THE DELIBERATELY ENIGMATIC THINKER
And yet, what is missing in Homer is an explicit account of the philosophic life, an explicit presentation of the philosopher as a model of human excellence, a model to be admired and imitated, as one sees in Plato.
Why? In order to address this question it is important to note that Homer not only hides himself as a thinker, he also hides himself as a poet. That is to say, Homer never explicitly presents himself in either of his poems as the composer of the poems, as the “poet” or, literally in Greek, the “maker” of the Iliad and the Odyssey.τ9τ Indeed, the Greek word “poet” in the sense of the composer of stories never appears in either poem. The first appearance of the word in this sense in extant ancient Greek literature is in Herodotus, who applies the term to Homer and Hesiod when he exposes them as the composers or makers, in large part, of the gods that ostensibly inspired them:For I opine that Homer and Hesiod were in their time of life four hundred years older than me and not more. These are the ones who composed [οi ποιησαντες] the genealogy of the gods for the Greeks and gave the gods their names and specified their arts and honors and indicated their forms. But the poets [ποιηταi] who are said to have been before these men, in my opinion at least, were later. (2.53.2)
In the Iliad and the Odyssey, Homer only identifies himself as a “singer [aotbos],” and even that he does only implicitly. The only time in either poem that he uses the word for singing in relation to himself is in the first line of the Iliad when he urges the goddess - the Muse - to sing [αsιδs] of the wrath of Achilles: “Of the wrath, sing, goddess, of the son of Peleus Achilles [Μpνιν αsιδs, θsa, Πηληιaδsω ,Aχιλpοs]." In the first line of the Odyssey, Homer asks the Muse, more generally, to “tell [evvsns]” of Odysseus: “Of the man tell me, Muse, the one of many ways [νδρα μοι εννsπs, Μοuσα, πολuτροπον]." Through Homer’s one reference to singing in the first line of the Iliad, he implies that his singing in both poems is the singing of a medium: The divine Muse sings through him of the wrath of Achilles and of the man Odysseus.[283] [284] As he humbly declares to the putatively omniscient Muses in Book II of the Iliad: Tell me now, Muses, Who have homes in Olympus - for You are Goddesses, are present, and know all things, but we hear only of their glory and we do not know at all. On the very surface of both poems, then, Homer comes to sight as a mere mouthpiece of the gods, one who resembles such divine spokesmen in his poems as the prophets Calchas, Ennomos, Helenus, Halitherses, Theoclymenos, and Leodes, but one who is more passive than they are insofar as he does not interpret the signs the gods send through birds or other animals but simply lets the gods speak through him.[285] Homer, then, does not merely hide himself as a philosopher but also as a poet. Both his inquisitive mind and his artistic creativity are entirely invisible to begin with, hidden behind the mask of the singer who is understood as the merely passive instrument of the gods. In order to understand why Homer hides himself so completely in both poems, let us consider his presentation of the figure of the singer in the Odyssey. For while Homer presents himself more clearly as an independent character in the Iliad than in the Odyssey - inasmuch as he offers more judgments, accounts of death, and similes - and also as a singer - he addresses the Muses six times in the Iliad but only once in the Odyssey[286] - Homer never presents an individual character whom he explicitly identifies as a singer in the Iliad.[287] [288] [289] In the Odyssey, however, he presents two such characters, Phemius and Demodocus. Indeed, singing is a much more visible theme in the Odyssey than in the Iliad: The word for singer (αοιδos) appears 37 times in the Odyssey but only twice in the Iliad,τ96 and other words related to singing (⅛ιδω, aοιδη, aοιδιaω, aοιδιμοs) appear 44 times in the Odyssey but only 13 times in the Iliad.τ97 In the Odyssey, singers are repeatedly described as being close to the gods and inspired by the gods, as Homer presents himself in the openings of both poems.[290] Phemius and Demodocus in particular are spoken of as “divine” 12 times in the poem: Homer calls Phemius “divine” 4 times (1.336,17.359, 23.143, 24.439) and Demodocus “divine” 4 times (8.47, 8.73, 8.87, 13.27); Alcinous calls Demodocus “divine” twice and Odysseus and Telemachus call Phemius “divine” once each (8.43, 8.539, 23.133, 16.252 17.385).[291] Homer presents Demodocus in particular as a singer who appears to be entirely a mouthpiece of the gods: “he whom the Muse loved exceedingly, and she gave him both good and evil: of his eyes she deprived him, but she gave him pleasant song” (8.62-64). Yet Homer also presents both Phemius and Demodocus as challenging the pious belief in gods who are loving of humans and all-knowing through their songs, just as Homer himself, as we have seen, challenges that belief through both the Iliad and the Odyssey. Muses about the doings of the Achaians at Troy. Yet Odysseus himself indicates that Demodocus might have learned about those doings, which did after all take place ten years before, “from another” human being rather than from a god (8.479-481, 8.487-491). Furthermore, and most importantly, when the desperate Phemius begs the raging Odysseus to spare his life, the ostensibly divinely inspired singer blurts out that he is “self-taught [àèòîá³Üàêòî;].” Through this remarkable admission, Phemius reveals that he has acquired his knowledge of gods and humans and, more broadly, his wisdom, through the efforts of his own “mind [φpEσiνP, rather than through the direct inspiration of the gods.[297] Through this admission, Phemius indicates as well that he conveys that wisdom through songs that he himself has composed. In sum, Phemius drops the mask of the divinely inspired singer here and shows himself to be a self-taught, humanly wise poet. Homer indicates here, through Phemius and also through Demodocus, that these singers are wise humans who seek to share their wisdom with others, but who pretend that they are merely the mouthpieces of the gods, just as he himself does. But why would singers pretend to be mouthpieces of the gods? In the first place, as the Odyssey indicates, inasmuch as the singers devote themselves to the acquisition of wisdom rather than power, they are inevitably at the mercy of the powerful men who surround them, such as the overbearing suitors, or the raging Odysseus, or even the “unkind” and bullying Phaiacians.[298] Therefore, in order to protect themselves from such mighty men, they claim to be the mere instruments of the gods, to be loved by the gods, and to be protected by the gods.[299] Furthermore, insofar as the singers seek to teach human beings and therefore must inevitably claim a certain superiority in wisdom to the authorities that surround them, they risk provoking the envy of those authorities unless they can protect themselves by claiming that they are nothing but empty vessels who are filled by teachings of the gods.[300] Finally, precisely insofar as the content of their teaching about the gods in particular may shock pious humans as a whole, the singers risk provoking popular hostility unless they can shield themselves by claiming to be loved and protected by the gods. Homer, then, hides the philosophic life in order to protect it from hostility, especially religious hostility, as Plato’s Protagoras also seems to suggest. As we have noted,[301] Protagoras observes that Homer was the first of a long line of cautious wise men or “sophists” who sought “to make a disguise for themselves and to cover themselves with it, some in poetry, as in the case of Homer,” in order to avoid popular hostility (Protagoras 316d3-9). Subsequent philosophers who were less demure and more open than Homer himself, such as Protagoras himself,[302] as well as Anaxagoras,[303] Diagoras,[304] Socrates,[305] and Aristotle[306] were all persecuted on the charge especially of impiety.[307] To be sure, Homer becomes, over the course of the Iliad, quite emphatic in his presentation of the gods as unwise, indifferent, unprovidential beings and hence in his religious skepticism. For example, while Homer stresses in Book I the divine wisdom of the prophet Calchas, “the best by far of those who interpret birds, who knew the things that are, that will be, and that were before,” in Book XVIII, Homer emphatically underscores the human wisdom of Poulydamas, “who alone saw before and behind him” (1.68-72, 18.250). Nonetheless, Homer declines to proclaim his own human wisdom loudly and in his own name, but retains the mask of the enigmatic singer. Another reason that Homer may hide himself and his way of life is didactic. Precisely insofar as the life he seeks to introduce the more thoughtful members of his audience to is a life of thinking for oneself and acquiring wisdom for oneself and on one’s own - precisely insofar as one must ultimately teach oneself and hence, like Phemius, be “self-taught [αuτοδιδακτοs]” (22.347) - Homer may think it truest to the spirit of that way of life to encourage the members of his audience to discover that way of life for themselves and on their own. For by presenting the philosophic life as something to be imitated directly, one might risk provoking, in a self-contradictory manner, a dogmatic and thoughtless imitation of an independent-minded and thoughtful way of life. Homer’s education of his audience promotes a broadly enlightened skepticism toward the gods, a broadly humanistic focus on human virtue as exhibited by dutiful political leaders, and a broadly tragic understanding of the uncertain relation between virtue and happiness. By focusing his presentation on the gods and on the heroes, all of whom are actively political, he provides his audience with food for thought, with material to ponder and grapple with the religious and moral questions that naturally emerge out of the political life. In this way, Homer points the more thoughtful members of his audience beyond the tragic outlook of his great but clearly flawed heroes and down the path of the philosophic life without explicitly presenting that life. Rather than present the philosophic life as one that is directly imitable, he provides the audience with the problems and the questions that might lead it to discover that life for themselves. For just as thinking is an activity that one can only engage in for oneself, so the life genuinely devoted to thinking must be discovered and lived for oneself. The path to the life of the mind, Homer suggests, lies through the life of political and military virtue. One must give oneself to the lives of Odysseus and especially of Achilles, ponder their greatness, and their limits, in order to arrive, for oneself, at the life of Homer. One must experience directly or indirectly the virtuous and pious life of politics and war, where men distinguish themselves in speeches and deeds, and wrestle with the problems that arise out of such a life in order to ascend, on one’s own, to the life of the mind. Accordingly, like the tragic poets and also like Thucydides - his greatest followers - Homer makes his presence felt but does not offer himself directly for imitation. Even though Homer seeks broadly to enlighten the Greeks with respect to the gods and human excellence and in this sense to usher in an age of enlightenment, he hides the philosophic life - the life that is the culmination of his education of the Greeks - for philosophic reasons. And yet it is precisely on this point that Plato criticizes Homer most sharply. In order to understand why, let us turn to consider Plato’s critique as a whole.