In The Greek
and the Irrational, first published in 1951, E.R. Dodds (1893 – 1979) investigates the question
of whether the ancient Greeks were really insensitive to the presence and
importance of nonrational, religious elements in human experience. Basing his
analysis on Greek evidence, literary sources from the Archaic Age (c. 750-480 B.C.)
through the Classical Age (c. 480-323 B.C.), and availing himself of the
conceptual schemes of social anthropology and social psychology, Dodds
highlights some of the aspects of the mental world of ancient Greece which are
related to religious experience, trying to find grounds for the thesis that the
Greeks, indeed, were not immune from behavior based on emotion rather than
reason.

The book consists of
eight chapters based on a series of lectures delivered at Berkeley in 1949 and
two appendixes reproducing  previously
published articles.

At the beginning
(chapters I and II) Dodds considers the Iliad, which furnishes the first clear
picture of the early Greek religion, 
analyzing episodes where Homeric heroes are described as acting  under the influence of divine intervention.
Examples are: Agamemnon stealing away Achille’s wife (Iliad 19.86 ff.) acting
in a state of ate, and Diomede acting under the impulse of menos.
Both Ate (temporary insanity) and menos (consciousness of a
mysterious access of energy) are abnormal states of mind caused by supernormal
agencies. The resulting picture is that of a world dependent on the
supernatural, a fact that the author would not explain away as an artificial
poetic machinery. But if so, how this conforms with the supposedly
irreligiosity of the Homeric poems?

Drawing attention to
the psychology of individuals, Dodds describes the Homeric world in terms of
shame-culture as opposed to that of 
guilt-culture. The distinction between shame-culture and guilt-culture
has been drawn by American anthropologists. In a shame-culture the estimation
of oneself is equated to other people’s conceptions, individuals are thus
conditioned by a pressure of social conformity. In a guilt-culture, instead,
individual experiences are filtered by one’s own conscience and the pressure is
rather that of a sense of guilt. According to Dodds, as heirs of a
guilt-culture we may have a difficulty in recognizing as religious experiences
those  manifested in the states of mind
of ate and menos which are religious in the Homeric sense.

Other kinds of
religious experiences considered in this book are those related to Plato’s
forms of "Divine madness" (Chapter III, and Chapter V p.218 regarding
the madness of Eros); to the belief in divine messengers who communicate with
men in dreams and visions (Chapter IV); and to Shamanism (Chapter V). Chapter
VI describes the decay of what has been called (G. Murray) the "Inherited
Conglomerate". That is the collection of different, sometimes contradictory,
religious beliefs which persist side by side in the fifth century. Chapter VII
considers Plato’s reaction to this situation, investigating the philosopher’s
views about the presence of nonrational factors in human behavior and his
directions for saving society from contamination by dangerous thoughts. Why
Plato’s proposals were not carried out is the topic of the last chapter.

The conclusion of
this fascinating journey is that "[…] the men who created the first
European rationalism were never — until Hellenistic Age — "mere"
rationalists: that is to say, they were deeply and imaginatively aware of the
power, the wonder and the peril of the Irrational. But they could describe what
went on below the threshold of consciousness only in mythological or symbolic
language; they had no instrument for understanding it, still less for
controlling it"(p. 254). At the time Dodds writes this books men were
beginning to elaborate such an instrument.

The Greeks and
the Irrational is a classical book that continues to
influence thinkers in different fields. Even if it is a learned work, it has
been written with the purpose of addressing a larger audience of scholars with
no special knowledge of ancient Greece.

© 2005 Giuseppina
Ronzitti

Giuseppina Ronzitti
received a Ph.D. in Philosophy from Univsity of Genoa, Italy, in 2002.

Categories: Philosophical