, Elliot
Clark, Allen
Strauss, Leo
Coughlin, M.L.
Benardete, Seth
von Oppen, Beate Ruhm
Dublin, Max
Description
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Volume XXXVI, number 2 of The St. John's Review, formerly The College. Published in Spring 1985.
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ISSN 0277-4720
The_St_Johns_Review_Vol_36_No_2_1985
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Annapolis, MD
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St. John's College
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English
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text
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St. John's College owns the rights to this publication.
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pdf
St. John's Review
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