Sealing with a sneeze

While reading The Odyssey recently, I was surprised by an unlikely coincidence. The passage comes amidst the conversation between Penelope, wife of Odysseus, and Eumaeus, her most trusted slave, about the beggar who has come to their palace (i.e. Odysseus in disguise):

At her last words Telemachus shook with a lusty sneeze
like a thunderclap resounding up and down the halls.
The queen was seized with laughter, calling out
to Eumaeus winged words: "Quickly, go!
Bring me this stranger now, face-to-face!
You hear how my son sealed all I said with a sneeze?
So let death come down with grim finality on these suitors--
one and all--not a single man escape his sudden doom! (17: 602-609, bolding is mine)

To an American ear, there is nothing peculiar about the above passage. But having been born in Russia, I was struck by the idea that a sneeze (jokingly) symbolizes an affirmation of whatever was said immediately before the oral eruption: Penelope speaks, Telemachus sneezes, and Penelope then laughs at this prophetic confirmation of her speech.

This folk custom is found in exactly the same form in modern Russian culture! Frequently when I sneeze, my mom will say "Pravda!" ("Truth!") as though to verify whatever point is being made in the conversation. I always thought this was a quirk of Russian culture (as far as I am aware, no such "idiom" exists in American lingo) but apparently it dates back to at least Homeric times. It is a nice thought that such jokes can eke out a cultural existence through millennia, but better judgment would say that the sneeze of affirmation is an eccentric cultural coincidence.

Money before mind?

Earlier in the week, an unlikely event occured to me: the working hypothesis for my senior thesis - my hunch - I found to have been already put forth (albeit in a limited form) by another historian. As I stated in a previous post, I am researching why some of the greatest ethicists in history lived within a hundred years of each other across the world (particularly in Greece, China, Israel and India) in the 6th and 5th centuries B.C. I noticed that coinage arose in those societies at around the same time or a couple of centuries before those philosophers. My hunch was that, with the introduction of coinage, something about the abstraction involved in thinking of wealth apart from useful goods (e.g. cows, land, vases) disharmonized the societies, prompting a similar philosophical response to congruous cultural conditions from the ethicists.

Last Wednesday, I was consulting with my undergraduate advisor, Prof. Marc Kleijwegt, who lent to me his book, Money and the Early Greek Mind: Homer, Philosophy, Tragedy by Richard Seaford. Judge for yourself how similar the following quote from the book's abstract sounds to my above hypothesis:

How were the Greeks of the sixth century BC able to invent philosophy and tragedy? In this book Richard Seaford argues that a large part of the answer can be found in another momentous development, the invention and rapid spread of coinage, which produced the first thoroughly monetised society. By transforming social relations, monetisation contributed to the ideas of the universe as an impersonal system (presocratic philosophy) and of the individual alienated from his own kin and from the gods (in tragedy).

I have not read Seaford's book yet, but I have a feeling it will be crucial to shaping the focus of my senior thesis. As he has "utilized" my ideas, I look forward to observing and perhaps utilizing the methodology he uses to explore Greek philosophy and then reapplying that to ancient Hebrew, Indian and Chinese thought. My senior thesis is shaping up to be a happy marriage between my two interests in college: ancient intellectual history and economics.

The ocean of beauty

Having recently read Plato's Symposium, a phrase kept resounding repeatedly in my head - a metaphor I hardly noticed when reading the text - the words, 'the ocean of beauty', 'the ocean of beauty'. The sound of that pleased me and I began thinking about why I have been drawn to Plato's (and of course, Socrates') philosophy ever since reading the Republic 3.5 years ago. (I know disciplined scholars frown upon such emotional outpourings, but please indulge me, if you will, as I think the allure of these particular ideas is common to many who have "conversed" with Socrates). Below is an excerpt which serves to illustrate the promise of Plato - that is, the attraction of his and Socrates' ideas - from the discussion of love and beauty in the Symposium:

. . . the lover is turned to the great sea of beauty, and, gazing upon this, he gives birth to many gloriously beautiful ideas and theories, in unstinting love of wisdom, until, having grown and been strengthened there, he catches sight of such knowledge, and it is the knowledge of such beauty . . .
First, it always is and neither comes to be nor passes away, neither waxes nor wanes. Second, it is not beautiful this way and ugly that way, nor beautiful at one time and ugly at another, nor beautiful in relation to one thing and ugly in relation to another; nor is it beautiful here but ugly there, as it would be if it were beautiful for some people and ugly for others. Nor will the beautiful appear to him in the guise of a face or hands or anything else that belongs to the body. It will not appear to him as one idea or one kind of knowledge. It is not anywhere in another thing, as in an animal, or in earth, or in heaven, or in anything else, but itself by itself with itself, it is always one in form . . .
This is what it is to go aright, or to be led by another, into the mystery of Love: one goes always upwards for the sake of this Beauty, starting out from beautiful things and using them like rising stars: from one body to two and from two to all beautiful bodies, then from beautiful bodies to beautiful customs, and from customs to learning beautiful things, and from these lessons he arrives in the end at this lesson, which is learning of this very Beauty, so that in the end he comes to know just what it is to be beautiful.

Symposium 210d-211d

Plato (rather, the character of the wise woman Diotima) has described the dialectical ascent from loving a particular person's body to loving the beauty common to all bodies to loving all beautiful things to loving finally the beauty common in all things - the Beautiful itself apart from any worldly form. This is 'the great sea of beauty': just imagine what it would be like to behold with the mind or the soul such an infinite ocean! No, not the beautiful mountain scape or a vigorous young visage - no, the very element of delight taken from both, from every beautiful thing ever created, in fact, taken and unified. What could kindle more joy than seeing such a mindscape?

By no means do I mean to elevate Platonism to the level of a religion nor do I think that the Socratic method is flawless (in fact, my inclination is that Plato would have us, in the words of scholar J.M. Cooper, "constantly question everything that any speaker says . . . to engage a person effectively in the right sort of search for truth"). What I mean to say is that while some philosophers offer humanity castles of ideas molded on self-styled sandless foundations, or tempt men with promises of supermen status, or spell out liberation from some perceived oppressor, Plato's promise is pleasing in its simplicity: to see the Beautiful, to possess the Good, to understand Justice, to live a good life, a truly virtuous life.

In his essay titled "Platonic Love" in The Cambridge Companion to Plato, G.R.F. Ferrari writes of the relationship between love and the forms of the Beautiful and the Good:

In view of such passages as [Symposium] 201c and Phaedrus 250c-d, let us say that the beautiful is thought of as the quality by which the good shines and shows itself to us. We can then claim that the ascent to the Beautiful itself [i.e. the path of love described above] is indeed also an ascent to the Good itself, but described so as to bring out at every turn what it is about the good that captivates us. (260)

One can almost swim through these ideas, writhing and wriggling and almost tasting the succulent nature of things. How far, it seems to me, has modern scholarship - with its cutting-edge ideas and methodologies - diverged from Socrates' vision of inner ascent. Why make the mental effort, travel the road, without the promise of transcendant destinations?

I will rest this thought with a passage from the Judeo-Christian tradition, to which I am drawn even more than to Platonism but for similar reasons of promise, about Wisdom's banquet:

Wisdom has built her house,
   she has hewn her seven pillars,
She has slaughtered her animals, she
           has mixed her wine,
   she has also set her table.
She has sent out her servant-girls, she
           calls
   from the highest places in the town,
"You that are simple, turn in here!"
   To those without sense she says,
"Come, eat of my bread
   and drink of the wine I have mixed.
Lay aside immaturity, and live,
   and walk in the way of insight."

Proverbs 9:1-6

To believe or not to believe

Reading The Economist kindled my thoughts (as commonly happens) a few days ago. A review of a new biography on Benito Mussolini ("The cruelest years", The Economist, 14 July, 2007) begins, "Ernest Renan, a 19th-century French philosopher, once famously observed that national identity requires a collective work of amnesia." Of course this article is suggesting that the Axis nations have struggled to forget their inglorious role in the Second World War in order to continue living with dignity. I began to wonder about collective amnesia in other societies.

It occurred to me that collective amnesia (or suspension of disbelief or even a noble lie to use Plato's terminology) is an understudied force in history. So many attributes of American society especially depend on noble lies such as that "all men are created equal", that all possess intrinsic rights to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness", and that a wealthy, handsome and successful man is no better than a poor, ugly and miserable woman. This was not always so in history. Ancient Roman society had no such notions of equality and natural rights while birth, wealth and beauty meant everything for moving up the social ladder. The ancient Roman way is more intuitive - are not those gifted by nature more deserving of social goods as well? - while the American way demands feats of faith and imagination. And yet who would argue that the American way of equality and individualism is the worse of the two?

Josiah Ober, a classicist at Stanford University, observes similar suspensions of disbelief in ancient Athens in his book Mass and Elite in Democratic Athens. Ober argues that the masses' exposure to theatrical drama trained the citizen-assemblymen to suspend their disbelief when the predominantly upper-class and educated leaders of the assembly spoke negatively about wealth and likened themselves to the common masses. A kind of symbolic rhetoric developed which on the one hand was fraught with imaginative inconsistency, but on the other hand also preserved for several generations an unlikely society, one founded on ideals of equality and direct democracy in a time of tyranny and rigid stratification.

So, in the best of societies - those founded on democracy and respect for the individual - we observe ideals accepted on faith which otherwise run against the grain of observable reality. Students of history, it seems to me, would do well to study those imaginative ideals popularly believed for the greater good and the manner of their unlikely acceptance.

Thesis thoughts

Since I may reference it in future posts, I am replicating below the abstract for my senior thesis research project in history titled, Age of Wisdom: The Rise of Genius Ethicists in Greece, China, Israel, and India in the 6th and 5th Centuries B.C. Please humor me and tolerate my generalist tendencies.

As the classical period was dawning in Greece, the Zhou dynasty was decaying in China, the Babylonian conquest was looming in Israel, and the "great kingdoms" were reigning in India, there arose thinkers from these nearly isolated societies whose social commentary has profoundly influenced their respective cultures.* In the spirit of exploring the intellectual bedrock of these important civilizations, this project will study their great thinkers of the 6th and 5th centuries B.C. - Socrates and the Presocratics in Greece, Confucius and Lao Tzu in China, the Babylonian Captivity-era prophets of Israel, and the Buddha in India - and the societies from which they emerged. This project will seek to critically analyze commonalities between the compared thinkers' ideas in their historical and cultural context. The Greeks and Chinese will be closely compared because of their secular answers to man's dilemmas, while the Hebrews and Indians will be paired as examples of religious responses. What in each society allowed for the cultivation of genius? What characterizes a 'golden age' of thought? How do developing civilizations solve cultural problems? These are main areas of inquiry along which this project will proceed.

*The ancient historian Chester Starr once wrote, "Historians have often noted in amazement that the Buddha, Confucius, some of the major Hebrew prophets, and the first Greek philosophers all lived within a century of each other...these four outlooks are among the greatest forces which have molded subsequent civilization." See Chester Starr, A History of the Ancient World (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), 143-144.

Epicurus and the gods?

I have lately been perplexed about questions related to the nature of pleasure and pain and have turned to several sources in this inquiry, among them the Greek philosopher of hedonism: Epicurus. An enjoyable website, which models itself as “a modern on-line version of the Garden” writes that Epicurus helped “lay the intellectual foundations for modern science and for secular individualism... His world-view is an optimistic one that stresses that philosophy can liberate one from fears of death and the supernatural... [emphasis added].” In other parts of the website, the author writes that future Epicurean thinkers like John Locke and Isaac Newton reverted to “intellectual contortions... to make room for God in their metaphysical systems”, in opposition to “modern science and modern social organization” which do away with deity altogether. The author of this website assumes that, even if Epicurus himself was not an atheist, then his philosophy naturally lends itself and evolved into secular humanism and that the Master would surely agree with such progress.

Admittedly, I have not read all of the primary sources concerning Epicurus, but his own Letter to Menoeceus does not suggest to me that Epicurus would approve of modern secular humanism. The first thing Epicurus writes after exhorting Menoeceus to follow his teachings is, “believe that God is a living being immortal and blessed, according to the notion of a god indicated by the common sense of mankind.” Epicurus continues, “it is that the greatest evils happen to the wicked and the greatest blessings happen to the good from the hand of the gods, seeing that they are always favorable to their own good qualities and take pleasure in men like themselves, but reject as alien whatever is not of their kind.” Finally, towards the end of his letter, the first thing that Epicurus suggests a “superior” man possess is “a holy belief concerning the gods” and that he be “altogether free from the fear of death.” So, according to this letter of Epicurus’, God (or the gods) does exist though “the multitude” might not have correct beliefs about him, he punishes the ungodly and upholds the pious, and the ideal man must correctly understand God.

Hence I am puzzled that the author of the above website, as well as perhaps other contemporary Epicureans, sees Epicurus as the harbinger of atheistic/agnostic secular humanism. Even the entry in the Oxford Classical Dictionary perplexes me, which states that in the Epicurean system the gods “take no thought for this cosmos or any other” and that men should not “[expect] favours or punishments from them.” Epicurus’ own Letter to Menoeceus seems to say something different.