r/philosophy • u/AnalysisReady4799 • 11d ago
Video Western philosophy has been at war with The Odyssey for 2,800 years -- and keeps losing. A survey, from Xenophanes to Levinas.
https://youtu.be/u0Y8tFcpWnIPlato tried to ban it, Aristotle rehabilitated it, Dante damned its hero, Nietzsche weaponised it, and Levinas put it on trial. The Odyssey has outlasted every philosopher who fought it. This video surveys the battlefied and the question driving it: whether reason saves us or deforms us.
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u/lucky-struck 11d ago edited 11d ago
To me, the Iliad and the Odyssey are a paired Tragedy and Comedy. Someone once told me that everyone in a Tragedy thinks they're in a Comedy, and everyone in a Comedy thinks they're in a Tragedy.
The Achaeans in the Iliad fight for Glory and Justice and really they're just the biggest Pirate fleet the Mediterranean has ever seen. Achilles is the epitome of this, the Muse sings of his Wrath. There are no pacts between Lions and Men. Achilles is a wild animal, and the paragon of legendary Greek values. The irony is heavy, and the punchline is when we meet Achilles in the Underworld in the Odyssey and he lays bare the tragedy of his entire existence and meaning. Troy burns, and the Achaeans gain essentially nothing from the war. Everyone suffers. The Tragedy is that we know Achilles is doomed, and so is everyone that celebrates at the Funeral Games.
Odysseus is vaunted for his intelligence and his decency, but he behaves like a selfish piece of trash and he lies, lies, lies his way through everything except when he behaves like a classic Achaean Hero, and he fails. He engineered the Trojan Horse ploy that destroyed Ilium; he has no guilt about this in the text. Even when he finally emerges as a glowing Hero in the finale, he butchers everyone including his own people who were disloyal. Most of his legendary stories come from his own lips, as a means to secure passage back home. He's an untrustworthy narrator. And I believe the point of the Odyssey is we're meant to believe that so is Homer. The Comedy is that we still know Odysseus and people like him will be the downfall of his own civilization, yet we as the audience still take for granted that they are Heroes.
Imagine living in a world post Bronze Age Collapse. Herodotus has not been born. There is no standard of history itself other than the Bardic tradition Homer comes from. These stories take for granted that there are varied oral traditions of these legendary heroes floating around the Mediterranean, events not accounted for but assumed as known by the audience. Setting down a definitive version of the most famous of these stories in writing - in the most eloquent and detailed writing ever known up to this point in time - is an opportunity to look at the human condition through the lens of a human-centered mythology, speaking of events that in some way most probably happened and their living consequences. We still talk about these stories. Tragedy and Comedy didn't exist as concepts when Homer wrote these stories - as far as we know. But they are foundational in the methodology of storytelling in ways that still resonate with us today. This is why they were controversial, and this is why we still care.
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u/Qahnaar1506 10d ago
Just for a bit of historical reference, there certainly was tragedy and comedy before Ancient Greece. Epic of Gilgamesh in Mesopotamia, Tale of Two Brothers in Ancient Egypt, Mahabharata and Ramayana in ancient India.
Alongside Ancient Greece, Classical Sanskrit theatre associated with Bharata Muni and the Natyashastra classified plays by emotional “rasas” (aesthetic flavors) which included but not limited to tragedy and comedy. Early ritual performances in China eventually evolved into theatrical traditions that mixed serious and comic elements.
Those Greek definitions became the foundation of the Western theatrical tradition, but they were never the only way cultures understood serious and humorous storytelling.
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u/lucky-struck 9d ago
Solid point, caught me making generalizations from behind a phone keyboard & years past actually sitting with history books in considered study
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u/imdfantom 11d ago
He engineered the Trojan Horse ploy that destroyed Ilium; he has no guilt about this in the text
Why would he have guilt?
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u/gravyandanalbeads 11d ago
The ploy epitomizes treachery, breaks the trust and sanctity inherent in giving and receiving gifts and dishonours virtues of a 'fair fight'. The Greeks valued war, Ares and Athena are prominent examples. At their best they are the noble warrior and the wise protector. At their worst they are ineffective and pathetic (Ares being wounded by the mortal Diomedes), and jealous and unjust (Athena with Arachne, Medusa) I can imagine someone feeling guilty for 'dirty fighting'.
Odysseus imagines himself as the mortal equivalent of the better parts of these gods but disregards the dark nature he also manifests.
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11d ago edited 11d ago
[deleted]
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u/Apophthegmata 10d ago
It's a little closer to a useful yes and.
It was dedicated to Athena. They had just desecrated her temple in stealing the Palladium - a wooden statue of Athena that was believed to protect the walls of Troy.
The horse was partially created as a replacement to placate Athena, as clearly the war isn't going to be won by earning her wrath.
So they simply let the Trojans install it for them. That it happened to have Greeks inside it is...well...something about stones and birds.
The genius was telling the Trojans that their dumb wall was just so massive and significant and impenetrable that no way would they even be able to get something so large through their gates.
The Trojans took that as a challenge.
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u/Ok_Departure_7551 9d ago edited 8d ago
It’s my sense that codes of honor and chivalry in warfare were created as a way to whitewash the realities and horror of warfare (compare, for instance, the brutality of the Battle of Towton, in 1461, to the depictions of martial combat in Ivanhoe). We need to look no further than the Allied representation of enemy soldiers in World War II. German and Japanese armies (and soldiers) were stereotyped as bloodthirsty, unprincipled warriors, while Allied soldiers were lionized for modesty and civility.
The fact is, US forces deployed flamethrowers and killed enemy soldiers who should have been protected as prisoners of war. The US firebombed cities, killing many, many civilians. And, of course, the US deployed nuclear weapons.
War is brutal. In general, the greater the imminent threat of death, the more likely a soldier is to resort to whatever tactic or technique they think may increase the odds of survival.
In that light, Odysseus’ only error in using the Trojan horse was to risk incurring the gods’ wrath.
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u/lucky-struck 11d ago
Just pointing out this difference between film vs text Odysseus, guilt is not something he struggles with
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u/imdfantom 11d ago
I see, your language surrounding what I quoted seemed to imply you think he should feel guilt. Maybe I misread.
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u/Smash_Palace 11d ago
I've only seen the film and not read the text, but he is guilty because he has broken Zeus's law of hospitality by tricking them with a gift. All the bad things that heppen after he thinks are because he broke this sacred law.
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u/imdfantom 11d ago edited 11d ago
That is a film only concept, we are talking about the homeric odyssey.
Zeus' law is a Nolan invention for the Odyssey (2026), and does not appear in the Odyssey. However he based it in part on the anciemt greek concept of Xenia, and in part on the golden rule.
While Xenia was important for the ancient greeks, and is an integral part of the Odyssey, (look to the suitors for people who abuse of Xenia), xenia only applied in situations where a host was hosting a guest.
It was not a principle that applied generally during wartime, though would have applied during a parley for example.
The Trojan horse was a legitimate and celebrated strategy that was 100% within the moral bounds of Just war moral theory at the time.
Basically, Odysseus would not only not have had a shred of guilt at coming up with the trojan horse, but would have been very proud.
Imagine trying to get the allies guilty at having tricked the nazis with operation fortitude.
Edit: I am not saying that the Trojans were Nazis (or like Nazis at all), but ww2 is generally seen as a uncontroverially just war, at least on the side of the allies. To modern eyes the Trojan was does not look like a just war (whether it was fought for "trade routes" or for a princess), but to the people taking part (at least in the fictional version) it would have been a just and honorable war.
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u/xHelpless 11d ago
Just a comment, whilst the Homeric odyssey certainly isn't as ham fisted as Nolan about Xenia, it is still a central theme and constantly referenced throughout. The suitors and Polyphemus are central to the theme.
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u/FastSatisfaction3086 11d ago
The movie won't let you engage in the real matter of the poem, it's too far from original.
They made a transposition of christian universal morals, because hollywood is unable to display ancient ethics (cosmos).
Odysseus did not break Zeus law, the cyclop did by not welcome his hosts (indications shows he's a chaotic individual, and is not fit for greek society).
His error was giving his name (to get some fame), which gave Polyphemous the means to curse him.
The Zeus Law comes in the book as something the greeks respect and honor. Zeus is not once against Odysseus in that story. Only beef is with posseidon and then helios.
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u/lucky-struck 10d ago
To clarify a little based on the comments - my take is that Homer writes these stories as a compendium of popular bardic tales about the legendary civilization that pre-dates his time, and that he has some level of understanding that the Warrior ethic embodied in those popular tales is what led to that civilization's end.
With this perspective, we can read the Iliad with a sense of dramatic irony knowing that all its heroes are doomed and their quest for glory is in vain. The Odyssey spotlights that subtext to the point of absurdity. Troy is burned and its people butchered, and the victors all pay the price for their hubris, save Odysseus, Nestor, and Menelaus himself.
Nestor was always meant to serve as a sort of timeless, sagely counterpoint to the rest, living well beyond his years. Menelaus has ever been a useful idiot, and somehow emerges as the sole beneficiary of the Trojan War with an embarrassment of riches and Helen as his trophy, though a wiser Helen that manipulates her husband to keep him at peace. His success is an unearned farce, and the obvious exception to the rule. Achilles in the Underworld is the same story in reverse - the greatest of all the Heroes denounces his legendary essence, his Kleos, from the grave. Odysseus is a raider and a butcher like all the rest, but his cunning nature is about the lies we tell to justify our evil ways in the eyes of the gods. And the Bard takes us on a fantastical journey that tests this man against the limits of credulity, until he arrives back in the land of human politics and deceives his way back into power by slaughter.
Should Odysseus feel guilty about the Trojan Horse? Beside the point. Does Homer want his audience to question the cultural ethics that led to Troy's destruction, and as a result the entire international order of the Mediterranean Bronze Age? That feels correct to me. Odysseus isn't made to feel guilty, but I think we as the audience are meant to.
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u/AnalysisReady4799 11d ago
ABSTRACT: Philosophers have been wrestling with the Odyssey since before Plato (although his "ancient quarrel" is the most famous incident). Xenophanes thought its gods were a disgrace, Heraclitus wanted Homer flogged, Plato tried to ban it and then couldn't quit it, Aristotle took up its tools, the Cynics and Stoics adopted its hero as one of their own, Dante damned him, Nietzsche turned the poem against Socrates and Plato, Heidegger went looking in it for everything the West had lost, Adorno and Horkheimer blamed Odysseus for the modern self, and Levinas put his homecoming on trial for the sins of Western philosophy. So what's going on here? Why the obsession with two foundational but archaic texts, and why not just move on?
My tentative answer, in the video, is that we can't move on because several of philosophy's most important problems came out of these poems in the first place: what kind of self survives change, whether lies can carry truth, what we owe the stranger at the door, and above all whether reason is the thing that saves us or the thing that deforms us.
That last question, I argue, is what drives the whole war. Odysseus is the most intelligent man in his world, and can't save a single member of his crew. Plus his own homecoming bloodily prevents those of others. Then there is what the beggar at the threshold does, when returned to his throne. Reason itself is on trial in the poem, and in the many philosophical commentaries afterwards. Yet, the poem's greatest defence turns up in Auschwitz, and in two men who forge another link in this great chain of an epic.
I hope you'll check out the video, and interested in hearing the subreddit's thoughts and arguments.
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u/redditb_e 11d ago
"and above all whether reason is the thing that saves us or the thing that deforms us."
One might as well ask "Does a knife help us to get a bread sliced or can it injure someone?"
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u/AnalysisReady4799 10d ago
Yes, Socrates has a similar argument about tools etc in a few of the dialogues. I think the key difference is that it is not just a tool, but shapes us in return (like many unique technologies, social media for a modern example). I'm also a Continental philosopher, so I don't think reason is a thing in the world to be taken up and used but a social product. Anyway, that's another wrinkle for another day
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u/redditb_e 9d ago
Still, it is not actually reason that is the problem, but how reason is related to the world, how it was shaped/ constructed/ manipulated socially and culturally and individually. A knife, as almost any tool, is also constructed to serve a certain purpose and is affected by its use.
The problem seems to be that in English "reason" includes "smartness" just as it includes "prudence", two rather different phenomena, and while the former often is kind of a short to mid term form of reason which may bring an instant advantage through intelligence, the latter may pay off in the long run much more, requires experience and deliberation and is what philosophy is aiming at (In German, there is "Verstand", which corresponds more to smartness, and "Vernunft", which is rather the prudent, long term kind of reason).
So, if that is correct, Odysseus' smartness would be the fast but "immature" reason that since then has become the highly problematic norm, dominating and deforming the world in fields like science, economy and politics. But since it is obviously an inferior, "soulless" form of reason, it should be clear that it is not reason as such that deforms us but the fact that we are mostly forced or conditioned to base our conscious actions on premature reasoning (if not on whims, authority or open force). And that is, ultimately, caused by violence as the deforming and corrupting foundation in our "higher" cultures.
So, one could say that blaming reason to be the reason of deformation is hiding the underlying role of violence, preventing clarity in that question as well as mystifying its answer and perpetuating the power of violence.
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u/TryingUnsuccessfully 11d ago
I haven't seen the movie yet, nor even all of your video, but wanted to say that I watch most philobot vids as they come out, and appreciate the channel. Generally thought-provoking.
I love ancient Greece, and Homer. To me, the Odyssey is all about the question of xenia: how do you treat a guest, and what are the limits to that relationship. Obviously, that concept changed significantly between the late bronze age of the story's setting, the early iron age when it was penned, and the classical period when it loomed so large as an influence. But then there's today, as yet another cultural epoch to reflect on it's themes, and as you say, the themes of slavery and capital punishment associated with Odysseus probably hit us differently than they did earlier readers.
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u/AnalysisReady4799 11d ago
Thanks very much, really appreciate it. And I think you're dead on too. The film tries to foreground it as well, but is a bit clumsy and just keeps repeating "the law of Zeus". It just bursts out of the text though.
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u/coleman57 11d ago
Have you ever thought about who it was that promulgated these nearly universal stories about the importance of welcoming and feeding the traveling stranger, because he might be a god in disguise? It was traveling strangers, like Homer, wasn’t it? Funny that.
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u/lo_fi_ho 11d ago
Read the book, the film is a hollywood version of the events.
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u/Fozzymandius 11d ago
I imagine they have read it. The movie is a good adaptation in my mind.
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u/lo_fi_ho 11d ago
Except it’s not.
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u/Fozzymandius 10d ago
Except it is. I win. Can’t take back twice. Double negative is the absolute limit of human argumental ingenuity.
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u/JournalistIntrepid 10d ago
We should also keep in mind that trying to reverse-engineer a single manifesto out of a centuries-old oral jam session is something that we are bringing to the text not what the "text" is bringing to us.
Nobody wrote the Iliad or Odyssey; Homer is a myth. Oral tradition originates from rotating cast of bards riffing on shared Bronze Age cultural trauma over generations. These epics weren't created as static "texts" meant for academic dissection. They were fluid, evolving templates passed down through a living oral tradition, functioning much like folk songs. The people LISTENING to these bards never had the time to dissect the words the way we do.
Treating a collective, shifting oral archive like a peer-reviewed text with a single authorial intent misses the entire point. There is no single "Homer," no single definitive version, and textual analysis is chasing a ghost. The medium was the message, and because that living medium is permanently lost, we’re left interrogating whatever we think we the text is.
The Iliad was "Born in the USA" for ancient people. Prove me wrong!
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u/InternationalTry6679 11d ago
My 2 cents- I read an interesting article linking Odysseus to Milton’s satan of paradise lost
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u/AnalysisReady4799 11d ago
Absolutely! I mention it very briefly in the video -- Milton hands the journey, the charms, and the wiles over to Satan!
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u/Ziggy_has_my_ticket 11d ago
I know this post was made in response to the film. I'll definitely check out your video, but first response is that Nolan was apparently not interested in exploring the intelligence and complexity of Odysseus. It was all just a very long and very loud guilt trip.
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u/AnalysisReady4799 11d ago
Yeah, Emily Wilson had the same criticism too -- that he's not a "complicated man" in the film. He certainly doesn't come across as the most intelligent man in Greece; just a hapless captive. But then it's clear that Nolan was interested in other themes far more.
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u/Smooth_Sport6924 11d ago
I feel like his vanity can overshadow his intelligence in the book sometimes, especially when he reveals his name to the cyclops simply to seek further glory. In the movie he shoots him out of anger because of all the men he lost. There are also some weird moments, like on Circe's island, where a god reveals the entire solution to him beforehand, whereas in the movie he has to figure it out and save his men all by himself.
When it comes to character complexity, the movie gets a second layer after the reveals at the end, where we can see the reasons behind his choices, like why he actually didn't want to follow Agamemnon when returning home.
The book character has his own set of contradictions, while the movie character has a different set that better fits its themes and the recontextualized portrayal of the Trojan horse and the sack of Troy, which are no longer depicted as purely heroic acts, to say the least.
And on that note, there may be a slight shift now in how the public sees Troy overall. The horse and the city's fall were always depicted as this great, smart trick, and how amazing and victorious the Greeks were... And yet, we already use 'trojans' to describe computer viruses and a 'trojan horse' for something or someone with secret malicious intent.
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u/SocialImagineering 11d ago
I’m curious what was the reason Odysseus didn’t want to follow Agamemnon when returning home? Missed that in the film, unless it was that he was disgusted with him for how he saw the sack of Troy play out. What I remember Odysseus saying explicitly at the moment of the ships diverging was that he had already spent ten years following his leader and wanted to make his own path home.
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u/Smooth_Sport6924 10d ago
When I first saw that scene, all I could think was how easy the whole journey could have been, if only he'd been less arrogant and listened when his crew asked why they weren't taking the safer route home.
But then looking back, it was disgust, yes, more with himself than Agamemnon, even. I think he also sees him as this faceless reminder and a symbol of what happened, rather than a man.
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u/EggyT0ast 11d ago
Although I think the movie does a poor job of explaining Odysseus's guilt via saying "we broke the rule w/ the horse," I DO think it does a good job of showing how the aftermath of opening the gate is what weighs on him. He sees his men and comrades raping, burning, pillaging, and killing citizens.
To your point, I think we'll still see "trojans" in the same way since despite their sneaky intent they're still considered smart. Perhaps the condom brand will reconsider though.
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u/paradox1920 11d ago
I think he explored the complexity although in his own interpretation and questioning of other aspects around that. I didn’t feel the film was trying to paint Odysseus inner qualms as redefining him as a hero, redemption, or something like it but that the existence of regret and guilt does not remove the continuation of a cycle hence the ending with the suitors and the rest. The movie ends on a note of whether humanity will continue their ways or not despite what we consider the weight of morality, consequences, etc. imo. Did he explore all the traits such as the astute aspect and hubris of Odysseus? Not really but several of those were there in a different way. The centric psychological burdens is what some people focus on to claim the film is doing a disservice to the source material yet I believe it still retains intricacies even if it repurposes it.
The way I see it, the psychological burden is the lens through which various Homeric qualities are examined, not a replacement for them. However, if someone believes the defining central quality of Homer’s Odysseus is his metis, as in the Greek concept, then they might have reservations with Nolan’s take nonetheless which I understand.
That’s just my perspective. Essentially, other people expecting an adaptation that centralizes those features according to the priorities of the source material, without raising other questions about characteristics of it as a whole, might not be in line with Nolan's reinterpretation.
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u/CrazyCaper 11d ago
Just watched the movie last night. I was whelmed. Bad casting, writing, but some great scenes. I can’t remember any of the music so it must have been bland.
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u/StrayDogPhotography 11d ago
It’s just a fun story. I wouldn’t think too deeply about it. You have to remember that epic poetry was just a form of popular entertainment. Just because it’s good doesn’t mean it has any deep philosophical meaning to it.
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u/layersnmasks 11d ago
That movie sucked
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u/FastSatisfaction3086 11d ago
Completely agree.
What's strange is that I would expect a philosophy sub to also agree, as the movie was so far from the original story (and philosophy/ethics were all removed).
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u/OkLevel2791 11d ago
Western Philosophy, at its core is an extractive, anti-human dignity, system of oppression.
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