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perhaps because the messages they carry transcend time. Fundamentally many of the old stories we still value have moral or philosophical components that are fou

perhaps because the messages they carry transcend time. Fundamentally many of the old stories we still value have moral or philosophical components that are foundational to our cultures.

watwut 8y ago
What does that mean, practically? For Odysseus for example, what foundational message does it have? I read it and it was interesting and even fun, I don't know what philosophical or moral component you have in mind. It had nuanced characters, but even that seems to be ignored by our popular culture which focuses exclusively on sirens and such.
- deleted 8y ago
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- artsandmeta 8y ago
  I think there are some morals in the Odyssey. For example, the assembly at Ithaca in book 2 provides some insight into justice in ancient Greece. Telemachus appears to escalate through three authorities. First, is his own strength, second is the people of Ithaca: Now we have no man like Odysseus in command to drive this curse from the house. We ourselves? We’re hardly the ones to fight them off. All we’d do is parade our wretched weakness. A boy inept at battle. Oh I’d swing to attach if I had the power in me. By god, it’s intolerable, what they do—disgrace, my house a shambles! You should be ashamed yourselves, mortified in the face of neighbors living round about! Fear the gods’ wrath—before they wheel in outrage and make these crimes recoil on your heads. (2.57-67) And when the towns people refuse to do anything, Telemachus escalates to the third authority—the gods: “But if you decide the fare is better, richer here, destroying one man’s goods and going scot-free, all right then, carve away! But I’ll cry out to the everlasting gods in hopes that Zeus will pay you back with a vengeance—all of you destroyed in my house while I go scot-free myself!” (2.141–5) It seems that fear of the gods was the main source of justice in Greek society. Since there were no contracts or court system to build trust between individuals, people relied on oaths—and the fear of the gods if one broke their oath—to build trust. Similarly, if one could not find justice through strength of your fellow men, you could threaten the wrongdoers with a curse. If they feared the gods, they make respond. In such a society an atheist or godless person could not be trusted. Right after Telemachus threatens the suitors with a curse, Zeus sends a sign down in the form of two eagles. One of the old townsmen, who excelled in reading omens and bird signs, said that the eagles were a sign from Zeus that the suitors would get what is coming to them. And the suitors respond: “Stop, old man!” Eurymachus, Polybus’ son, rose up to take him on. “Go home and babble your omens to your children— save them from some catastrophe coming soon. I’m a better hand than you at reading portents. Flocks of birds go fluttering under the sun’s rays, not all are fraught with meaning.” (2.177–83) To the Greeks that read this, I think the Odyssey would be affirmation that the gods did exist and that the suitors were in the wrong. Perhaps this could be interpreted as a moral lesson? (Quotes are taken from the excellent Robert Fagles translation)
  - watwut 8y ago
    Thank you for the answer. It does not seem that fear of gods would move people in town to do anything there. I read it more as expression of Telemachus anger and helplessness. He can do nothing except threaten gods, people in town know it and don't care. The gods don't come to help either. Only Athena helps them, but it is because Odysseus is her favorite and she is helping him whether he is right or wrong. Poseidon would not help Odysseus, because he blinded his son. Poseidon would not care one bit about what happen in the household and prefers Odysseus dead. Athena don't care about Poseidon son in particular. It did not seem to me that gods would be source of justice. They are source of power and have own politics that is independent of right and wrong. They just are and are strong and characters invoking them don't necessary mean anything for gods actions. (It was also my impression that characters like to blame gods for their own bad decisions when they are about to talk about their own mistakes.)
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
    - artsandmeta 8y ago
      You are welcome. I love thinking and discussing mythology and religion. > It did not seem to me that gods would be source of justice. They are source of power and have own politics that is independent of right and wrong. In general, I agree with this statement. I think one needs to stretch to find justice in the Odyssey, and even more so in the Iliad. That being said, I do believe there are some early inklings of justice and morality which evolved and grew with Greek civilization, and by the later classical period, Zeus was increasingly associated with Justice. Also, Hesiod, who wrote at about the same time as Homer, certainly associated justice with Zeus. Here is a quote from Works and Days: > You too, my lords, attend to this justice-doing of hours. For close at hand among men there are immortals taking note of all those who afflict each other with crooked judgements, heedless of the gods' punishment. Thrice countless are they on the rich-pastured earth, Zeus' immortal watchers of mortal men, who watch over judgements and wickedness, clothed in darkness, traveling about the land on every road. And there is the maiden Right, daughter of Zeus, esteemed and respected by the gods in Olympus; and whenever someone does her down with crooked abuse, at once she sits by Zeus her father, Kronos' son, and reports the men's unrighteous mind, so that the people may pay for the crimes of their lords who balefully divert justice from its course by pronouncing it crooked. Homer mentions a somewhat similar (although different) idea in book 19 of the Iliad: "Zeus be my witness first, the highest, best of gods! Then Earth, the Sun, and Furies stalking the world below to wreak revenge on the dead who broke their oaths--- I swear I never laid a hand on the girl Briseis Hesiod wasn't as influential as Homer, but he was still quite influential on Greek culture. There is a story that Hesiod and Homer had a poetry competition, and Hesiod won. Anyway, this idea of justice appears to have been present in both authors to a very limited degree. The 1951 article, "The Gods of Homer," by G. M. A Grub, has an interesting discussion of morality in Homer and how it evolved. You can read the article for free, if you have a JSTOR account, here: https://www.jstor.org/stable/1086075 https://www.jstor.org/stable/1086075 Grube's main premise is that the gods of Homer came from an earlier conception of the gods as "forces of nature." After Homer, or the poets before Homer, personified the gods, it was inevitable that they would become moralized over time. Grube believes that Homer is near the start of this process. This would explain why some of the stories in the Iliad and Odyssey represent the gods as being essentially unethical; these stores were from before the gods were expected to be moral.
- artsandmeta 8y ago
  I apologize for the double reply. I am not familiar with how HN comments work, and it doesn't seem to let me edit my earlier comment. TO your point: my example about justice in ancient Greece is clearly not a timeless moral lesson, since it doesn't make much sense today.
- christudor 8y ago
  Not the OP, but surely one of the most pertinent moral positions of the Odyssey is the idea that justice will prevail: the good guy wins and gets the girl, the bad guys lose.
  - watwut 8y ago
    I don't think that is the message of Odysseus at all. Story and its characters (including Odysseus himself) are way more nuanced then that. It is definitely not the simple cheap good guy wins the day story. And I also think that poem ending is more ambiguous - while it is clear that killing suitors is ok, the killing slave girls is less so.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
  - forapurpose 8y ago
    > surely one of the most pertinent moral positions of the Odyssey is the idea that justice will prevail: the good guy wins and gets the girl, the bad guys lose. There's nothing good about Odysseus; he's a bad person and, IMHO, one of the most annoying, obnoxious personalities in literature. He leads his group around murdering and pillaging, not to mention using and manipulating - he's renowned for his lying and trickery. He gets his men killed over and over due to his capricious, pointless acts of ego - at one point much of his fleet is sunk and men die because he pointlessly taunts enemies as they sail away. But if someone should act against him, he switches to victimhood and moral outrage - poor Odysseus! All his troubles and tribulations! In the end he returns home alone, having gotten all his men killed, and encounters the 'suitors', who presume that with him missing for 20 years, likely he won't return. They are peaceably [EDIT: up to a point then that changed; see the reply below], though obnoxiously in some ways, competing to see who gets his throne and his wife's hand - leaving the choice to her [EDIT: though as the reply below states, she is being forced to marry one of them; she can't say no]. He slaughters them all, indiscriminately, for their presumption. The slave girls (did I mention that he takes and keeps slaves?) that are suspected (there is no trial or evidence or anything more than someone's accusation) of the grave crime of dalliances with the suitors, he unceremoniously has a rope wrapped around all their necks and hangs them together. Then he says, we need to replenish our stocks - depleted so unfairly by the mean suitors! - so we'll soon set out to raid and steal them. Is this a good man? Did the good guy win? The Odyssey is a rich story of and study in personality and in human relations, and in politics; it's not at all about justice.
- beaconstudios 8y ago
  I think most of the lessons from foundational stories are so internalised now that they seem stupidly obvious. To take your example of the sirens, why is that idea one that we resonate with? Because it's valuable as a metaphor and an archetypal example: we even use the term directly (ie. "siren song") to refer to real-life instances of the archetype. Other concepts that refer to the same archetype are the idea of no free lunch, if it's too good to be true then it probably is, and so on. These archetypes are compounded lessons that we've absorbed culturally for millennia, and continue to reflect on via our own recreations in the various arts.
  - watwut 8y ago
    Frankly, given how small and unimportant sirens incident is, I assume it is because they are tempting and female and thus painters had an excuse to imagine and paint naked women (they are not described naked in the poem). As in, it is short fun part of the poem that sparks imagination. It is short and more fun to paint or tell then Penelope being helpless alone in her chamber.
    - beaconstudios 8y ago
      Perhaps, for sirens at least. But that was just an example. I haven't read The Odyssey myself so I'm not well placed to give further specific examples but I was trying to point to the idea that old cultural mythos and stories are there to provide instantiations of archetypes. I'm not sure your disparagement of classical painters holds much weight though, given they painted plenty of naked women without needing an "excuse". The motivations seem more to do with notions of depicting beauty or purity than just being lecherous.
      - watwut 8y ago
        Sirens story as in poem has no beauty nor purity in it. Really. Sirens are not described and promises to give him knowledge, mostly about Trojan war. Nothing beautiful or pure about that. And I think that some painters liked to paint naked women and customers liked those paintings without it being necessary disparaging. The line between "lecherous" and "beauty or purity" is mostly the one of framing - whether you are determined to see it as good or bad. Nevetheless, it is a projection of own ideas into old story, because we want to see ourselves in the oldest known poems. People want our civilization to spring from that, so they project onto it. It is not like every sirens painting painter would read the poem, they heard the story as part of their education and imagined the rest.
- netcan 8y ago
  Idk about foundational but... A lot of philosophical and moral questions are fairly universal. They get discussed in ancient law codes, scripture & modern parliaments. Is prostituion immoral? What defines rape? King Cyrus ruled on these. They're discussed in the Bible. You'll find similar debates in modern courts and legislatures. For Odysseus, some big philosophical themes are hubris/pride, worthiness. Ancient Greek literature is pretty obsessed with these, especially pride. These aren't really big moral themes/questions today, but they are pretty popular literary themes. Maybe it's universality. Maybe it's Greek influence. Maybe it's coincidence. I don't think these texts surveillance be because of universality. I do think that because they survived, we learn that some things are pretty universal, that we have deep spiritual similarity to bronze age Aegean pirates.
- neaden 8y ago
  I think the big question the Odyssey asks is what does time and violence do to people. What did Odysseus' journey do to him, what did it do to his son who grew up without him, what did it do to his wife and father who had to go on living like he was dead, what did it do the political system back home with their leader and so many young men gone and a void there where the suitors begin to fill. And once they are all reunited after so many years, what then. Athena grants them a happy ending, restoring Odysseus' youth, but what about the rest of us.
netcan 8y ago
I don't think moral and philosophical conclusions are universal in any way. In fact, there's a lot of mismatch between our everyday modern morals and the ancient (or even recent) moral and political religious texts. I do think there's universality of moral and philosophical questions. King Cyrus and #metoo debated the same questions. Plato/Socrates, René Descartes & The Matrix constructed story worlds to highlight the same epistemological problem (what if the world isn't real). Good stories give you a richness of scenarios and questions to discuss, whether you agree or dissent to the author's conclusions.
- beaconstudios 8y ago
  I totally agree. Hence why I didn't say they necessarily provided the answers. Though I think our cultures are often deeply intertwined with their religions, which do provide a framework of answers to many of the questions (whether you actually practice said religion or not).
- kingraoul3 8y ago
  The Iliad and The Odyssey draw pretty murky moral conclusions.
  - netcan 8y ago
    Moral murkiness is a good thing, imo. Show's conflict. Some of my favourite stories are all about murky waters of morality. Moral badness.... Realistically, every morality other than one's own is bad and so statistically...

perhaps because the messages they carry transcend time. Fundamentally many of the old stories we still value have moral or philosophical components that are foundational to our cultures.

watwut 8y ago

What does that mean, practically? For Odysseus for example, what foundational message does it have? I read it and it was interesting and even fun, I don't know what philosophical or moral component you have in mind. It had nuanced characters, but even that seems to be ignored by our popular culture which focuses exclusively on sirens and such.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
artsandmeta 8y ago
I think there are some morals in the Odyssey. For example, the assembly at Ithaca in book 2 provides some insight into justice in ancient Greece. Telemachus appears to escalate through three authorities. First, is his own strength, second is the people of Ithaca: Now we have no man like Odysseus in command to drive this curse from the house. We ourselves? We’re hardly the ones to fight them off. All we’d do is parade our wretched weakness. A boy inept at battle. Oh I’d swing to attach if I had the power in me. By god, it’s intolerable, what they do—disgrace, my house a shambles! You should be ashamed yourselves, mortified in the face of neighbors living round about! Fear the gods’ wrath—before they wheel in outrage and make these crimes recoil on your heads. (2.57-67) And when the towns people refuse to do anything, Telemachus escalates to the third authority—the gods: “But if you decide the fare is better, richer here, destroying one man’s goods and going scot-free, all right then, carve away! But I’ll cry out to the everlasting gods in hopes that Zeus will pay you back with a vengeance—all of you destroyed in my house while I go scot-free myself!” (2.141–5) It seems that fear of the gods was the main source of justice in Greek society. Since there were no contracts or court system to build trust between individuals, people relied on oaths—and the fear of the gods if one broke their oath—to build trust. Similarly, if one could not find justice through strength of your fellow men, you could threaten the wrongdoers with a curse. If they feared the gods, they make respond. In such a society an atheist or godless person could not be trusted. Right after Telemachus threatens the suitors with a curse, Zeus sends a sign down in the form of two eagles. One of the old townsmen, who excelled in reading omens and bird signs, said that the eagles were a sign from Zeus that the suitors would get what is coming to them. And the suitors respond: “Stop, old man!” Eurymachus, Polybus’ son, rose up to take him on. “Go home and babble your omens to your children— save them from some catastrophe coming soon. I’m a better hand than you at reading portents. Flocks of birds go fluttering under the sun’s rays, not all are fraught with meaning.” (2.177–83) To the Greeks that read this, I think the Odyssey would be affirmation that the gods did exist and that the suitors were in the wrong. Perhaps this could be interpreted as a moral lesson? (Quotes are taken from the excellent Robert Fagles translation)
- watwut 8y ago
  Thank you for the answer. It does not seem that fear of gods would move people in town to do anything there. I read it more as expression of Telemachus anger and helplessness. He can do nothing except threaten gods, people in town know it and don't care. The gods don't come to help either. Only Athena helps them, but it is because Odysseus is her favorite and she is helping him whether he is right or wrong. Poseidon would not help Odysseus, because he blinded his son. Poseidon would not care one bit about what happen in the household and prefers Odysseus dead. Athena don't care about Poseidon son in particular. It did not seem to me that gods would be source of justice. They are source of power and have own politics that is independent of right and wrong. They just are and are strong and characters invoking them don't necessary mean anything for gods actions. (It was also my impression that characters like to blame gods for their own bad decisions when they are about to talk about their own mistakes.)
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - artsandmeta 8y ago
    You are welcome. I love thinking and discussing mythology and religion. > It did not seem to me that gods would be source of justice. They are source of power and have own politics that is independent of right and wrong. In general, I agree with this statement. I think one needs to stretch to find justice in the Odyssey, and even more so in the Iliad. That being said, I do believe there are some early inklings of justice and morality which evolved and grew with Greek civilization, and by the later classical period, Zeus was increasingly associated with Justice. Also, Hesiod, who wrote at about the same time as Homer, certainly associated justice with Zeus. Here is a quote from Works and Days: > You too, my lords, attend to this justice-doing of hours. For close at hand among men there are immortals taking note of all those who afflict each other with crooked judgements, heedless of the gods' punishment. Thrice countless are they on the rich-pastured earth, Zeus' immortal watchers of mortal men, who watch over judgements and wickedness, clothed in darkness, traveling about the land on every road. And there is the maiden Right, daughter of Zeus, esteemed and respected by the gods in Olympus; and whenever someone does her down with crooked abuse, at once she sits by Zeus her father, Kronos' son, and reports the men's unrighteous mind, so that the people may pay for the crimes of their lords who balefully divert justice from its course by pronouncing it crooked. Homer mentions a somewhat similar (although different) idea in book 19 of the Iliad: "Zeus be my witness first, the highest, best of gods! Then Earth, the Sun, and Furies stalking the world below to wreak revenge on the dead who broke their oaths--- I swear I never laid a hand on the girl Briseis Hesiod wasn't as influential as Homer, but he was still quite influential on Greek culture. There is a story that Hesiod and Homer had a poetry competition, and Hesiod won. Anyway, this idea of justice appears to have been present in both authors to a very limited degree. The 1951 article, "The Gods of Homer," by G. M. A Grub, has an interesting discussion of morality in Homer and how it evolved. You can read the article for free, if you have a JSTOR account, here: https://www.jstor.org/stable/1086075 https://www.jstor.org/stable/1086075 Grube's main premise is that the gods of Homer came from an earlier conception of the gods as "forces of nature." After Homer, or the poets before Homer, personified the gods, it was inevitable that they would become moralized over time. Grube believes that Homer is near the start of this process. This would explain why some of the stories in the Iliad and Odyssey represent the gods as being essentially unethical; these stores were from before the gods were expected to be moral.
artsandmeta 8y ago
I apologize for the double reply. I am not familiar with how HN comments work, and it doesn't seem to let me edit my earlier comment. TO your point: my example about justice in ancient Greece is clearly not a timeless moral lesson, since it doesn't make much sense today.
christudor 8y ago
Not the OP, but surely one of the most pertinent moral positions of the Odyssey is the idea that justice will prevail: the good guy wins and gets the girl, the bad guys lose.
- watwut 8y ago
  I don't think that is the message of Odysseus at all. Story and its characters (including Odysseus himself) are way more nuanced then that. It is definitely not the simple cheap good guy wins the day story. And I also think that poem ending is more ambiguous - while it is clear that killing suitors is ok, the killing slave girls is less so.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
- forapurpose 8y ago
  > surely one of the most pertinent moral positions of the Odyssey is the idea that justice will prevail: the good guy wins and gets the girl, the bad guys lose. There's nothing good about Odysseus; he's a bad person and, IMHO, one of the most annoying, obnoxious personalities in literature. He leads his group around murdering and pillaging, not to mention using and manipulating - he's renowned for his lying and trickery. He gets his men killed over and over due to his capricious, pointless acts of ego - at one point much of his fleet is sunk and men die because he pointlessly taunts enemies as they sail away. But if someone should act against him, he switches to victimhood and moral outrage - poor Odysseus! All his troubles and tribulations! In the end he returns home alone, having gotten all his men killed, and encounters the 'suitors', who presume that with him missing for 20 years, likely he won't return. They are peaceably [EDIT: up to a point then that changed; see the reply below], though obnoxiously in some ways, competing to see who gets his throne and his wife's hand - leaving the choice to her [EDIT: though as the reply below states, she is being forced to marry one of them; she can't say no]. He slaughters them all, indiscriminately, for their presumption. The slave girls (did I mention that he takes and keeps slaves?) that are suspected (there is no trial or evidence or anything more than someone's accusation) of the grave crime of dalliances with the suitors, he unceremoniously has a rope wrapped around all their necks and hangs them together. Then he says, we need to replenish our stocks - depleted so unfairly by the mean suitors! - so we'll soon set out to raid and steal them. Is this a good man? Did the good guy win? The Odyssey is a rich story of and study in personality and in human relations, and in politics; it's not at all about justice.
beaconstudios 8y ago
I think most of the lessons from foundational stories are so internalised now that they seem stupidly obvious. To take your example of the sirens, why is that idea one that we resonate with? Because it's valuable as a metaphor and an archetypal example: we even use the term directly (ie. "siren song") to refer to real-life instances of the archetype. Other concepts that refer to the same archetype are the idea of no free lunch, if it's too good to be true then it probably is, and so on. These archetypes are compounded lessons that we've absorbed culturally for millennia, and continue to reflect on via our own recreations in the various arts.
- watwut 8y ago
  Frankly, given how small and unimportant sirens incident is, I assume it is because they are tempting and female and thus painters had an excuse to imagine and paint naked women (they are not described naked in the poem). As in, it is short fun part of the poem that sparks imagination. It is short and more fun to paint or tell then Penelope being helpless alone in her chamber.
  - beaconstudios 8y ago
    Perhaps, for sirens at least. But that was just an example. I haven't read The Odyssey myself so I'm not well placed to give further specific examples but I was trying to point to the idea that old cultural mythos and stories are there to provide instantiations of archetypes. I'm not sure your disparagement of classical painters holds much weight though, given they painted plenty of naked women without needing an "excuse". The motivations seem more to do with notions of depicting beauty or purity than just being lecherous.
    - watwut 8y ago
      Sirens story as in poem has no beauty nor purity in it. Really. Sirens are not described and promises to give him knowledge, mostly about Trojan war. Nothing beautiful or pure about that. And I think that some painters liked to paint naked women and customers liked those paintings without it being necessary disparaging. The line between "lecherous" and "beauty or purity" is mostly the one of framing - whether you are determined to see it as good or bad. Nevetheless, it is a projection of own ideas into old story, because we want to see ourselves in the oldest known poems. People want our civilization to spring from that, so they project onto it. It is not like every sirens painting painter would read the poem, they heard the story as part of their education and imagined the rest.
netcan 8y ago
Idk about foundational but... A lot of philosophical and moral questions are fairly universal. They get discussed in ancient law codes, scripture & modern parliaments. Is prostituion immoral? What defines rape? King Cyrus ruled on these. They're discussed in the Bible. You'll find similar debates in modern courts and legislatures. For Odysseus, some big philosophical themes are hubris/pride, worthiness. Ancient Greek literature is pretty obsessed with these, especially pride. These aren't really big moral themes/questions today, but they are pretty popular literary themes. Maybe it's universality. Maybe it's Greek influence. Maybe it's coincidence. I don't think these texts surveillance be because of universality. I do think that because they survived, we learn that some things are pretty universal, that we have deep spiritual similarity to bronze age Aegean pirates.
neaden 8y ago
I think the big question the Odyssey asks is what does time and violence do to people. What did Odysseus' journey do to him, what did it do to his son who grew up without him, what did it do to his wife and father who had to go on living like he was dead, what did it do the political system back home with their leader and so many young men gone and a void there where the suitors begin to fill. And once they are all reunited after so many years, what then. Athena grants them a happy ending, restoring Odysseus' youth, but what about the rest of us.

netcan 8y ago

I don't think moral and philosophical conclusions are universal in any way. In fact, there's a lot of mismatch between our everyday modern morals and the ancient (or even recent) moral and political religious texts. I do think there's universality of moral and philosophical questions. King Cyrus and #metoo debated the same questions. Plato/Socrates, René Descartes & The Matrix constructed story worlds to highlight the same epistemological problem (what if the world isn't real). Good stories give you a richness of scenarios and questions to discuss, whether you agree or dissent to the author's conclusions.

beaconstudios 8y ago
I totally agree. Hence why I didn't say they necessarily provided the answers. Though I think our cultures are often deeply intertwined with their religions, which do provide a framework of answers to many of the questions (whether you actually practice said religion or not).
kingraoul3 8y ago
The Iliad and The Odyssey draw pretty murky moral conclusions.
- netcan 8y ago
  Moral murkiness is a good thing, imo. Show's conflict. Some of my favourite stories are all about murky waters of morality. Moral badness.... Realistically, every morality other than one's own is bad and so statistically...