The Divided Self in Greek Poetry

Abstract

Abstract In this chapter, I consider the question of the model of personality which is displayed in a number of notable passages of self-division in Homer and Greek tragedy.1 As elsewhere, my claim is that these passages are best interpreted in the light of the objective-participant conception of personality rather than the subjective or individualist conceptions sometimes used to interpret them. I want especially to explore links between the kind of objective (non-subject-centred) psychological model and the kind of participant ethical model that we find in Greek poetry. I do so partly by examining the connections between three of the ideas associated with this conception, and with the image of the self in dialogue which symbolizes this. These ideas, in outline, are: (1) that human psychological life centres on the inter play or ‘dialogue’ between parts or functions; (2) that ethical life is shaped and expressed by participation in interpersonal and communal dialogue; (3) that reflective or dialectical debate constitutes the means by which human beings can properly determine the basis of this shared ethical life.2 I begin by reviewing the way in which this book has so far illustrated these ideas (as they figure in Greek thinking), and then explain how the analysis of the poetic examples of self-division fits into the exploration of this conception of personality.