The Iliad as Ethical Thinking: Politics, Pity, and the Operation of Esteem 1

Abstract

Plato’s banishment of Homer from his philosophic republic is well known. The problem with the Homeric epic for Plato is that it imitates phenomenal appearance (phainomena) as it depicts the shadowy world of human action. Unlike Homer, whose art can tell us nothing about how to live because it merely imitates what we already do, the philosophic craft, as it draws its inspiration from the contemplation of truth, is capable of producing political judgments about what conduct makes individuals better or worse (599d). Overlaying this Platonic argument in modern times is a Kantian distinction between “pure moral philosophy” and other precepts that “may be only empirical and thus belong to anthropology” (Kant 1959.5). Moral philosophy is seen as derived from abstract and universal principles that impose a categorical duty on humans. Empirical precepts, such as norms of behavior or even ethics, are seen as culturally grounded and, thus, not critically reflective. Applied to the Homeric world, this distinction underlies a view, still very much a part of scholarship, of Homeric individuals as conforming