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1 - The Contest between Homer and Plato and the Homeric Education on the Gods

From Divine to Human Providence

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 August 2022

Peter J. Ahrensdorf
Peter J. Ahrensdorf
Affiliation:
Davidson College, North Carolina
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Summary

Plato identifies Homer as the philosophic educator of Greece but severely criticizes the Homeric education for his portrayal of the gods, his portrayal of heroes as exemplars of human excellence, and his portrayal of himself. Homer reveals through his poems that nature limits the power of the gods and that the gods’ own immortal nature renders them incapable of understanding and caring for humans and hence incapable of providing for them.

Keywords

HomerPlatoSocratesIliadOdysseyAchillesOdysseusdivine power and natureHomeric godsHomeric education
Type
Chapter
Information
Homer and the Tradition of Political Philosophy
Encounters with Plato, Machiavelli, and Nietzsche
 , pp. 10 - 82
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

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