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Title: Greeks and the Irrational by Eric R. Dodds ISBN: 0-520-00327-6 Publisher: University of California Press Pub. Date: July, 1983 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.64 (11 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: Stimulating, despite a questionable agenda
Comment: It is not uncommon for major figures of Ancient Greek thought to be deemed 'rationalists', a word often tainted by modern science in its implications. E.R. Dodds' book is fairly difficult to gauge on this. On one hand, it reconsiders the 'rationalist overview' by tracing back various guises of irrationalism that permeated Greek culture - a belief in daimons, the conception of a useful mania, theurgy, astrology, mystery cults. Writing about these elements, Dodds surveys a wide variety of authors and themes and provides a lively compendium. On the other hand, his methodology has shortcomings. The reader soon realizes that the ambivalence of Greek thought between the power of reason and its limitations is not a virtue according to Dodds. This is a legitimate point of view, but it has important consequences on the book's agenda. It is unabashedly teleological: irruptions of irrationalism are usually seen as 'symptoms', as setbacks from Dodds' ideal of positivistic rationalism. This is emphasized by his characterization of 5th century BC as Greece's Aufklarung. The chapter on theurgy is equally representative: while it is well-researched and in-depth, it is also filled with simplifications (the equation 'theurgy = magic', frequent in 1950s and 1960s scolarship, is stated repeatedly) and shows little sympathy for either theurgy or its theorists; this section would color many subsequent studies on the spirituality of late Neoplatonism, until scholars such as H.-D. Saffrey (a pupil of Dodds) favored an approach which was more open-minded and receptive. In spite of this, Dodds' book remains extremely stimulating and should be read by all those who are fascinated by the blurred line between reason and what is out of its reach; but it should not be considered as the last word on its objects of study.
Rating: 5
Summary: Dodds - the ideal communicator
Comment: This is a work that can't fail to grip. It's not a work just for the historian or the classicists. It's a book for anyone with an interest in the mind and the civilisation of Europe and America. Our notion of the ancient Greeks as an intensely rational people doesn't begin to do them justice. They too had their deeper, psychic side, on the basis of which their philosophy developed, and which even the modern culture continues to demonstrate. The Greek view of madness (mania),and possession, not necessarily as a curse, is explored from original sources. 'Madness' could be viewed as even a blessing in this ancient culture. So too the 'Sacred Disease' of Hippokrates (i.e. epilepsy). We find his treatment of what may be the first description of an out-of-body experience - in Pindar (c.470 B.C.E.) and the poetic double vision and causation, the Muses' gift. Not to be missed by anyone with an interest in the human mind.
Rating: 5
Summary: Those Crazy Greeks
Comment: Dodds introduces his material with an anecdote of a young man he met in the British Museum who confessed his inability to get excited about the Elgin Marbles, because, after all, the Greeks were so "terribly rational." Dodds then poses the question, "[w]ere the Greeks in fact quite so blind to the importance of nonrational factors in man's experience and behaviour as is commonly assumed both by their apologists and by their critics?" In answering his own question (the answer is, of course, "no"), Dodds writes an interesting book.
Dodds's chapters (originally lectures) are roughly chronological and thematic, starting (as one must) with Homer's use of "ate" and working down through the increasing rationality of classical Greece to the Hellenistic Return to Irrationality. En route, he deals with perceived shamanistic influences, the notion of divine inspiration, the question of whether man has a soul, etc.
_The Greeks and the Irrational_ is great in itself and may have value, as Dodds indicates in his closing chapter, to moderns seeking to understand their own relationship with Irrationality. It is also enlightening background reading for any student of the classics generally, in particular providing useful commentary on Homer, Plato (lots on Plato) and the tragedians. Because each chapter was originally a lecture, Dodds' style is eloquent and also readable. Each chapter is buttressed with an impressive clump of endnotes (about a quarter of the book must be notes) for further research.
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Title: The World of Odysseus (New York Review Books Classics Series) by M. I. Finley, Bernard Knox ISBN: 1590170172 Publisher: New York Review of Books Pub. Date: 10 August, 2002 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
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Title: Homeric Moments: Clues to Delight in Reading the Odyssey and the Iliad by Eva T. H. Brann ISBN: 0967967570 Publisher: Paul Dry Books Inc Pub. Date: October, 2002 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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Title: Homer on Life and Death by Jasper Griffin ISBN: 0198140266 Publisher: Clarendon Pr Pub. Date: December, 1983 List Price(USD): $27.50 |
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Title: Shame and Necessity (Sather Classical Lectures, Vol 57) by Bernard Williams ISBN: 0520088301 Publisher: University of California Press Pub. Date: October, 1994 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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Title: The Greeks and Their Gods by W. K. C. Guthrie ISBN: 0807057932 Publisher: Beacon Press Pub. Date: June, 1985 List Price(USD): $22.50 |
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