Posted on 10/28/2003 11:45:20 PM PST by marron
Still reading but, Oh, I like this very much! With Thanks to beckett and bb for the ping. And beckett, what a pleasure it is to see you here! And Askel, what a pleasure it would be to see again!
Yes; and that's a very different question than asking "who he is." The latter question goes to personal qualities (virtues), to personal actions and their fruits. "What's your name?" is a comparatively impersonal question that, in this passage, ultimately goes to one's native land and family/clan connections. Even such an extraordinary figure as Odysseus would not be understood as a unique individual in the culture formed by Homer.
Plato was perhaps the first thinker to conceive of man as he is "in himself" -- and set off a revolution that continues to reverberate to this day. Truly, Plato marks a profound intellectual and cultural turning point in human history.
Thanks so much for writing, cornelis. It's good to see you again!
Which is why we appreciate Homer, who certainly gives us an understanding of this particular man as he is "among others."
Homer, who delights in the confusion of the barbarian who thinks Odysseus is a nobody, who plays up the error of those that mistake him for a god or treat him like a beast, who in many ways is already way ahead of Socrates--that first intellectualist who conceived himself in a movement toward individuality as when divorced from land, friends, son, wife, and body--Homer, who gives Odysseus his most profound individuality as unmistakably Odysseus,--not a anqrwpoV but the anhr--whose namelessness is exorcised by the token of industry, a cloak woven by his wife.
Book Eight and especially the irony of King Alcinoos trying to be civil makes sense as long as Odysseus is the true name of him who weeps and not the onomatopoeic gurgle of an outiV--no one in particular--of the one whose existence is in doubt, even by Odysseus himself, whose name pains and prides him.
To which you said: Which is why we appreciate Homer, who certainly gives us an understanding of this particular man as he is “among others.”
The conception of man as a “particular man as he is ‘among others’” has certainly been given short-shrift in the modern imagination. That is, the tendency to accentuate the individual aspect of man comes at the expense of viewing man as the social being he clearly is.
The human individual and the human community cannot be isolated and held apart, as in an intellectual exercise or designed experiment. The relations are organic, dynamic; and thus unavoidably inseparable. In the process of segregating the two, we lose the idea of what is common to all men. Concentration on the “part” leaves us blind to the whole. And thus we are left with no way to make human existence intelligible, to ourselves or to each other.
May I here interject that historically, science has been predicated on the isolation and study of parts, the assumption being that this is the best way to understand the wholes that the several parts collectively constitute. And that more recently, along came quantum theory, which places this heretofore reliable assumption in doubt.
I’ve been thinking about this part (e.g., human individual) vs. whole (e.g., human community) tension a lot lately. And I find I have been having recourse to Bohr’s complementarity principle, inspired by actual observations of a certain fundamental duality in physical nature, expressing as particle/wave, position/velocity, quanta/field constructs – their “relation” specified in the terms of the uncertainty principle. On their face, such relations seem mutually exclusive.
Bohr’s point was, however, that neither “side of the divide” can give a complete description of the physical system of which they are “modes,” or parts. If you want to understand the whole, you need to understand both.
But I digress. Cornelis, I thought this was simply beautiful:
Homer, who delights in the confusion of the barbarian who thinks Odysseus is a nobody, who plays up the error of those that mistake him for a god or treat him like a beast, who in many ways is already way ahead of Socrates--that first intellectualist who conceived himself in a movement toward individuality as when divorced from land, friends, son, wife, and body--Homer, who gives Odysseus his most profound individuality as unmistakably Odysseus – [sorry cornelis; I have no Koine, and neither does my present character set] -- whose namelessness is exorcised by the token of industry, a cloak woven by his wife.
Book Eight and especially the irony of King Alcinoos trying to be civil makes sense as long as Odysseus is the true name of him who weeps and not the onomatopoeic gurgle of [...] no one in particular -- of the one whose existence is in doubt, even by Odysseus himself, whose name pains and prides him.
I imagine your specification of “onomatopoeic gurgle” to pertain to the faceless “mass man” of our current era. Never in a million years could a personality such as Odysseus be understood in such terms. He was distinct; he was enormously potent, ingenious, and strenuously active in his disposition towards and engagement with the world outside himself. But at the end of the day, his power resided, not merely in personal intelligence, ingenious/industrious applications of personal judgment and will, and courageous, glorious personal acts, but in the perduring, faithful, and wise “industry” of a loving other – his beloved wife, Penelope. And also to his connections with his native soil, community, and culture.
As the poet says: No man is an island.
Very nice of you to say so cornelis. I do what I can, but to be honest I wish I was a better writer.
Marron, I prefer the usage of "person" myself. For "person" seems better able to mediate seeming contradiction than "individual"; for "person" has cultural resources to help him that "individual" perhaps does not.
It seems to me a separation of individual apart from culture -- the separation of part from whole -- is unnecessay in principle. For man lives in the "in between" -- as Plato put it, in the "metaxy" -- of "two worlds," mediating time and the timeless, of correleating actual experience with timeless principle, in the modes of existence and being.
Man can neither be separated from the human community, nor from transcendent reality, and still be man. It seems the good order of the human person cannot be effected in isolation from such "competing" claims.
Man was created to express both modes in himself -- and yet be himself in the process, as the "site and sensorium" of the process/project. For the "process" cannot occur in the first place, absent the action of the human mind and spirit.
I cannot express how very much I admire your work.
Man can neither be separated from the human community, nor from transcendent reality, and still be man. It seems the good order of the human person cannot be effected in isolation from such "competing" claims. Man was created to express both modes in himself -- and yet be himself in the process, as the "site and sensorium" of the process/project. For the "process" cannot occur in the first place, absent the action of the human mind and spirit.
You said: Man can neither be separated from the human community, nor from transcendent reality, and still be man. It seems the good order of the human person cannot be effected in isolation from such "competing" claims.
The lectionary passage reads (from the ESV): And one of the scribes came up and heard them disputing with one another, and seeing that he answered them well, asked him, "Which commandment is the most important of all?" Jesus answered, "The most important is, 'Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. The second is this: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. There is no other commandment greater than these." [snip]
The only change I would offer to your comment, in keeping with the hierarchy of the commandments, is that the transcendent is first; otherwise the community relationship loses its "rightness".
Odd, that ... you may very well end up in tomorrow's sermon... :)
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