• Responsibility, motivation, and right/wrong
  
• Gods can force humans to do things
• In some cases, humans cannot resist divine force
  
• Pandaros, the guy who shot Agamemnon, was forced, [but he was also said to be underlyingly foolish]: he embraced that role
• Paris is physically taken from the battlefield: he is not said to embrace or reject that
  
• Helen is made to want to make love to Paris
• She resents it
• So is this a way to show someone who has two urges inside of them, one that is well considered, and one that is more emotional/impulsive?
• After all, it seems very common for us humans to not always feel sexually attracted to people who are good for us or to whom we think it is OK to be sexually attracted.
• Even if it is a way to present things we usually think are internal to a person, can that be the end of the story? is this 'just' externalizing of an ordinary human phenomenon? 
  
• It can't be, because Aphrodite's involvement is part of a larger plot: it's not confined to Helen's inner struggle.
• and yet, we can unweave the threads, and the epics are tolerant of contradiction, as was said above, so maybe the fact that these things are fully integrated plot-wise is not really an indication that they are not separable?
  
• Another reason why it might not be is that Helen is in a particular situation where it might be wise for her to deny that she is with Paris fully willingly (both in terms of her own personal feelings and also in terms of her relations with others in Troy as well as the Greeks)
• At 19.86, Agamemnon says that he was forced by divinely sent Até (delusion) to do what he did that enraged Achilles, but he is still willing to offer compensation (hence the embassy in book 9 and later suggestions): why would he be willing to offer compensation if he was just a puppet and had no choice? In contrast, back at 9.115, he said he was deluded and takes responsibility without blaming anything divine.
• Is it possible that he is just saving face by hiding behind a claim of divinely sent delusion in book 19? Can we talk that way about this world? Is that plausible in terms of everything else in the epic? or is it anachronistic/out of place?
• Is it the case that even if he doesn't actually say it was divinely sent delusion, it was still divinely sent delusion? Is it the case in this world that every case of delusion is divinely sent? Or just some cases? I.e. do the gods seem to take advantage of human psychology to mimic it, or are they part of it?
  
• When he blames Calchas, the prophet, he doesn't say that Calchas is making stuff up: it doesn't seem to be acknowledged that one might lie about such things rather easily.
  
• Maybe one can accept responsibility for the act WITHOUT accepting responsibility for intending the act? Is that what Helen and Agamemnon do?
• Or perhaps another way to put it is that if someone does something, they did it, and so are responsible for the act.
• But still, they could do it "in spite of themselves" and so deny the intention to do it?
• So are they unified persons?
  
• Gods can also convince/pressure/advise humans to do things: i.e. they can interact with humans as if they were simply other people.
  
• Humans can reject divine advice.
• Humans can resent or resist divine pressure/advice
• It seems that separating out and deciding whether the motivation for a given action was divine or human is difficult, and perhaps that's because the worldview being presented is one of over-and-under-determination:
  
• over-determination because both human and divine motivation maye be the right way to see it and it would never occur to an epic Greek character to doubt that.
  
• But under-determination in that it may also be one in which "divine" motivation is not really the sort of thing that would absolve one of blame at all.
  
• just as an all-knowing, all-powerful, and omni-present monotheistic god obviously causes everything, and yet folks think there is personal sin that the individual is held accountable for
  
• Another issue: In terms of human internal motivations ('psychology'?), various body parts of humans are said to motivate humans
• the picture is very complex and not helped by the translation, which tends to go with understandable things like "his heart was not in it" rather than literal translations: in the Greek, the liver, the diaphragm, the heart, the spleen, etc. (but not the brain) all motivate humans, and they can even oppose what the human would otherwise do.
  
• There does not seem to be a clear idea that a human is a unified single agent: each seems to be a somewhat non-unified agent, a bunch of agents.
• are humans unified agents? probably not as much as we like to think.
  
• All that is complicated by the nature of emotions: their emotions seem to differ from our own notions about emotions in important ways:
  
• In particular, some thinkers maintain that in the epic world, success or failure lead to honor or shame, but guilt is not really a motivating factor.
• Nestor doesn't seem to be able to tell Agamemnon that what he is proposing to do is "wrong," which would involve shame: it is not "shameful," because that is a concept that primarily attaches to failure, and what Agamemnon is doing is not failing.
• Face-saving is huge here.
  
• Basically, our normal moral vocabulary of right and wrong and justice and such is not deployed (yet?).
• Another issue: Our modern mechanisms of laws and judges and carefully defined and impersonally regulated institutions of justice (laws, regulations, means of redress) as part of the state are simply not yet on the scene.
• Note that "legal/illegal" is not at all synonymous with "right/wrong": just because something is legal does not make it right, and just because something is illegal does not make it wrong and blameworthy: sometimes we think breaking the law is the right thing to do. Some laws simply decide things based on practicality: it's no more right than wrong to make people drive on the right than the left side of roads.
• It is usually held to be 'wrong' to break any law, even if that law is unjust: we don't just willy-nilly engage in civil disobedience: it's got to be a serious mismatch to 'justify' civil disobedience: but that is far from the Homeric world, which has no concept of civil disobedience I can detect.
  
• But ideally, the divide between legal/illegal is lined up nicely with right/wrong
  
• All of this is also complicated by the idea that we cannot simply take a given character's judgement of blame and credit as truth: who says it matters, and why and how they say it may be a matter of rhetorical positioning
  
• For instance, Priam absolves Helen of guilt
• Helen herself does not
• Each have their own particular viewpoint
• Everything is presented via rhetoric
• And that holds of many interactions: the characters and situations call for rhetorical stances.
  
• And a character's attitude seems to matter:
• Achilles rejects the embassy and all the gifts offered in book 9: why? he says at 9.386 that Agamemnon's gifts do not pay back all Achilles' grievous shame: is it that the gifts are ostentatious and do more honor to Agamemnon as obviously generous than they do honor to Achilles as wronged? It seems that he resents Agamemnon's attitude as much as the fact of not having Briseis and other plunder.
  
• Reciprocity
• Many of the ideas here are based somehow on reciprocity: if you are wronged, reciprocal reparations must be made to make it right OR you must take reciprocal revenge.
  
• Revenge is HUGE in this world. HUGE.
  
• Paris took Helen with no suggestion of any reciprocity: it was pure brigandage, seems to be the idea, and so the reciprocal action is to take her back and kill Paris, and to go to war to do so if need be.
  
• Decisions are to some extent collective: the assemblies.
• But highly hierarchical in terms of who gets to speak and whose word prevails.
• For instance:
  
• Achilles is the best warrior and has the best fighters (the myrmidons)
  
• Agamemnon has the biggest army and most resources.
• There is no good way to decide between them.
• Nestor calls for both to respect each other.
• When Agamemnon does take Briseis, he says he will take her 'himself' and Achilles says that he should not because the 'sons of the Achaeans,' the assembly, gave her to him
• So even though Agamemnon is the highest official and distributes the plunder, he normally does so as someone implicitly vested with the authority of the assembly, and what is particularly offensive about his taking Briseis is that it is not at all done with the agreement of the assembly but rather by 'himself.'
  
• Success seems to matter most: this is a competitive society.
  
• this is parallel to the modern notion that 'possession is 9/10ths of the law' or 'act now: ask forgiveness later'
  

There is a lot of literature on this, many efforts to explain and analyze the epic values, ideas of responsibility, justice, etc.

And yet, the epics do not seem to be primarily concerned with such things: they play a big role, just as they do in any human narrative, but I don't really believe anyone who claims that these epics centrally problematize such matters or are centrally about them: we see/read that into them.

• Why is Homer important ethically:
• Why is he important to Ancient Greeks, that is.
  
• Xenophanes (580-480BC)
• "from the beginning everyone has learnt according to Homer"
• this is not an idiosyncratic quotation: it reflects a broad consensus that can be found elsewhere in Classical Greek thought
  
• Homer has:
• pre-eminent authority
• "pre" temporally
• "pre" culturally
• but not like scripture in important ways:
• not the word of God, infallible, etc.
• there is no privileged caste or group of Epic-interpreters who are ALSO law- and justice-givers
• not a text with religious prescriptions of what to do
• religion is sometimes depicted but it is not mandated by the epics
  
• still, like scripture in some ways
• everyone knew Homer backwards and forwards
• people referred to the epics as cultural touchstones and defining documents of what it meant to be "Greek"
  
• Think of Homer as an ever-present subtext that permeates society: a sort of "default cultural norm" but also one that is obviously referring to a time and situation different from most of Greek historical time. So it has to be mediated.
  

• Is Homer ethically plausible? reasonable?
• i.e. should we take the ethics that underly his narrative seriously?
• yes, but not as an option we should adopt outselves
  

• Homeric characters who have names are (almost) invariably good/virtuous by Homer's standards
• What does Homer count as "good"?
• First, the main characteristics of a good person which can be observed in the epics
  
1. Birth: one must be born into a noble family to be good
2. Wealth: one must be rich to be good
3. Strength: one must be physically fit or have been in one's prime physically fit to be good
• NOTE: not a single one of these is fully in the person's own control
• Least of all the most important one, good birth.
  
• NOTE: bad behavior does not make one lose these things, and so does not make one bad!
• Consider Paris: he behaves badly, but is not "bad" because of it.
• Now, some other characteristics of a good person
• He is good in battle
• strength (Ajax)
  
• skill (Odysseus and Achilles)
  
• courage (Achilles, Hector)
• NOTE: These are things which are more within a person's own control, but still not by any means entirely
  
• NOTE TOO: These are highly individualistic ways to be good: they do not necessarily involve or benefit others (although they may at times)
  
• He has honor
  
• Other people's good opinion
• Material goods: trophies, gifts
• 1.126
  I want another prize ready for me right away.
  I'm not going to be the only Greek without a prize,
  It wouldn't be right. And you all see where mine is going.
• Inferiors: number of minions = amount of power
  
• 1.285 (Nestor speaks)
  
  And when I talked in council, they took my advice.
  So should you two now: taking advice is a good thing.
  Agamemnon, for all your nobility, don't take this girl.
  Leave her be: the army originally gave her to him as a prize.
  Nor should you, son of Peleus, want to lock horns with a king.
  A scepter-holding king has honor beyond the rest of men,
  Power and glory given by Zeus himself.
  You are stronger, and it is a goddess who bore you.
  But he is more powerful, since he rules over more. ..
• NOTE: These require other people.
• Gifts, trophies etc. are given to one by others and are a material measure of something like one's stock market value
• One must respect other people to get their good opinion, because they collectively define these values.
  
• He is better than others
• Achilles' father sent him "to always be the best and to excel the others"
  
• NOTE: This too requires others.
• NOTE: But this is still highly individualistic

• THE HERO AND OTHERS
• Heroes are expected to have some concern for others
• Hector's concern for Andromache and Astyanax
• Achilles' concern for Patroclus (and Patroclus for Achilles)
  
• Achilles and Agamemnon are blamed for neglecting the army's welfare
• 11.709
  
  (Nestor speaks)
  But Achilles
  For all his valor has no feeling for us.
• The basic rule is that one is expected to have
  
• concern for one's inferiors, most particularly those who are in one's power, and
  
• respect for equals and
  
• deference to superiors
  
• Heroes are expected not to be indifferent to suffering
• Achilles' treatment of Hector's corpse is clearly an outrage (the episode with Priam shows us that)
• Patroclus moves Achilles by appeal to the suffering of the army b/c of Achilles' absence
• Heroes are expected to have sympathy for those who are helpless
• Rules of supplication
• In Odyssey, Cyclops lacks these values
• 1.61
  
  Nine days the god's arrows rained death on the camp.
  On the tenth day Achilles called an assembly.
  Hera, the white-armed goddess, planted the thought in him
  Because she cared for the Greeks and it pained her
  To see them dying.
• Those who fail to show such feelings are beasts, not human
• But failure to care about others does not call down any inevitable human or divine punishment: we've seen several heroes summarily executing people who beg for mercy (Menelaus was going to be merciful, but Agamemnon came up and slaughtered that enemy warrior (name?): Odysseus and Diomedes in the Doloneia slaughter Dolon).
  
• BUT, in spite of those expectations, heroes are not praised for their concern for others: Achilles is not less good because he acts selfishly. There is little sustained suggestion that his reputation will suffer from his selfish actions.
• BUT if he had been enslaved, he would have lost his good reputation! The day of enslavement, a person loses his virtue.
• That reveals priorities.

• There are other-regarding good qualities, but many of the other-regarding virtues of a Homeric hero are instrumental
• Namely, others serve as instruments to enhance the more important aspect of a hero's goodness, namely his reputation and material honor.
• Not all virtues are purely instrumental: nonetheless, they are clearly secondary to the big boldfaced ones above.
• A hero is never expected to sacrifice his reputation or material honors for others
• That would diminish his honor
• Which would, BTW, diminish his ability to protect and further his followers' interests, but that doesn't seem to be the main point
  
• When Achilles returns to battle, he returns as much because he failed to protect Patroclus and that made him look weak as because of love for Patroclus
• Consider Hector, the most other-regarding of the heroes
• Twice he chooses his honor over protecting his family and city
• He chooses to fight Achilles
• He admits that withdrawing in battle would serve Troy's interest better, but does not do so because of honor
• THE UPSHOT OF IT ALL IS THAT OTHERS ARE of SECONDARY IMPORTANCE, but not unimportant
  

• Problems with this sort of ethics
• Because reputation and material honors are the prizes to be won, a person must adjust his goals to the opinions of others to win the prizes his society holds most important. More than other systems, in spite of the system's individualism, there is paradoxically little room for one to hew one's own path of virtue. There is a high social control factor.
• Also, the most important factor, birth, is not earned: there is no way to earn birth.
  
• Example: Thersites, that lowly soldier who speaks truth to power in Book 2, but is beaten down cruelly by Odysseus. The other rank and file soldiers laugh and approve of Odysseus' frankly bullying action.
  
• CENTRAL Example: Achilles and Agamemnon conflict
• Agamemnon wins the first bout: he gets the prize
• Achilles could win the second bout by taking what's offered by Agamemnon.
  
• 1.220
  (Athena speaks to Achilles)
  Now come on, drop this quarrel, don't draw your sword.
  "Tell him off instead. And I'll tell you,
  Achilles, how things will be: You're going to get
  Three times as many magnificent gifts
  Because of his arrogance. Just listen to us and be patient."
• He refuses.
• 1.175
  (Achilles speaks) "No, I do all the dirty work with my own hands,
  And when the battle's over and we divide the loot
  you get the lion's share and I go back to the ships
  With some pitiful little thing, so worn out from fighting
  I don't have the strength even to complain.
  Well, I'm going back to Phthia now. Far better
  To head home with my curves ships than stay here,
  Unhonored myself and piling up a fortune for you."
• 16.55
  
  (Achilles speaks)
  I take it hard when someone in power
  Uses his authority to rob his equal
  And strip him of his honor. I take it hard.
• He claims he will be happy living an obscure life without honor: he calls honor transitory and unstable and irrelevant in death:
  
• 9.324
  (Achilles speaks to the embassy of Greeks sent to persuade him to fight)
  "It doesn't matter if you stay in camp or fight -
  In the end, everybody comes out the same.
  Coward and hero get the same reward:
  You die whether you slack off or work.
  And what do I have for all my suffering,
  Constantly putting my life on the line?
  Like a bird who feeds her chicks
  Whatever she finds, and goes without herself,
  That's what I've been like, lying awake
  Through sleepless nights, in battle for days
  Soaked in blood, fighting men for their wives.
  I've raided twelve cities with our ships
  And eleven on foot in the fertile Troad,
  Looted them all, brought back heirlooms
  By the ton, handed it all over
  To Atreus' son, who hung back in camp
  Raking it in and distributing damn little.
  What the others did get they at least got to keep.
  ...
  Why did Agamemnon lead the army to Troy
  If not for the sake of fair-haired Helen?
  Do you have to be descended from Atreus
  To love your mate? Every decent, sane man
  Loves his woman and cares for her, as I did,
  Loved her in my heart. It doesn't matter
  That I won her with my spear.
  ...
  I will sacrifice to Zeus and all the gods tomorrow,
  Load my ships, and launch them on the sea.
  ...
  Nothing is worth my life, not all the riches
  They say Troy held before the Greeks came,
  Not all the wealth in Phoebus Apollo's
  Marble shrine up in craggy Pytho.
  Cattle and flocks are there for the taking;
  You can always get tripods and chestnut horses.
  But a man's life cannot be won back
  Once his breath has passed beyond his clenched teeth.
  My mother Thetis , a moving silver grace,
  Tells me two fates sweep me on to my death.
  If I stay here and fight, I'll never return home,
  But my glory will be undying forever.
  If I return home to my dear fatherland
  My glory is lost but my life will be long,
  And death that ends all will not catch me soon.
  As for the rest of you, I would advise you too
  To sail back home..."
• But he is ashamed to have let down Patroclus and angry at Hector for killing him, and so goes back into battle: 18.95
• More generally, each individual hero has an incentive to do things that are bad for society as a whole.
• A hero's inferiors can expect protection from a hero ONLY IF it does not conflict with that hero's honor.
• Consider Penelope's suitors:
  
• their actions are bad for the whole community
• but they are heroic, for they are striving for the material prize of honor: Penelope

•    But still, perhaps this sort of system is good for a society exposed to attacks from outside.
• BUT the heroic code itself creates a situation where protection from such attacks is needed: it feeds upon itself
• Why could not some other means of defense be found?
• The Homeric hero must choose between security and contentment or precarious honor, and in Homer, it is clear that honor is the choice one should make.

• As for the broader picture in Homer
• The gods
  
• The gods have birth (they are in fact quite often the status-guaranteeing ancestors of the mortal heroes: sometimes we must go outside the epics to look for their genealogy)
  
• The gods possess honor securely and inalienable
• They also possess security
• They are the ideal resolution of the problem of a human hero: how to retain honor and yet be secure.
• But they do that thru the magic of immortality
  
• There are, however, threats to their dominion: giants, etc.
  
• Zeus
• Zeus is represented at times as a force of moral order who presides over the world which is ordered according to Zeus' reason
  
• But at other times, he is subject to the Fates, who bring in an element of arbitrariness and chance to which even the gods are subject
• The upshot is that the Homeric world-view is one in which order and its imposition are not the full story: there are forces immune to order and control
  

• Why is Homeric ethics reasonable? Why should we think about it?
  
• Wealth, honor, status, power are all achievable: people throughout history have in fact achieved them in many places and times.
• It is clear and intelligible
• It is not clear that it is wrong
• It is not clear that our society today does not follow it in ways
• A somewhat clear example: the mafia
• Perhaps the "popular crowd" that keeps the rest of the high school crowd under its thumb as much as it can. They are the "popular crowd" often because of wealth, physical traits they define as beautiful, athletic prowess, and sheer arrogating of the status to themselves. And often, they cruelly enforce it and stymie efforts by other groups to operate more than marginally.
• Of course, this is a caricature, but it is also not clearly a truly inaccurate one.
• there is renown both school-internally and via inter-school competitions
• The cynic might say that underneath it all these are the rules for how to operate in the world, even simply how the world works: birth, wealth and power matter most, and honor as shown by one's reputation, material wealth, and the number of people who are on one's side. They might claim that the rest (laws, religion, etc.) is a puzzle, a maze to be navigated, and caring for others, if it's not in one's own interest, is at best a necessity and at worst fool's game.
• Later on, in much later times (Classical Greece) we know from various writings about it that the popular morality that is present in many places in Greek society is what can be called 'in-group/out-group' morality, and it is guided by the idea 'help your friends, harm your enemies'
  
• There are other options: none of which have much role in the epics:
  
• harming no one
  
• loving our neighbors
• helping others,
  
• being citizens of the world, sharing knowledge and resources, working to perfect our inner selves, the rule of law, rejecting revenge in favor of careful rule-bound justice, spreading privilege that is not zero-sum as widely as possible, dismantling/compensating for privileges that are a zero sum game, rejecting in-goup/outgroup ethics,
  
• etc.