The epithet used by Homer for Odysseus is polymetis, which literally means ‘of many counsel’ or ‘the powerful schemer’- since in Greek metis refers to good counsel and the ability to ensure that things turnout well; it means the stratagem, the simulation, the hunter’s trap, the feint, and inspired wit. Hence it is the quick-witted man’s virtue par excellence. At the same time, Metis is the proper name of the goddess on intelligence, whom Zeus pursues in his usual manner.
He fathers a child with her, whose birth he
fears, since it has been foretold that the child would be his equal in
intelligence – which prompts him to devour the pregnant mother. He winds up
with a very difficult brain-pregnancy as a result. Hephaestus relieves his
headache by striking Zeus on the skull with a double axe, so that Athena can
leap out of his head armed with a lance and wearing a full suit of armor. Zeus
later comes to terms with his exceptionally wise daughter, and when Athena offers
candid opinions during the gods’ council, he contents himself by saying to her
in a paternal tone: ‘my child, what strange remarks you let escape you.’
In what follows, I would like to make a case for my basic thesis that ancient Greek intellectual culture, informed by metis as it appears in the Odyssey and is reflected in Hellenistic myths about cunning, represents a distant prelude to what in our view is the most Greek of all phenomena –the Sophistic movement, which led to the secession of philosophy in the fourth century. In contemporary German, a society animated by sophistic arts would be called Streitkultur [‘agonistic culture’]- we an see here that even though Germany has a word for this phenomena, it lacks the thing itself, because, instead of Streikultur, we have an accusatory culture [Hetzkultur], a culture of denunciation, a culture of disparagement, in which things are decided in advance, before they have a chance to become controversial. In contrast, the Greek polis was organized ion an agonistic basis. Not only were there organized interests and divergent classes in every city, there was a ubiquitous pluralism of claims to nobility and excellence that could not have been made without a rhetorically articulated competition between the claimants.
To truly understand the Sophistic movement in its original sense, we must get rid of the bad name given to it by the Academy, a reputation it received partly on valid grounds, and partly from dubious strategic motives. One of the positive effects of Nietzsche’s epochal emergence in the history of ideas was that even academic philosophy was compelled to reevaluate the Sophistic movement In our present context, we can resume this reconsideration by observing that the Sophistic movement signifies precisely the continuation of the Odyssean praxis of intelligence with urban means. The homecoming hero’s capacity to negotiate a viable future for himself with every power in the world, with the gods, with human beings, indeed with the sea itself, recurs in the polis as the capacity of orators and lawyers to navigate the sea of disputes within the city and between cities and to conclude their mandates successfully.
If Homer often endows the storm-tossed voyaging hero with the epithet ploymetis, he is not merely labeling a specific person, but characterizing a type of masculine existence in which renowned heroic vigor (in other words, the ability to make an impact) for the first time includes a new kind of compromising cunning- with a purely navigational or operative cunning. Such cunning thought still remains entirely bound to the current situation. This early version of cunning is still a long way from abstract theory. The characteristic feature of Odyssean intelligence is that it understands itself to be dealing with the challenges that fate has posed for it from day to day, from port to port, and from case to case. The challenges to be overcome by the seafarer on his delayed journey home are prototypes of what one day will be called ‘problems’ – but there can only be ‘problems’ at all, if homecoming heroes have turned into argumentative citizens and if they have transformed the monsters at the ends of the Earth into mere legal adversaries.
In urban space, a free-ranging intelligence forms concepts that are gradually detached from the level of given cases and concrete examples. The desire to have and to solve ‘problems’ begins to flourish when the cunning of polymetis Odysseus changes into the maneuverability of the urban or ‘political’ rhetoric that distinguishes lawyers and orators at the peak of Hellenic culture. There is a moving episode in the Odyssey that is a powerful example of polymetis Odysseus’ art. I am thinking of the shipwrecked sailor landing on the beach on the island of Phaeacia, after a storm has destroyed the raft that was supposed to bring him home when he left the nymph Calypso behind. More than half-drowned, with his last bit of strength he saves himself, and after several days of floating around on the tempestuous sea ends up on the beach, where, stumbling into the bushes, he falls into a deep sleep, concealed by a hedge. On the following day, Nausicaa, the daughter of King Alcinous, and her maids head to the shore to wash their clothing and discover the unkempt shipwrecked voyager, who emerges from his hiding place at that very moment.
Homer sets the scene, showing how tee unclothed foreigner winds up in the young women’s view:
Odysseus had this look, in his rough skin
Advancing on the girls with pretty braids;
And he was driven on by hunger, too.
Streaked with brine, and swollen, he terrified them,
So that they fled, this way and that. Only
In what follows, I would like to make a case for my basic thesis that ancient Greek intellectual culture, informed by metis as it appears in the Odyssey and is reflected in Hellenistic myths about cunning, represents a distant prelude to what in our view is the most Greek of all phenomena –the Sophistic movement, which led to the secession of philosophy in the fourth century. In contemporary German, a society animated by sophistic arts would be called Streitkultur [‘agonistic culture’]- we an see here that even though Germany has a word for this phenomena, it lacks the thing itself, because, instead of Streikultur, we have an accusatory culture [Hetzkultur], a culture of denunciation, a culture of disparagement, in which things are decided in advance, before they have a chance to become controversial. In contrast, the Greek polis was organized ion an agonistic basis. Not only were there organized interests and divergent classes in every city, there was a ubiquitous pluralism of claims to nobility and excellence that could not have been made without a rhetorically articulated competition between the claimants.
To truly understand the Sophistic movement in its original sense, we must get rid of the bad name given to it by the Academy, a reputation it received partly on valid grounds, and partly from dubious strategic motives. One of the positive effects of Nietzsche’s epochal emergence in the history of ideas was that even academic philosophy was compelled to reevaluate the Sophistic movement In our present context, we can resume this reconsideration by observing that the Sophistic movement signifies precisely the continuation of the Odyssean praxis of intelligence with urban means. The homecoming hero’s capacity to negotiate a viable future for himself with every power in the world, with the gods, with human beings, indeed with the sea itself, recurs in the polis as the capacity of orators and lawyers to navigate the sea of disputes within the city and between cities and to conclude their mandates successfully.
If Homer often endows the storm-tossed voyaging hero with the epithet ploymetis, he is not merely labeling a specific person, but characterizing a type of masculine existence in which renowned heroic vigor (in other words, the ability to make an impact) for the first time includes a new kind of compromising cunning- with a purely navigational or operative cunning. Such cunning thought still remains entirely bound to the current situation. This early version of cunning is still a long way from abstract theory. The characteristic feature of Odyssean intelligence is that it understands itself to be dealing with the challenges that fate has posed for it from day to day, from port to port, and from case to case. The challenges to be overcome by the seafarer on his delayed journey home are prototypes of what one day will be called ‘problems’ – but there can only be ‘problems’ at all, if homecoming heroes have turned into argumentative citizens and if they have transformed the monsters at the ends of the Earth into mere legal adversaries.
In urban space, a free-ranging intelligence forms concepts that are gradually detached from the level of given cases and concrete examples. The desire to have and to solve ‘problems’ begins to flourish when the cunning of polymetis Odysseus changes into the maneuverability of the urban or ‘political’ rhetoric that distinguishes lawyers and orators at the peak of Hellenic culture. There is a moving episode in the Odyssey that is a powerful example of polymetis Odysseus’ art. I am thinking of the shipwrecked sailor landing on the beach on the island of Phaeacia, after a storm has destroyed the raft that was supposed to bring him home when he left the nymph Calypso behind. More than half-drowned, with his last bit of strength he saves himself, and after several days of floating around on the tempestuous sea ends up on the beach, where, stumbling into the bushes, he falls into a deep sleep, concealed by a hedge. On the following day, Nausicaa, the daughter of King Alcinous, and her maids head to the shore to wash their clothing and discover the unkempt shipwrecked voyager, who emerges from his hiding place at that very moment.
Homer sets the scene, showing how tee unclothed foreigner winds up in the young women’s view:
Odysseus had this look, in his rough skin
Advancing on the girls with pretty braids;
And he was driven on by hunger, too.
Streaked with brine, and swollen, he terrified them,
So that they fled, this way and that. Only
Alkinoos’ daughter stood her ground,
being given
A bold heart by Athena, and steady knees . . .
Odysseus is now faced with a fateful choice: he can either throw himself at the feet of ‘this beauty’ and clasp her knees – or stand away from her and appeal to her from afar with flattering words. After deliberating for a moment, he realizes that he prefers the second option, because he is mindful that a daughter from a good house might become easily annoyed if he were to presume to touch her knees without permission. This consideration leads to the ship-wrecked voyager’s speech on the shore –or, as Homer puts it, he ‘let the soft words fall.’. In terms of the history of rhetoric, his can be viewed as the first plea ever made by a lawyer pro se on European soil. The naked speaker mounts the rostrum that his need has erected, and devotes himself to the task of winning the harshest public in the world, the bold heart of a woman, over to his side.
A bold heart by Athena, and steady knees . . .
Odysseus is now faced with a fateful choice: he can either throw himself at the feet of ‘this beauty’ and clasp her knees – or stand away from her and appeal to her from afar with flattering words. After deliberating for a moment, he realizes that he prefers the second option, because he is mindful that a daughter from a good house might become easily annoyed if he were to presume to touch her knees without permission. This consideration leads to the ship-wrecked voyager’s speech on the shore –or, as Homer puts it, he ‘let the soft words fall.’. In terms of the history of rhetoric, his can be viewed as the first plea ever made by a lawyer pro se on European soil. The naked speaker mounts the rostrum that his need has erected, and devotes himself to the task of winning the harshest public in the world, the bold heart of a woman, over to his side.
Mistress: please: are you divine or
mortal?
If one of those who dwell in the wide heaven,
You are most near to Artemis, I should say -
Great Zeus’s daughter – in your grace and presence.
If you are one of Earth’s inhabitants,
How blest your father, and your gentle mother,
Blest all your kin. I know what happiness
Must send the warm tears to their eyes, each time
If one of those who dwell in the wide heaven,
You are most near to Artemis, I should say -
Great Zeus’s daughter – in your grace and presence.
If you are one of Earth’s inhabitants,
How blest your father, and your gentle mother,
Blest all your kin. I know what happiness
Must send the warm tears to their eyes, each time
They see their wondrous child go to
dancing!
But one man’s destiny is more than blest -
He who prevails, and takes you as his bride.
Never have I laid eyes on equal beauty
In man or woman. I am hushed indeed.
So fair, one time, I thought a young palm tree
At Delos near the alter of Apollo -
I had troops under me when I was there
On the sea route that later brought me grief -
But that slim palm tree filled my heart with wonder:
Never came shoot from Earth so beautiful.
So now, my lady, I sand in awe so great
I cannot take your knees. And yet my case is desperate:
Twenty days, yesterday, in the wine-dark sea,
On the ever-lunging swell, under gale winds,
Getting away from the island of Ogygia.
And now the terror of Storm has left me stranded
Upon this shore – with more blows yet to suffer,
I must believe, before the gods relent.
Mistress, do me a kindness!
After much weary toil, I come to you,
And you are the first soul I have seen- I know
But one man’s destiny is more than blest -
He who prevails, and takes you as his bride.
Never have I laid eyes on equal beauty
In man or woman. I am hushed indeed.
So fair, one time, I thought a young palm tree
At Delos near the alter of Apollo -
I had troops under me when I was there
On the sea route that later brought me grief -
But that slim palm tree filled my heart with wonder:
Never came shoot from Earth so beautiful.
So now, my lady, I sand in awe so great
I cannot take your knees. And yet my case is desperate:
Twenty days, yesterday, in the wine-dark sea,
On the ever-lunging swell, under gale winds,
Getting away from the island of Ogygia.
And now the terror of Storm has left me stranded
Upon this shore – with more blows yet to suffer,
I must believe, before the gods relent.
Mistress, do me a kindness!
After much weary toil, I come to you,
And you are the first soul I have seen- I know
No others here. Direct me to town,
Give me a rag that I can throw around me,
Some cloth or wrapping that you brought along
And may the gods accomplish your desire:
A home, a husband, and harmonious
Give me a rag that I can throw around me,
Some cloth or wrapping that you brought along
And may the gods accomplish your desire:
A home, a husband, and harmonious
Converse with him .. .
But the white-armed
maiden, Nausicaa, says: ‘Stranger, there is no quirk or evil in you that I can
see.’
We can clearly
see that Odysseus on the shores of Phaeacia does not have what we would call a ‘problem’ at all. He is in need, in a tight
squeeze with only one way out, precisely were the young woman is standing. The
man who Homer calls polymetis is warrior
who has learned to transform every hardship into a challenge. From his nakedness
he makes an argument, and he forms a project out of his destitution. He is
literally someone who is never at a loss. We should never forget that at the
inception of European rhetoric, we find a sea monster making its plea and frightening
off young women. Only one brave maiden holds her ground to forms an audience. A miracle occurs in her ears – the salt
encrusted monster opens its mouth and reveals itself to be the most human of
all human beings. The zoion logon echon,
as defined a half-millennium later by Aristotle, the living being that has
speech – here stands on the beach, with his irresistible flattery, his musical
declamation, and his ability to make a virtue, that of beautiful speech, out of
the most urgent necessity. It then occurs to Nausica that she might fall in
love with a man who speaks to her this way, not so much beause of his quite
forward compliments, which drift past her like a warm breeze, but because she
feels and suspects that a good and clever man stands before her. She has experienced a logophany – proof
that language, as soon as it comes into its own, elevates the human being. If the disheveled foreigner is not a god, he
has provided proof of his humanity by speaking as no beast, no fool, and no villain
could.
From here, we can proceed further in an almost direct line to a scene that played out centuries later in Athens. In one of his dialogues, Plato tell as us how a father brings his teenage son to Socrates the sophist, who was known for his ability to educate youth. Socrates turned to the young man with a single request, ‘Speak boy, so that I may see you.’ The belief in the logophanic revelation of the human being’s essential nature reaches its culmination here. At the same time, Odysseus’ plea on the beach also leads directly to other fifth-century sophists who were famous for their ability to argue any position. Isocrates, the prince of Greek lawyers, demonstrates how significant this influence was in his notorious Helene Encomion (Encomium of Helen) which is supposed to prove that a good lawyer wins a case that seems lost in advance. What case could be more than the one against the most fatal woman of antiquity, the unfaithful beauty for whose sake the Trojan War must be fought?
We learn of Gorgias that, in his case, the ability to speak about anything at all degenerated into his really being a know-it-all. In one anecdote we read: ‘For coming into the theater of the Athenians he had the boldness to suggest a subject, and he was the first to proclaim himself willing to take this chance, showing apparently that he knew everything and would trust to the moment to speak on any subject.’ Only one aspect of this story is of interest here. Gorgias has walked every step of the path that leads from a distress that still can find words to playing with mere ‘problems’ – this can be observed in the word he uses to challenge the Athenian public to propose a topic for him: the word is proballete – from the verb proballein, meaning ‘to throw something’ at him, ‘to suggest’ something to him, ‘to pose a topic,’ a word from which both ancient and modern problemata derive. The ‘problem’ that Gorgias wanted to ‘solve’ in the theater was simply a random topic for an expert to develop a thesis on or a virtuoso to use as a basis for extemporization.
If the Sophistic movement is supposed to involve the translation of existential hardships into a kind of relaxed playing with topics, then Odysseus is not yet a sophist in this sense. Odyssean intelligence is still bound to the harsh necessities of the struggle for survival, and cannot claim the privilege of relaxed observation for itself. Nevertheless, we an trace a line of descent from him to the Sophistic movement, since we discover in polymetris Odysseus the first signs of a general craft consciousness that is an essential feature of Classical Greek civilization. From a distance, the Odyssey already heralds that great event in the history of thought which can be called the Greek miracle: the birth of problems from the proud awareness of being able to deal with them. The brilliant words of an Austrian essayist (Egon Friedell),written before the First World War, seem appropriate for fifth-century Greeks: ‘Culture has a wealth of problems, and the more mysteries it discovers, the more enlightened it is.’ We could even say instead that culture is the sum of relief efforts [ Entlastungen] in response to primal needs. Decadence sets in the moment that the recipients of such relief forget why they needed culture to relieve them in the first place.
From here, we can proceed further in an almost direct line to a scene that played out centuries later in Athens. In one of his dialogues, Plato tell as us how a father brings his teenage son to Socrates the sophist, who was known for his ability to educate youth. Socrates turned to the young man with a single request, ‘Speak boy, so that I may see you.’ The belief in the logophanic revelation of the human being’s essential nature reaches its culmination here. At the same time, Odysseus’ plea on the beach also leads directly to other fifth-century sophists who were famous for their ability to argue any position. Isocrates, the prince of Greek lawyers, demonstrates how significant this influence was in his notorious Helene Encomion (Encomium of Helen) which is supposed to prove that a good lawyer wins a case that seems lost in advance. What case could be more than the one against the most fatal woman of antiquity, the unfaithful beauty for whose sake the Trojan War must be fought?
We learn of Gorgias that, in his case, the ability to speak about anything at all degenerated into his really being a know-it-all. In one anecdote we read: ‘For coming into the theater of the Athenians he had the boldness to suggest a subject, and he was the first to proclaim himself willing to take this chance, showing apparently that he knew everything and would trust to the moment to speak on any subject.’ Only one aspect of this story is of interest here. Gorgias has walked every step of the path that leads from a distress that still can find words to playing with mere ‘problems’ – this can be observed in the word he uses to challenge the Athenian public to propose a topic for him: the word is proballete – from the verb proballein, meaning ‘to throw something’ at him, ‘to suggest’ something to him, ‘to pose a topic,’ a word from which both ancient and modern problemata derive. The ‘problem’ that Gorgias wanted to ‘solve’ in the theater was simply a random topic for an expert to develop a thesis on or a virtuoso to use as a basis for extemporization.
If the Sophistic movement is supposed to involve the translation of existential hardships into a kind of relaxed playing with topics, then Odysseus is not yet a sophist in this sense. Odyssean intelligence is still bound to the harsh necessities of the struggle for survival, and cannot claim the privilege of relaxed observation for itself. Nevertheless, we an trace a line of descent from him to the Sophistic movement, since we discover in polymetris Odysseus the first signs of a general craft consciousness that is an essential feature of Classical Greek civilization. From a distance, the Odyssey already heralds that great event in the history of thought which can be called the Greek miracle: the birth of problems from the proud awareness of being able to deal with them. The brilliant words of an Austrian essayist (Egon Friedell),written before the First World War, seem appropriate for fifth-century Greeks: ‘Culture has a wealth of problems, and the more mysteries it discovers, the more enlightened it is.’ We could even say instead that culture is the sum of relief efforts [ Entlastungen] in response to primal needs. Decadence sets in the moment that the recipients of such relief forget why they needed culture to relieve them in the first place.
What Happened in the 20th Century? by Peter Sloterdijk; Polity Books (2016) 2018 English. pages 159-164
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