Homer's Hero

Michelle M. Kundmueller

Description

Offering a new, Plato-inspired reading of the Iliad and the Odyssey, this book traces the divergent consequences of love of honor and love of one's own private life for human excellence, justice, and politics. Analyzing Homer's intricate character portraits, Michelle M. Kundmueller concludes that the poet shows that the excellence or virtue to which humans incline depends on what they love most. Ajax's character demonstrates that human beings who seek honor strive, perhaps above all, to display their courage in battle, while Agamemnon's shows that the love of honor ultimately undermines the potential for moderation, destabilizing political order. In contrast to these portraits, the excellence that Homer links to the love of one's own, such as by Odysseus and his wife, Penelope, fosters moderation and employs speech to resolve conflict. It is Odysseus, rather than Achilles, who is the pinnacle of heroic excellence. Homer's portrait of humanity reveals the value of love of one's own as the better, albeit still incomplete, precursor to a just political order. Kundmueller brings her reading of Homer to bear on contemporary tensions between private life and the pursuit of public honor, arguing that individual desires continue to shape human excellence and our prospects for justice.
Acknowledgments

Introduction: Human Excellence in Homer

Part I. The Iliad

1. Homer’s Honor-Loving Heroes: Ajax and Agamemnon

2. Homer’s Love-Torn Heroes: Achilles and Hektor

3. Homer’s Pausing Hero: Odysseus at Troy

Part II. The Odyssey

4. A Hero’s Story

5. Remembering Home

6. At the Heart of Homecoming

7. The Meaning of Homecoming

Conclusion: Homer’s Hero

Notes
Bibliography
Index

Sujets

• Philosophie
• Philosophie politique
• Philosophie antique
• Ancient philosophy

Informations

• Publié par: State University of New York Press
• Date de parution: 01 octobre 2019
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781438476681
• Langue: English

Extrait

Homer’s Hero
Homer’s Hero
Human Excellence in the Iliad and the Odyssey
Michelle M. Kundmueller
Cover art: iStock by Getty Images.
Published by State University of New York Press, Albany
© 2019 State University of New York
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY www.sunypress.edu
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Kundmueller, Michelle M., author.
Title: Homer’s hero : human excellence in the Iliad and the Odyssey / Michelle M. Kundmueller.
Description: Albany : State University of New York Press, 2019. | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018056832 | ISBN 9781438476674 (hardcover : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781438476681 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Heroes in literature. | Homer—Characters. | Homer—Criticism and interpretation.
Classification: LCC PA4037 .K83 2019 | DDC 883/.01—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018056832
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Human Excellence in Homer
P ART I T HE I LIAD
1 Homer’s Honor-Loving Heroes: Ajax and Agamemnon
2 Homer’s Love-Torn Heroes: Achilles and Hektor
3 Homer’s Pausing Hero: Odysseus at Troy
P ART II T HE O DYSSEY
4 A Hero’s Story
5 Remembering Home
6 At the Heart of Homecoming
7 The Meaning of Homecoming
Conclusion: Homer’s Hero
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Acknowledgments
I have neither oar nor winnowing fan to carry. My remaining labors are far more pleasant: I offer thanks to the institutions and individuals who have made my intellectual journey possible.
Many institutions have supported this book. I commenced writing it at the University of Notre Dame, eventually continuing there with the support of a postdoctoral fellowship made possible by the Jack Miller Center. I completed it at Christopher Newport University with the support of the Center for American Studies. The Intercollegiate Studies Institute supported the project during its early years, the Mercatus Center at George Mason University and the John Templeton Foundation have supported final revisions and document preparation, and the Charles Koch Foundation made possible the research assistance of several eager undergraduates. The Institute for Humane Studies, from start to finish, has provided financial assistance for which I thank it and its donors.
The book has benefited from the care and diligence of many. Thanks are due to Aimee Anderson for the correction of many an error, the clarification of many an ambiguity, and the coherence of cross-references throughout; her friendship and enthusiasm—from my days as a summer associate to the final revisions of the manuscript—have stiffened my backbone on many a difficult day. Sarah Hopkins’s careful diligence ensured Homeric accuracy. Lili Samios’s eye for argument (and willingness to trudge to and from the library) extended the scholarly reach. Brandon Hubbard’s patience and ear aided in revisions, ensuring that the final reiterations focused the argument.
I must also thank two blind reviewers who strengthened my book. The depth of reference in classics, in particular, was largely gifted to me by a blind reviewer who took extensive pains to direct me down avenues of research of which I was unaware. A second reviewer, while offering enthusiastic support, provided many a thoughtful correction and—more importantly—solved an issue of organization with which I had grappled without success. My heartfelt thanks are extended to both of these anonymous reviewers.
From a broader perspective, the adventures that made this book possible had been given to me before my memory commences by those who shared and passed on their love of the great books. The example has ever been before me of reading as an adventure from which wealth could be won without strife. My mother and father ensured that my childhood bookshelves were overflowing with treasures destined to make reading Homer a kind of homecoming.
My peers, particularly Ashleen Menchaca-Bagnulo, Veronica Roberts Ogle, and Nathan Sawatzky, sharpened my wits with many a grand debate and served—in a manner of speaking—as prophets assuring me that eventually this project would reach this happy stage. They added greatly to the joys of the adventure. To the professors who have—at every stage of my education—torn themselves from their own labors to help me with mine, thank you. Arthur Vanden Houten, Mary Keys, and David O’Connor each contributed to my thoughts about virtue, love, and Homer in meaningful and generous ways. Michael Zuckert’s playful and insightful suggestions, including the comment that I might want to read Hannah Arendt’s The Human Condition , have kept me connected to the world after ancient Greece in productive ways.
My debt to Catherine Zuckert is deep. I am grateful for classes on Plato, conversations about Homer and manuscript organization, careful readings, and strategic advice. Catherine’s gift for simultaneously communicating correction and encouragement always served as a catalyst for deeper thought and better writing. As a teacher, writer, and mentor, Catherine inspires my best efforts to be courageous, moderate, and wise.
As is customary for good reason (for custom and reason may point to the same conclusion), I save the last and deepest thanks for spouse and children. I pray that my three children look back on this experience with knowledge of their mother’s gratitude and a sense of having gained—not lost—from our joint adventure. To my husband, Mark: my hope is that all our labors may be shared, so that our greatest affinity to Odysseus and Penelope may be that echo of their epic longing that is felt by all loving spouses, the desire for daily reunion.
Introduction
Human Excellence in Homer
There are many questions about politics that Homer does not answer. At the end of his epics, he has not set forth a comprehensive theory of justice, nor does he purport to have offered a satisfactory basis for justice. Life, liberty, and property are not buried within his stories; much less are positive human rights hiding in plain sight at the origins of Western civilization. Nonetheless, Homer continues to resonate with readers and to elicit scholarly study. Although he provides no blueprint for politics, justice, or rights, his epics continue to captivate our imaginations and enrich our knowledge of the human experience because he offers us an enduring portrait of human excellence that is no less instructive than it is beautiful.
To understand the portrait of human excellence found in the Iliad and the Odyssey requires reading each epic in light of the other. Through the heroes, who differ from one another in both degree and kind of excellence, Homer provides a portrait of different kinds, degrees, and mixtures of excellence. But over the course of his epics—through the development of individual heroes and through their interactions with one another—his narrative reveals how different human desires cause the growth of some virtues and undermine others. He thus provides exemplars of the quality of human excellence and through his narratives illustrates why individuals differ in their degrees and kinds of virtue. Homer’s account of human virtue, embedded as it is within epic stories of war and of homecoming, ultimately reveals the consequences of desire and excellence for happiness and for the prospects for a stable, just politics. Rather than a plan for a satisfactory polis, Homer offers an illustration of two divergent paths toward human happiness and politics.
In his poetic narrative Homer illustrates how two distinct desires—the desire for public honor and the desire to preserve and be with that which is one’s own—result in differing sets of virtues. As the brilliant battlefield exploits of the Iliad show, love of public honor—or glory—produces courage but is also associated with failures in both moderation and intellect. Homer juxtaposes the passionate pursuit of honor with the preference for that which is one’s own—survival and physical comforts but also family, intimate friends, and the private household. As the Iliad hints and the Odyssey confirms, devotion to that which is one’s own produces courage but also nurtures intelligence and moderation. Moderation and intelligence prove to be prerequisites to the restraint of one’s impulses, to deliberate choice, and to the use of speech rather than violence to resolve conflict. From the outset of the Iliad , the Achaian hero least likely to rush forward in pursuit of glory proves preeminent in moderation and intelligence. By the end of the Odyssey , having overcome his intermittent love of glory and learned to be more wary of threats to his self-restraint, Odysseus emerges as a man who demonstrably prefers that which is his own—his own wife, family, home, dog, and even his own bed. Through the virtue that they exhibit and the friendship that they maintain, Odysseus and Penelope ultimately emerge as Homer’s highest and best—if flawed—heroes.
The desires of Homer’s heroes and their corresponding excellence remain relevant because the loves and virtues at the heart of Homer’s story remain central to the human experience. Homer’s characters thereby retain their political salience, and his epics are rightfully the subject of more than mere literary or historic interest. Two of the reigning interpretations of human excellence in Homer, to the contrary, argue that disjunctions between Homeric culture and modern life preclude application of the hero’s excellence to contemporary life