Simone Weil’s essay “The Iliad: or Poem of Force” places importance on human interaction, the grounding, empathic, human relations which are rare, fleeting, and necessary. She claims Force to be a governing factor in all human interaction, and the ‘thingness’, which force prescribes to humans, as a dangerous, uncontrollable factor of human existence. In order to overcome force, one must direct all their attention towards recognizing others suffering. In her other essay, “Attention and Will,” Weil discusses religious attention as the most important. She claims that one must practice a passive attention to God in order to reach a divinity beyond reality itself which holds truth. While one essay attributes importance to grounded human interaction, the other reaches far beyond earth, to the divine. Weil …show more content…
Both are all encompassing, intense practices which cannot conjoin for the fact that each requires complete attention to achieve. When practiced together it is nearly impossible to sustain, the results can be seen in Weil’s own life. Unfortunately one cannot live within the sky and down on earth simultaneously. Attention to Weil is to “by dint of patience, effort and method…come to understand with our whole self the truths which are evident” (Weil 231). Attention is a sort of letting go, or loosening. She says that, “inner supplication is the only reasonable way” to achieve this attention, “for it avoids stiffening muscles” (231). The passivity which Weil attributes to attention is a passivity which necessitates effort. She claims that, “it is only effort without desire… which infallibly contains a reward” (232). This passivity is what creates a conflict within her philosophy. She calls for a religious meditation which necessitates an intense attention towards God while simultaneously necessitating attention towards human interaction. She makes it clear that attention focused on objects such as animals and
ABSTRACT: Levinas depicts a pluralism of subjectivity older than consciousness and self-consciousness. He repudiates Heidegger's notion of solitude in order to explore the implications of the Husserlian pure I outside the subject. A hidden Good constitutes the Other in the self: a diremption not at the expense of the unity of the self. Levinas stands with Nietzsche on the side of life which requires and is capable of no justification whatsoever. But for Levinas the totality is ruptured by the thought that there is a unity of self undiminished by its immemorial responsibility for the Other, a unity of self beyond totality. This self containing the Other is the transcendence of the Ego otherwise immanent in Husserl's pure intentionality. Just here Levinas' thought is most perfectly distinguished from Sartre's notion of the transcendence of the Ego as complete exclusion from the immanence of intentionality. The pure I is otherwise than the Hegelian absolute Elastizität: incarnate and inspirited, the "self tight in its own skin." The transubstantiation of Ego to Other has not yet occurred to thought in Levinas, but what does occur here is the altersubstantiation of the I. The Other in the Same is an alteration of essence. It is precisely through thinking the contraction of [the modern] essence [of consciousness] that Levinas thinks otherwise than being, beyond essence, thinks "a thought profounder and 'older' than the cogito." Humanity signifies a "new image" of the Infinite in the preoriginary freedom by which the Self shows the Other mercy.
Most can agree that random evil and suffering, such as accidents, war, illness, crime, and many more, have the power to disrupt human happiness. Most would also agree that it is not the evil and suffering that affects one, as much as it is how one responds to the evil and suffering that occurs in one’s life. It is undeniable that suffering occurs to everyone in some shape or form, and while others may not believe that it is suffering, it all depends on one’s life. There are many examples a reader can draw from in recent and ancient literature that provides examples of other’s suffering and how they responded to those stimuli. This essay explores how the problem of evil is addressed by Greek tragedy and by Western monotheistic tradition.
conception of her encounters highlight her fixation on a kind of lived fantasy blinding her from
The subject of Homer’s epic poem, the Iliad, is very clearly stated--it is “the rage of Peleus’ son Achilles.” The reader remains continually aware of the extent of Achilles’ rage, yet is never told the reason why Achilles remains angry and unreconciled. There is no definitive answer to this question. Achilles is not a static character. He is constantly changing; thus the question of why he remains angry solicits different answers at various stages throughout the poem. To find an answer, the reader must carefully examine Achilles’ ever-changing dilemma involving the concepts of mortality and honor. At its simplest, Achilles’ dilemma is that if he goes to war, he will die. But he will die with glory.
“Then the screaming and shouts of triumph rose up together, of men killing and men killed, and the ground ran blood.” From first examination the Iliad seems to be an epic founded on an idealized form of glory, the kind that young boys think about when they want to join the army. A place full of heroism and manliness where glory can be achieved with a few strokes of a sword and then you go home and everything is just lovely. Many people view the Iliad this way, based on it’s many vivid battle descriptions and apparent lack of remorse for the deaths that occur. This, however, is not how war is presented in the Iliad. Homer presents a very practical outlook on war countering the attainment of the glory with the reality of its price and the destruction it causes. He successfully does this by showing the value of the lives of each person that dies and, in a sense, mourning their passing, describing the terror and ugliness of war, and, through the characters of Achilleus and Hector, displaying the high price of glory.
The reason why this page is important in The Iliad Book XXII is because this page is to show the final time before Hector’s death. Homer states, “Athena tricked me. Death is closing in and there’s no escape”. He also says, “My fate is here, but I will not perish without some great deed that future generations will remember”. This page also demonstrates the velocity of the fight between Hector and Achilles. The main point of this page is, “ As Hector charged. The heavy bronze apex pierced the soft neck but did not slit the windpipe, so that Hector could speak still”. This quote shows the vigorious description of Hector’s death. In the next part of this page Achilles begins to question Hector, “ So you thought you could get away with it didn’t
Change, in The Iliad, appears in many forms, but most originate from the actions of others. It is human nature for men to follow their will almost without any regard for those around them. This unwavering willpower brings change upon the weaker wills of other men. Faced with change, the weaker man’s path is altered either slightly or drastically. From this alteration, man is given choices or must make it himself. Through these experiences, they become more aware or more confused with what goes on around them. Regardless of whether they deal with it or not, they accept that change is inevitable and will continue forward. Knowing their lives are comparatively ephemeral to the immortals, they have the tendency of seizing the day. It almost sounds humbling when they say, “no man can turn aside nor escape…let us go on and win glory
The Iliad is an epic tale of war and hero’s within the Greek way of life. A
Homer reveals his ideas of glory through the use of similes, comparing great men to flora and natural forces, conveying the idea that glory comes from these forces themselves. These similes Homer uses in The Iliad exemplify how glory obtained in battle is nothing compared to the glory and immortality of nature. Homer purposely juxtaposes the images of nature, using diction to intensify their glory, to images of men fighting for glory. During battles, especially when warriors are gaining immense glory, many similes about plants and natural forces appear. In book XII, two Trojan warriors arising to the front line in battle are compared to “oaks that rear their crests on a mountain ridge, / standing up to the gales and driving rains, day
“Heroes are made by the paths they choose, not the powers they are graced with.” Brodi Ashton quotes from her book Everneath. Is this true for the epic hero Achilles in the famous poem The Iliad? He was blessed with being much more powerful than a typical mortal because of his mother being Thetis, a sea-goddess. Achilles knows he has proven himself as an extremely successful warrior, but he soon finds out he has a double-fate. He knows that if he stays home and does not fight at Troy then he will live, but if he does he will be killed. He chooses to go to this war, so does that make him a hero and did he chose what was going to become of him? You can also relate the quote, by Brodi Ashton, to the epic hero Odysseus from the poem The Odyssey. This man is a brave, strong, loyal, and handsome. He was the leader that didn’t ask his men to do anything he wouldn’t do, and asked more out of himself. This sounds like a hero, but what if you get on his bad side? Odysseus is an angry man,
The 'Iliad'; by Homer is a book that deals with many emotional issues. I am going to talk about a few emotional parts of the Iliad and compare them to the emotional life of today. I have chosen a section of the book and will talk about the emotions that come up there. The section that I have chosen to talk about is in book 18 when Achilles is very angry and very sad about Patroclus death. After that he wants revenge by killing hector.
Homer's Iliad is commonly understood as an epic about the Trojan War, but its meaning goes deeper than that. The Iliad is not only a story of the evolution of Achilleus' persona, but at times it is an anti-war epic as well. The final book proposes many questions to the reader. Why not end with the killing of Hektor? Most stories of war conclude with the triumphant victory of good over evil, but in the Iliad, the final thoughts are inclined to the mourning of the defeated Hektor, which accentuates the fact that good has not triumphed over evil, but simply Achilleus triumphed over Hektor. Ending with the mourning of Hektor also brings to center stage for the first time the human side of war and the harsh aftermath of it. We see that war not only brings great glory, but also much suffering and anguish. Homer puts his anti-war views on display.
Divine Intervention is a “direct and obvious intervention by a god or goddess in the affairs of humans”. In various myths such as the Iliad, the Epic of Gilgamesh, and Herakles, divine intervention was called upon in order to restrain a hero’s destructive or too powerful forces. Although the divine intervention was used to impair different heroes, the purpose to constrain was the same in all the narratives.
The Iliad and the Odyssey are two classic stories told by Homer. Within these two stories the roles of the gods are very important to the story line and how they affect the characters throughout. In the Iliad, more gods are involved with the characters whereas in the Odyssey there are only two major gods that affect two major characters. The roles of the gods in the Iliad are through two different stances of immortal versus immortal and mortal versus immortal. The roles of the gods in the Odyssey are through two major gods and they affect the plot as Poseidon versus Odysseus and Athena versus Telemachus.
Briseis The Iliad is a Greek poem consisting of 24 books by Homer. It is based on the tenth and final year of the Trojan War. The Trojan War is fought because Paris of Troy took Helen from her husband, King Menelaus. Helen is taken while Paris is a guest in the home of King Menelaus.