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‘But Why has my Spirit Spoken with me thus?’: Homeric Decision-Making1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 September 2009

R. W. Sharples
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Extract

It has been argued, above all by Bruno Snell, that there is lacking in the Homeric poems any notion of the ‘self as an integrated whole; the individual is regarded rather as an assembly of more or less independent psychic forces. There can thus, it is argued, be no making of decisions by individuals in the Homeric poems, because there is no such thing as a psychic whole which could decide; in his Scenes from Greek Drama, Snell argues not only that Homer in the Iliad does not explicitly present Achilles as deciding to avenge Patroclus and die young, but also that there are differences in outlook between Homer and Aeschylus which mean that Homer could not portray such a decision, whereas Aeschylus could.

Type
Research Article
Information
Greece & Rome , Volume 30 , Issue 1 , April 1983 , pp. 1 - 7
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1983

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References

Notes

2. The Discovery of the Mind, tr. Rosenmeyer, T. G. (Harvard, 1953)Google Scholar, ch. 1; cf. Dodds, E. R., The Greeks and the Irrational (Berkeley, 1951), pp. 15fGoogle Scholar. The view is criticized by Lloyd-Jones, H., The Justice of Zeus (Berkeley, 1971), pp. 8 ffGoogle Scholar.

3. Snell, B., Scenes from Greek Drama (Berkeley, 1964), pp. 1 fGoogle Scholar. My colleague James Hooker suggests to me that Iliad 9 can be seen precisely as an extended depiction of the making of a decision by Achilles, the stages of the process being presented in his successive speeches.

4. Other passages which exhibit a similar pattern are Iliad 17.90 ff. (Menelaus) and 21.552 ff. (Agenor); Voigt, C., Ueberlegung und Entscheidung bei Homer (Berlin, 1934), pp. 92, 94Google Scholar. I have translated as literally as possible, with no attempt at elegance; for discussions like the present, where it is with the details of the wording that we are concerned, this seems most appropriate.

5. In the passage from Iliad 11, as in that from Odyssey 22 (below), the course eventually adopted is one of those mentioned before the decision is taken; in that from Iliad 22 it is not—which has the effect of heightening the pathos.

6. Dodds, above n. 2, pp. 17 f.; Adkins, A. W. H., Merit and Responsibility (Oxford, 1960), pp. 46 ffGoogle Scholar.

7. From Homer to Aristotle (and beyond), the tendency of Greek thought is to formulate decisions in terms of assessing what is the best course for the individual to follow. This applies both to the conduct of life as a whole—the central question of ethics being ‘what way of life is most conducive to eudaimoniav (Adkins, above n. 6, p. 253) and to individual decisions. Socrates’ approach to decision-making in terms of the comparison of the consequences for oneself of different courses of action (Plato, Protagoras 356 ff.; Xenophon, Memorabilia 3.9.4) is only the generalization of the approach we already find in Iliad 22, even if the criteria by which the consequences are assessed differ from one context to another.

8. Early Greek Poetry and Philosophy, tr. Hadas, M. and Willis, J. (Oxford, 1975), p. 79 n. 11Google Scholar.

9. Dodds (above n. 2), ch. 1, especially pp. 13 ff.

10. Cf., on Iliad 11.403 ff., Voigt (above n. 4), pp. 89 f. I am not here advocating a reductivist approach—one that would claim that the significance of references to divine intervention in Homer can be exhausted by their explanation in terms of the individual's psychology. But the attempt to relate aspects of the Homeric presentation of these occurrences to features of our own experience may assist us in understanding it. In the study of ancient thought in general, whether in technical philosophical writers or elsewhere, there is a place both for the synchronic approach—comparing the responses of ancient and modern thinkers to what are often essentially the same issues—and for the historical one; the important thing is to be aware of the difference between them.

11. Fränkel (above n. 8), pp. 79 ff.

12. Snell, loc. cit. (above n. 2); Dodds (above n. 2), pp. 15 f.; Fränkel (above n. 8), pp. 76 ff. Psuche, the later term for the ‘soul’ of the living man, is only used of the dead or dying in Homer.

13. It should also be pointed out, with Adkins (above n. 6), p. 314 n. 12, that there are passages in Homer where there is no suggestion that it is anything other than the self that is taking the decision; e.g. Iliad 1.189 ff.

14. Popper, K. R., The Open Society and its Enemies (London, 1966), i. 79–81Google Scholar.

15. Cf. Popper, op. cit., p. 79 n. 32.

16. It is, after all, repeated in the Timaeus (69c ff.) and in the myth of the Phaedrus. At the same time, there may be a danger of seeing Plato as more committed to a particular analysis than he in fact is; he does introduce the doctrine of the tripartite soul in the Republic in a particular context and for a particular purpose, and it may be a mistake to see him as concerned to give a definitive account of the soul there in the way that Aristotle, for example, is in the De anima.

17. It is true that other passages, such as Republic 6 486d, give a rather different picture; but it is not clear how they are to be reconciled with Republic 4. It is also true that in the Ideal State—or the philosophical individual—there is no problem; reason, or the Guardian-Rulers, rule and take the decisions. Further, Plato in the Republic still holds, with Socrates, that all wrong-doing is the result of ignorance; if a person's desires triumph over his reason, that is because the person as a whole lacks knowledge (586a; cf. Timaeus 86b). But it is precisely the interpretation of the outcome of moral conflict as the prevailing of one force over another, with no ‘self actually deciding between them, which raises the objection. At the same time, it must be recognized that there will be decisions which do not involve a conflict between the parts of the soul, and that these do not raise a problem; presumably, in these cases whichever part of the soul is predominant in a given individual will do the deciding.

18. Adkins, above n. 6, p. 302.

19. Cf. τανρα τα παθη ɛν ηυιν 644e 1.

20. 69c ff.; above n. 15. Cf. Guthrie, W. K. C., ‘Plato's views on the nature of the soul’, Entretiens Hardt 3 (1955), pp. 2–19Google Scholar, reprinted in G. Vlastos (ed.), Plato (Garden City, N.Y., 1971), vol. II ch. 15.

21. The position of the historical Socrates on this issue was idiosyncratic, and hence best treated in a footnote. Unlike Plato, it seems clear that he regarded the soul as a unity; as for Homer, Aristotle, and the Stoics, so for Socrates at any given time there is only one answer to the question ‘which course of action does X think best?’ But, uniquely among Greek thinkers (for the Stoics did not confine their attention to the sage) and notoriously, Socrates does not seem to have countenanced weakness of will or temporary lapses at all; if Agamemnon suffered a temporary lapse and acted, by taking Achilles’ prize, in a way he later regretted, then that would be a sign for Socrates that as a general truth Agamemnon did not possess the knowledge that would have told him how to behave.

22. On this chapter see the discussion by Hardie, W. F. R., Aristotle's Ethical Theory (Oxford, 1980), pp. 258–93CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

23. Above n. 9.

24. Posidonius reverted from this view, holding that even if there were not distinct parts of the soul, as Plato had said, there were distinct rational and irrational faculties which could be in conflict with each other (cf. Galen, On the opinions of Hippocrates and Plato, 5.5.32-5.7.3, and 6.2.5; respectively Corpus Medicorum Graecorum vol. 5.4.1.2 p. 324.2-23, 336.23-and 368.20-26 de Lacy).