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Depends on where you draw the line for ancient. In the Iliad, Achilles spends a fair bit of time discussing his feelings--mostly, to be sure, of suffering disre

by cafard 8y ago

Depends on where you draw the line for ancient. In the Iliad, Achilles spends a fair bit of time discussing his feelings--mostly, to be sure, of suffering disrespect or of mourning his friend. The main actors of the Aeneid don't have especially stuff upper lips, do they?

the_af 8y ago
The oft-discussed here "The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind" by Julian Jaynes -- intriguing and possibly wrong, but still a fascinating read -- argues otherwise. This is what Jaynes has to say about Achilles [1]: "The word psyche, which later means soul or conscious mind, is in most instances life-substances, such as blood or breath: a dying warrior bleeds out his psyche onto the ground or breathes it out in his last gasp. The thumos, which later comes to mean something like emotional soul, is simply motion or agitation. When a man stops moving, the thumos leaves his limbs. But it is also somehow like an organ itself, for when Glaucus prays to Apollo to alleviate his pain and to give him strength to help his friend Sarpedon, Apollo hears his prayer and "casts strength in his thumos" (Iliad, 16:529). The thumos can tell a man to eat, drink, or fight. Diomedes says in one place that Achilles will fight "when the thumos in his chest tells him to and a god rouses him"" (Note that, simplifying a bit, Jaynes argued that the men in the Illiad were consciousless robots which "heard the voices" of the Gods telling them to do things, instead of having an inner monologue) and "The Iliad is about action and it is full of action — constant action. It really is about Achilles' acts and their consequences, not about his mind. And as for the gods, the Iliadic authors and the Iliadic characters all agree in the acceptance of this divinely managed world. To say the gods are an artistic apparatus is the same kind of thing as to say that Joan of Arc told the Inquisition about her voices merely to make it all vivid to those who were about to condemn her. It is not that the vague general ideas of psychological causation appear first and then the poet gives them concrete pictorial form by inventing gods. It is, as I shall show later in this essay, just the other way around." [1] http://www.julianjaynes.org/origin-of-consciousness_english_book-one-chapter-three.php http://www.julianjaynes.org/origin-of-consciousness_english_...
- goto11 8y ago
  > It really is about Achilles' acts and their consequences, not about his mind. I don't understand that. All his actions are driven by his emotions. The first line is "Sing, Goddess, of Achilles' rage" (In the original Greek "rage" is literally the first word). So obviously the mind and emotions of Achilles is the absolute center of the story, driving all the action.
  - the_af 8y ago
    Well, I don't speak Greek and understand the historical meaning of Greek terms even less, but I think Jaynes' thesis is that every term we now associate with the mind and with inner emotions was meant in the Illiad to be more like a physical or even an external command of "the Gods" (see his discussion of psyche and thumos). That is, while it's now obvious to us these were emotions, the authors of the Illiad didn't perceive them as such -- or so I understand Jaynes argued -- and instead they thought they were either physical things (much like a stomach ache) or a command of "the Gods". If you speak Greek, what's the exact term for "rage" as written in the Illiad? ---- edit: ok, found it. Jaynes claims this: "Even the poem itself is not wrought by men in our sense. Its first three words are Menin aedie Thea, 'Of wrath sing, O Goddess!' And the entire epic which follows is the song of the goddess which the entranced bard 'heard' and chanted to his iron-age listeners among the ruins of Agamemnon's world." I find it a bit disappointing because even if the singer didn't ascribe feelings to men, he must at least understand the meaning of "wrath" itself. And it seems to me it must be hard to understand this emotion unless you can feel it.
  - the_af 8y ago
    You mention songs in another of your posts. Jaynes also had something interesting to say about singing. If I remember correctly, Jaynes argues that singing is produced by the same side of the brain that produced the "voices of the Gods" (and also, the voices in schizophrenic patients), and not the same side that produces speech. To him it's no surprise the ancient forms of storytelling were actually songs. Again, I must add the disclaimer that I don't know whether Jaynes was correct. I suspect he wasn't. But he built such a fascinating house of cards with his theory...
goto11 8y ago
The article doesn't say characters in ancient fiction doesn't have feelings, it says "medieval authors represented characters’ mental states mainly through their direct speech and gestures" - rather than say through internal monologue. This is also true about the Illiad. However the article continues "Moreover, emotions were usually predictable reactions to external actions or events, revealing little about a character that was complex or surprising." which is absolutely bullshit. The Icelandic Sagas which the article uses as an example have lots of examples of complex and surprising emotions - it is just narrated in a "show - don't tell" genre.

by cafard 8y ago

the_af 8y ago

The oft-discussed here "The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind" by Julian Jaynes -- intriguing and possibly wrong, but still a fascinating read -- argues otherwise. This is what Jaynes has to say about Achilles [1]: "The word psyche, which later means soul or conscious mind, is in most instances life-substances, such as blood or breath: a dying warrior bleeds out his psyche onto the ground or breathes it out in his last gasp. The thumos, which later comes to mean something like emotional soul, is simply motion or agitation. When a man stops moving, the thumos leaves his limbs. But it is also somehow like an organ itself, for when Glaucus prays to Apollo to alleviate his pain and to give him strength to help his friend Sarpedon, Apollo hears his prayer and "casts strength in his thumos" (Iliad, 16:529). The thumos can tell a man to eat, drink, or fight. Diomedes says in one place that Achilles will fight "when the thumos in his chest tells him to and a god rouses him"" (Note that, simplifying a bit, Jaynes argued that the men in the Illiad were consciousless robots which "heard the voices" of the Gods telling them to do things, instead of having an inner monologue) and "The Iliad is about action and it is full of action — constant action. It really is about Achilles' acts and their consequences, not about his mind. And as for the gods, the Iliadic authors and the Iliadic characters all agree in the acceptance of this divinely managed world. To say the gods are an artistic apparatus is the same kind of thing as to say that Joan of Arc told the Inquisition about her voices merely to make it all vivid to those who were about to condemn her. It is not that the vague general ideas of psychological causation appear first and then the poet gives them concrete pictorial form by inventing gods. It is, as I shall show later in this essay, just the other way around." [1] http://www.julianjaynes.org/origin-of-consciousness_english_book-one-chapter-three.php http://www.julianjaynes.org/origin-of-consciousness_english_...

goto11 8y ago
> It really is about Achilles' acts and their consequences, not about his mind. I don't understand that. All his actions are driven by his emotions. The first line is "Sing, Goddess, of Achilles' rage" (In the original Greek "rage" is literally the first word). So obviously the mind and emotions of Achilles is the absolute center of the story, driving all the action.
- the_af 8y ago
  Well, I don't speak Greek and understand the historical meaning of Greek terms even less, but I think Jaynes' thesis is that every term we now associate with the mind and with inner emotions was meant in the Illiad to be more like a physical or even an external command of "the Gods" (see his discussion of psyche and thumos). That is, while it's now obvious to us these were emotions, the authors of the Illiad didn't perceive them as such -- or so I understand Jaynes argued -- and instead they thought they were either physical things (much like a stomach ache) or a command of "the Gods". If you speak Greek, what's the exact term for "rage" as written in the Illiad? ---- edit: ok, found it. Jaynes claims this: "Even the poem itself is not wrought by men in our sense. Its first three words are Menin aedie Thea, 'Of wrath sing, O Goddess!' And the entire epic which follows is the song of the goddess which the entranced bard 'heard' and chanted to his iron-age listeners among the ruins of Agamemnon's world." I find it a bit disappointing because even if the singer didn't ascribe feelings to men, he must at least understand the meaning of "wrath" itself. And it seems to me it must be hard to understand this emotion unless you can feel it.
- the_af 8y ago
  You mention songs in another of your posts. Jaynes also had something interesting to say about singing. If I remember correctly, Jaynes argues that singing is produced by the same side of the brain that produced the "voices of the Gods" (and also, the voices in schizophrenic patients), and not the same side that produces speech. To him it's no surprise the ancient forms of storytelling were actually songs. Again, I must add the disclaimer that I don't know whether Jaynes was correct. I suspect he wasn't. But he built such a fascinating house of cards with his theory...

goto11 8y ago

The article doesn't say characters in ancient fiction doesn't have feelings, it says "medieval authors represented characters’ mental states mainly through their direct speech and gestures" - rather than say through internal monologue. This is also true about the Illiad. However the article continues "Moreover, emotions were usually predictable reactions to external actions or events, revealing little about a character that was complex or surprising." which is absolutely bullshit. The Icelandic Sagas which the article uses as an example have lots of examples of complex and surprising emotions - it is just narrated in a "show - don't tell" genre.