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Suffering, Pity and Friendship: an Aristotelian Reading of Book 24 of Homer’S Iliad Marjolein Oele University of San Francisco, [email protected]

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Suffering, Pity and Friendship: an Aristotelian Reading of Book 24 of Homer’S Iliad Marjolein Oele University of San Francisco, Moele@Usfca.Edu View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by University of San Francisco The University of San Francisco USF Scholarship: a digital repository @ Gleeson Library | Geschke Center Philosophy College of Arts and Sciences 11-2010 Suffering, Pity and Friendship: An Aristotelian Reading of Book 24 of Homer’s Iliad Marjolein Oele University of San Francisco, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: http://repository.usfca.edu/phil Part of the Classics Commons, and the Philosophy Commons Recommended Citation Oele, Marjolein, "Suffering, Pity and Friendship: An Aristotelian Reading of Book 24 of Homer’s Iliad" (2010). Philosophy. Paper 17. http://repository.usfca.edu/phil/17 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the College of Arts and Sciences at USF Scholarship: a digital repository @ Gleeson Library | Geschke Center. It has been accepted for inclusion in Philosophy by an authorized administrator of USF Scholarship: a digital repository @ Gleeson Library | Geschke Center. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Suffering, Pity and Friendship: An Aristotelian Reading of Book 24 of Homer’s Iliad Marjolein Oele University of San Francisco [email protected] Book 24 of Homer’s Iliad presents us with one of the most beautiful and chilling scenes of the epic: the scene where Achilles and Priam directly face one another at the point when the suffering (pathos) of each seems to have reached its pinnacle. Achilles’ suffering is centered on the loss of his best friend Patroclus, while the suffering of Priam – although long in the making due to the attack on his city and his family – has reached a new level of despair with the loss of his dearest son Hector. At first sight, the suffering of each man seems very different in its nature and expression. Achilles grieves over his friend and lifetime companion, and expresses this grief in both deep sadness and rage. In Homer’s words: … But sleep That masters all had no hold on Achilles. Tears wet his face as he remembered his friend. He tossed and turned, yearning for Patroclus, For his manhood and his noble heart, And all they had done together, and the woes suffered together (tolypeuse syn autoi kai pathen algea), The battles fought, the hard times at sea. 52 Electronic Antiquity 14.1 Thinking on all this, he would weep softly, Lying now on his side, now on his back, And now face down. Then he would rise To his feet and wander in a daze along the shore. Dawn never escaped him. As soon as she appeared Over the sea and the dunes, he would hitch Horses to his chariot and drag Hector behind. (Homer, Iliad, 24:3-15) 1 By contrast, Priam’s suffering is that of a father grieving over the death of his most beloved son. After Priam’s son Hector has been killed, Homer describes Priam as petrified – with signs that indicate previous writhing: …..The old man, Wrapped in his mantle, sat like graven stone. His head and neck were covered with dung He had rolled in and scraped up with his hands. (Homer, Iliad, 24:161-165). Not only are the nature and expression of their suffering different, these men themselves seem utterly incomparable: Achilles is a young, powerful fighter, and the son of a goddess; Priam is an old, noble yet frail, king of a besieged city, and father to many children. Achilles is fighting on the side of the Achaeans; Priam is king on the side of the Trojans. Yet, despite the many differences visible between Priam and Achilles, Book 24 of the Iliad brings them together in a remarkable fashion. In one of the most intimate moments of the Iliad, we find Priam and Achilles crying together – and thereby seemingly identifying with each other, thus overcoming their multiple differences. This paper seeks to analyze in what way Priam and Achilles come to identify with each other, and whether Priam and Achilles ultimately suffer together, or whether their sufferings remain ultimately their own. To answer this question, I will first briefly explore Aristotle’s account of (tragic) suffering and discuss his analysis of King Priam’s suffering in the Nicomachean Ethics. Subsequently, I will examine the topic of suffering 1 Lombardo’s translation (1997) slightly modified. This translation will be used consistently throughout this paper. Oele Suffering, Pity and Friendship 53 and co-suffering through the lens of Aristotle’s account of pity in his Rhetoric, since precisely that account offers us interesting insights on the difference between pity and suffering together. Part One: Aristotle on Happiness, Virtue & King Priam’s Suffering In Book Delta of his Metaphysics, Aristotle provides a list of the different meanings of the term pathos. Among its meanings is the sense of pathos as a painful and destructive experience. In Aristotle’s own words: misfortunes and pains of considerable magnitude (ta megethê tôn sumphorôn kai luperôn) are called pathê (Metaphysics V.21, 1022b19-20).2 Thus, pathos, for Aristotle, can mean that kind of extreme suffering that we encounter in Homer’s Iliad. In fact, in the Poetics, Aristotle explicitly refers to the Iliad as a work that is rich in suffering or that is, in his words, “pathêtikē” (Poetics 24, 1459b14). Yet, we may ask: how does Aristotle conceptualize that experience about which it is so hard to speak? An answer may be found in the following passage of the Nicomachean Ethics where Aristotle first explicitly mentions King Priam and his suffering. He writes: Happiness (eudaimonia), as we have said, requires completeness in virtue as well as a complete lifetime. Many changes (metabolai) and all kinds of contingencies (tychai) befall (ginontai) a person in the course of his life, and it is possible that the most prosperous (malist’ euthenounta) person will encounter great misfortunes (megalais symphorais) in his old age, as the Trojan legends tell about Priam. When a person has met a fate such as his and has come to a wretched end, no one calls him happy (eudaimonidzei) (EN I.9, 1100a4-9).3 2 The translation used here is Apostle’s (Apostle, Aristotle’s Metaphysics, 1979). 3 Ostwald’s translation, 1962, with some small modifications. 54 Electronic Antiquity 14.1 In this passage, Aristotle uses the suffering that Priam endures as an example of how a great misfortune can radically affect and alter (metabolein) the life of someone who seemed in every way of his life fully flourishing and happy. In fact, in the Iliad we find Priam praised for all those aspects of his life – his wisdom,4 tremendous political power, 5 prosperity and his many children6 – which are all important conditions for Aristotle’s conception of eudaimonia (EN I.8, 1099a31-1099b8). Most importantly, Aristotle must have considered Priam as an example of a virtuous person; otherwise he would not have described him within the context of a discussion on virtue and flourishing. For, in Aristotle’s language, only “activities in conformity with virtue constitute happiness” (EN I.10 1100b10). Yet, although a virtuous and flourishing person “will not be dislodged easily (kinêthêsetai raidiôs) from his happiness by any misfortune that comes along” (EN I.11, 1101a9-11) as Aristotle writes, there are exceptions. The case of Priam is so extreme that Aristotle admits that due to his misfortune, Priam can no longer be called a flourishing person. This means that although Aristotle maintains that the virtuous and flourishing person leads a stable life and is not easily moved and dislodged by misfortunes, there are limits to one’s endurance. The case of Priam shows that long-time wisdom, political power, prosperity and, most critically, virtue, can ultimately not protect us against extreme adversities.7 Aristotle’s recognition of our vulnerability is significant for various reasons. In the first place it shows that Aristotle is very much aware of the fact that we, human beings, are in fact to be characterized by a fundamental lack8: our lives as they are lived are only complete when they are filled by others – in particular, those whom we consider our friends. As Books 8 and 9 of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics make clear, a life of eudaimonia includes a life shared with friends – with friends as our staunchest critics, as mirrors to ourselves, and, poignantly put, as “second selves” whom we see as extensions of ourselves (EN IX.9, 1169b7, 1170b7). This dependence upon the other also implies that the loss of friends – in the case of King Priam, his dearest son – constitutes a loss of our own self and thus a threat to our flourishing. Secondly, 4 Cf. Hecuba’s address to Priam, Homer, Iliad, 24: 202. 5 Achilles, in his speech to Priam, describes his political power as “expanding beyond the Hellespont” (Homer, Iliad, 24: 543-545). 6 Cf. Homer, Iliad 24:546. 7 Cf. Kosman, 1992, p. 66. 8 Cf. Ricoeur, 1992, p. 182. Oele Suffering, Pity and Friendship 55 Aristotle’s recognition of our vulnerability implies the recognition of the limits of his own conception of eudaimonia. In the face of tragic pathos, Aristotle maintains that the virtuous and flourishing person is resilient and can endure much without being moved away from his or her state of happiness. Nonetheless, the fact that extreme and recurrent adversity may lead to our destruction despite our worthiness to be happy signifies that Aristotle recognizes the limits of his theory regarding the power of virtue and admits the questionable nature of the relationship between virtue and happiness.9 In other words, Aristotle recognizes suffering as that which threatens to destroy his conceptualization of the goal and purpose of human life.
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