The Soul of the Greeks

by Davis, Michael

• ISBN13: 9780226137964
• ISBN10: 0226137961
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2011-04-15
• Publisher: Univ of Chicago Pr

Summary

The understanding of the soul in the West has been profoundly shaped by Christianity, and its influence can be seen in certain assumptions often made about the soul: that, for example, if it does exist, it is separable from the body, free, immortal, and potentially pure. The ancient Greeks, however, conceived of the soul quite differently. In this ambitious new work, Michael Davis analyzes works by Homer, Herodotus, Euripides, Plato, and Aristotle to reveal how the ancient Greeks portrayed and understood what he calls "the fully human soul." Beginning with Homer'sIliad, Davis lays out the tension within the soul of Achilles between immortality and life. He then turns to Aristotle'sDe AnimaandNicomachean Ethicsto explore the consequences of the problem of Achilles across the whole range of the soul's activity. Moving to Herodotus and Euripides, Davis considers the former's portrayal of the two extremes of cultureone rooted in stability and tradition, the other in freedom and motionand explores how they mark the limits of character formation. Davis then shows howHelenandIphigeneia among the Tauriansserve to provide dramatic examples of Herodotus's extreme cultures and their consequences for the soul. The book concludes with Plato's presentation of the soul of Socrates as self-aware and nontragic, even if it is necessarily alienated and divided against itself. The Soul of the Greeksthus begins with the imperfect soul as it is manifested in Achilles' heroic, but tragic, longing and concludes with its nontragic and fuller philosophic expression in the soul of Socrates. But, far from being a historical survey, it is instead a brilliant meditation on what lies at the heart of being human.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	p. ix
Introduction The Soul of Achilles	p. 1
Aristotle	p. 19
The Doubleness of Soul	p. 21
Out of Itself for the Sake of Itself	p. 28
Nutritive Soul	p. 28
Sensing Soul: Vision	p. 31
Thinking Soul	p. 34
Sensation and Imagination	p. 34
Passive and Active Mind	p. 39
Imagination and Thought	p. 43
The Soul as Self and Self-Aware	p. 55
ôThe Father of the Logosö	p. 55
ôFor the friend is another selfö	p. 72
Herodotus: The Rest and Motion of Soul	p. 75
Rest in Motion: Herodotus's Egypt	p. 77
Motion at Rest: Herodotus's Scythians	p. 90
Euripides: Soul as Same and Other	p. 103
The Fake That Launched a Thousand Ships: The Duplicity of Identity in the Helen	p. 105
Euripides among the Athenians: The Double Vision of Soul in Iphigeneia among the Taurians	p. 123
Plato	p. 139
The Soul of the Law: Gyges in Herodotus and in Plato	p. 141
The Subject of Justice: On Plato's Cleitophon	p. 159
The Object of Tyranny: Plato's Hipparchus	p. 174
Plato's Phaedrus: Eros and the Structure of Soul	p. 192
The Grammar of Soul: The Middle Voice in Plato's Euthyphro	p. 205
Conclusion The Soul of Socrates	p. 223
Index	p. 229
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.