Homer and Hesiod

Homer and Hesiod, Myth and Philosophy is a study of the nature and function of the poetry of Homer and Hesiod when their work is considered in historical context as the initial significant developments of poetry as a distinctive voice for truth beyond religion and myth. To understand their innovations properly, this work begins with the presentation of an account of the nature of religion and myth and in particular of the disclosure of truth achieved in myth. Then it takes up the Homeric and Hesiodic innovations which transform the bardic poetry that was heritage from at least Mycenaean times and that make the inspired poet an educative voice for truth. After giving an account of the four major poems in which this transformation is embodied: Illiad and Odyssey, Theogony and Works and Days, the work concludes with a discussion of how these creations shaped the matrix within which philosophy arose. In this way it points to why the distinctive realization of philosophy in Greece (as contrasted with that in China and India) involved what the Platonic Socrates can speak of as "an ancient quarrel between poetry and philosophy."

Richard Gotshalk is the author of Beginnings of Philosophy in India (University Press of America 1998), Beginnings of Philosophy in China (UPA 1999) and Divination, Order and the Zhoi (UPA 1999). He was Professor of Philosophy at Pennsylvania State University until his initial retirement in 1977, then taught part-time at the University of Montana until his second retirement in 1995.