HUMAN H1AS Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Moral Authority
Document Summary
Beginning moments of great pressure in poems: grabs reader, beginning is crafty and implicit. Classical epic: poem, frame central themes and capsulate whole arc of story, dramatic suspense, beginning of iliad opaque, full of puzzles. Only the gods and achilles experience rage: achilles is special, hero able to feel on level of gods but in a human body. Iliad: achilles neither trojans the thing about tory yet poem starts with agamemnon. Strange syntax of the opening: and the will of zeus, what is the relation between achilles" anger and zeus" will. Human action encounters some kind of limit of the will: deep in 9th year of war. World of iliad inhospitable to women: briseis and chryseus. Achilles wouldn"t fight orders under force of will their own will. Greeks missing agency: have no conscious mind the capacity to act freely involves capacity to reason, unique to formulate moral authority, should we think of ancient greeks as slaves.
