This article offers a philosophical reinterpretation of Homeric ethics by bringing into debate the opposing views of Peter J. Ahrensdorf, Richard Ruderman, and Darrell Dobbs. Ahrensdorf and Ruderman highlight the whimsical, capricious, selfish, and morally indifferent behavior of the Homeric gods. Given these divine flaws, humans lack perfect safeguards against calamities caused by fate (Moîra) and necessity or by their flawed judgments. For both authors, rational judgment serves as the most reliable antidote to suffering and destruction. Ruderman, in particular, interprets Homer as a defender of “enlightenment,” grounded in the rejection of false hopes on divine providence, which in the Homeric context is considered unreliable and untrustworthy. Blind faith in gods, he argued, indulges thymos, the most self-assertive innermost human longing that incites rampant anger, often culminating in hubris (extreme moral transgression). In contrast, Dobbs focuses on Homer’s Odyssey and defends a vision of reverence as morally stabilising. For him, rational action cannot guarantee morality and justice. More importantly, the instrumentality of rationalism can lead to recklessness and hubris.
Tag: Homer
Dr. Michail TheodosiadisSelf-Purification and Social Dramatization; from Simone Weil to Martin Luther King Jr.
This article begins with an analysis of Simone Weil’s notion of “impersonality”, which implies disengagement from earthly attachments, deep introspection, and connection with an “anonymous” God, that is, with an imagined spiritual force of purity, located beyond the observable secular world. “Impersonality” encourages purification (or catharsis) from frantic passions (excited by such attachments); it inspires love, which Weil associates with respect and selfless devotion to social justice. My goal is to identify a shared set of similarities between Weil and Martin Luther King Jr. on the issue of individual catharsis, acknowledging also important divergences. King—contra Weil—claimed that rejection of frantic passions is incited through connection with a “personal” (rather than “anonymous”) God, with a high moral power, which responds to individual prayers and leads men and women into the path of love. Like Weil, King associated love with mutual respect and social justice. Both Weil and King believed that individual catharsis should lead to civil disobedience, whose ultimate objective is collective catharsis, that is, the abandonment of deeply rooted attitudes and beliefs (on behalf of a collectivity) that (sometimes unknowingly) perpetuate injustices, causing great suffering. By reflecting on the viewpoints offered by these thinkers, the present study will attempt to shed light on the process by which collective catharsis shifts public attitudes. The aim of civil disobedience, I will explain, is to dramatize social evils (such as racism and social exclusion), making large portions of a society aware of their passive reproduction of attitudes that contribute to the perpetuation of such unjust practices.