It is possible to see Homer as the beginning of a lot of things. (The use of ‘Homer’ here is simply for convenience as a way of referring to The Iliad and The Odyssey and should not be taken as an assertion that there was a single author of those two epics or that if there was such an author, the author had that name). Nevertheless, it may be particularly appropriate to see Homer at the beginning of virtue ethics. There are ways that there is a version of virtue ethics in the Homeric epics related to later virtue ethics in antiquity, and while there is no equivalent version of later metaphysics, epistemology, or political theory.
Virtue ethics dominates the way we see ancient ethics and that vein of ancient ethics can be taken back to Homer even if not quite the same as in later more abstract philosophical elaborations, and even lacking in the same vocabulary. What follows will just assume that a language of virtues can be applied to Homer and is not concerned with how far such a language can be found in an explicit way in that literature. The Homeric approach is interestingly different and even superior to the later philosophical reflections in that virtues are shown to varied and conflicting, rather than as part of rationally unified and hierarchically structures.
Virtue theory refers to patterns of human action which come from and enhance human flourishing, along with the connections between a life of such actions and philosophical reflection on ethics. For the ancients, such philosophical activity is itself a form of virtuous action demonstrating the benefits to a good human life of the use of reason in this way. The Homeric epics show various patterns of human action as more or less admirable as expressions of life, while poetry itself is put forward as the central way of passing on the examples of virtues, and so is in some sense virtuous, though as with the general approach to virtues, there is considerable ambiguity. For example, Odysseus’ wish to be famous, that is remembered in poetry, itself creates dangers.
At the centre of The Iliad we see that centrality of skill and courage in battle in judging any male human life as worthwhile. This attitude does not appear unrevised in the later philosophical texts, such as those of Plato and Aristotle, but there is some continuity. The second class of guardians in Plato’s Republic are warriors, as a form of spirited passion guided by reason to master the desires. Courage in war to defend the home state is a virtue discussed by Aristotle a few times in the Nicomachean Ethics, even if in contrast with Homeric heroes at some moments, Aristotle’s ethical man avoids a rash suicidal courage. The consuming passion of Homeric heroes at some points to fight with disregard for life does not, anyway, create a complete contrast between the ethics of Homer and the ethics of Aristotle. Restraint in war so that a martial spirit is guided by a rational approach to winning the battle appears as admirable in Homer, while Aristotle does recognise reckless courage as preferable to the lack of the virtue of courage to be found in cowardice.
The paragon of courage and martial spirit, Achilles son of a goddess, does move from a kind of spiritedness which leads to a destructive argument with Agamemnon through a passion for revenge in battle, contempt for the corpse of his enemy Hector, to a reconciliation with Hector’s father Priam, allowing a truce in the war so that the Trojans can arrange an appropriate funeral for their dead hero and prince. So Achilles has a virtue of mastering fear in battle and moves towards the virtues that allow sympathy for the grief of an enemy, something like magnanimity maybe.
Odysseus presents another kind of virtue though he has his share of the warrior virtue of courage, which are the virtues of using thought to guide actions, sometimes in more considered reflective ways as in his advice to the Greeks during the Trojan War or in a more immediate intuitive way in his adventures as recounted in The Odyssey. He is sometimes destructively impulsive impulsive in The Odyssey so does not represent pure virtue and his character can be taken as evidence that in this world kings are more virtuous than the average person, but are not pure in virtue.
Odysseus slept when he should have stayed awake as the Aeolian bag of winds guides his ship home to Ithaca, instead of falling asleep near Ithaca so that his crew can open the bag, destroying its power. He demonstrates an extreme degree of rational self-control as virtue in the Sirens episode where he tells his men to tie him to a mast so that he can listen to the Sirens’ song without being able to do anything dangerous as a result. However, this wise precaution is on the advice of the goddess Circe, so suggesting that he lack capacities of virtue sufficient to design a strategy of self-restraint on his own.
From the examples above, we can see that the Homeric heroes contain enormously strong impulses of spirit and have a very mixed capacity to control such impulses, which sometimes require divine intervention to really operate. The same sometimes applies to courage in battle, at least at its most intense and passionate. Virtue in Homer appears in constant conflict and flux regarding possession of virtues and relations between virtues. Passion for battle conflicts with wisdom in stratagem.
The wise prudential virtues of Odysseus contain a capacity for lying for self-preservation even lying to people of good character of his own social station. The capacity for prudential lies gives way to the warrior desire for glory and recognition in the Cyclops passage in The Odyssey. That is Odysseus protects himself by concealing his name, but then seeks glory by revealing his name, which allows divine retribution to be visited upon him. In all virtues in Homer are changeable and conflicting so requiring an art of attempted provisional harmonisation, not so obvious in the more rationalistic accounts of virtue in philosophers.
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