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The Greeks and the Irrational

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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.

Surprised to see this old classic still in print, one can certainly recommend it, though with a list of debating points. Written in the Age of Freud the viewpoint is a trifle dated, yet not so, and wears well, despite the slight 'Greek on the couch' tone. It should not surprise us that the Age of Reason coursing through the Greeks should coexist with a great deal of Hyperborean tribal lore among some quite rude and saucy fellows, with their epic tales, animal sacrifices, Olympian divinities and iron weapons. Further, we overselect the 'Ionian Enlightenment' from a world far richer in content, one where Pythagoras sounds echoes of Indian religion, reincarnation was associated with the classic cultic mysteries, and the polytheism denatured by later monotheism flowered for the last time as the first version of the 'aesthetic state' so doted upon by Hegel, Wagner, and Nietzsche. The latter, after all, blames Euripides for 'rationalizing' the rich masterchords of the world of Greek tragedy. Dodds worries along with Gilbert Murray over this aspect of the Greek 'irrational' but we seldom realize that Indian culture and Greek culture in the Axial Age resembled each other more than we think.

But more than that, it is our own conception of rationality that might be at fault. After all, between the high Enlightenment, Kant and Hegel on reason in history, then the instrumental reason critiqued by Adorno, we have no good stable definition of what rationality we are talking about. Homer's nod! What is the boundary of the 'irrational'? In an age of scientism, that boundary is miscast, and the Greeks remain to be discovered as a people with a balance we may well have lost! Always a fascinating piece of work.

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.

This book covers the importance of the irrational and primitive 'petri dish' of Greek culture that is of necessity. And the importance of a 'counter reformation' to the idea of changing the modus of this Greek culture.

Published in 1951 but still in print, this is one of those books that you read slowly, not because it's difficult, but because each sentence is so well-turned, and so larded with meaning, that you have to savor it. Once you submerge yourself in this book, it will make your hair stand on end. Some people cringe at classical studies because the Greek world often looks like a victory parade of cold rationalism. They would do well to read this book. Dodds applies a psychoanalytical perspective to the neglected flip-side of Greek religion.

He digs right down to the chthonic roots of the rituals, even to symbolic relics of a presumably-once-real cannibalism: "It is hard to guess at the psychological state that he (Euripides) describes in these two words, omophagon charin; but it is noteworthy that the days appointed for omophagia were 'unlucky and black days,' and in fact those who practiced such a rite in our time seem to experience in it a mixture of supreme exaltation and supreme repulsion: it is at once holy and horrible, fulfilment and uncleanness, a sacrament and a pollution -- the same violent conflict of emotional attitude that runs all through the Bacchae and lies at the root of all religion of the Dionysiac type."

Dodds connects ancient Greek ways to cultures far removed from our common conception of the solemn, rationalist mind -- cannibalistic dances in British Columbia, and shamanistic ecstatic rites in Sumatra and Siberia. Whether Dodds mentions snake-handling sects in Perry County, Ky., or whether that was something I thought of while reading him, I don't remember. But it was Dodds who dug a key phrase out of Benedict's "Patterns of Culture": "The very repugnance which the Kwakiutl (Indians of Vancouver Island) felt towards the act of eating human flesh made it for them a fitting expression of the Dionysian virtue that lies in the terrible and the forbidden."

Eric Dodds' masterpiece "The Greeks and the Irrational" is an interestingly subversive work. In it, the author uses the methodologies and tools of anthropology and psychology to show that the Ancient Greeks, far from being the paragons of rational thought that we are so often told to revere, were in fact at least as beset by little-understood internal sub-rational or irrational forces as, for example, Franz Kafka or Humbert Humbert. Please realize that this book was written in the 1950s, so a lot of the anthropological and psychological jargon is very outdated, and often even offensive in today's climate... Scrolling down this page, I notice several people from South America have contributed their reviews of this book. This is probably not insignificant. I once saw Carlos Fuentes speak, and he talked quite a bit about the way that, under fascist regimes in South America, many national educational systems have often been encouraged by their governments to put forward Sparta, as opposed to Athens, as a model of the great virtue of the Greeks. Such models of government, of course, favor the fascists and entrenched power in general. Face it, those Greeks have power! If you can invoke the spirit of Pericles, Plato, or even Draco, in an essay or assembly, you can feel some confidence that your words will be hearkened unto all the more attentively.

I mentioned Draco in that last paragraph for a reason. In post-September 11 America, you can bet that the nation's right-wingers, along the lines of Podhoretz, the Kristols, and the like, are saying amongst themselves "this is our time! Our hour has come!" There are going to be a lot of very powerful forces in our society in the coming months and years, pushing us ever rightward. I personally feel that this is probably necessary in the short run -- our fantastic civil liberties are the single best thing about our country, but this is not the world of 1776, or even 1968. It may, in fact, prove to be more like the world of 1349, during the Black Death, if bio-terrorism really takes off. At any rate, we will probably see a shift to the right in our political culture, for security's sake. Perhaps this is acceptable. The real problems will arise later, when the right wing ideologues are going to try to hold onto their newfound power. Traditionally, such people have always been drawn to the arguments of the deadest, whitest dead white males they could come up with, who of course include many Ancient Greeks among their numbers. When these ideologues begin to spout such arguments, which I believe is inevitable, books like "The Greeks and the Irrational" will be very valuable reading in our universities, as a way of breaking their power over the minds of our students.

So, if you're smart, you should look to the future by looking to the past, and buy yourself a copy of "The Greeks and the Irrational." Two thumbs up.

I had seen this book referenced throughout my life, but until I hit Amazon, never seen the book. And now that I've read it, I can't imagine why it's not required reading at every school! Beginning with the earliest European literature, Dodds traces the development of psychological and spiritual concepts we now take as our common heritage, showing the contexts in which they arose, and how the meanings of words such at soul, fate, temptation and others changed over time. The immediate reason I was drawn to this book at this time in my life was my reading of Julian Jaynes' "Origins of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind", and it is an excellent companion to that volume. "The Greeks and the Irrational" also can serve as a perceptive guide to further studies of ancient literature, drama, and thought. What a book!

The decision of reprinting such a book is hardly understandable. Mr. Dodds tries to use the contributions of anthropology and psychology together with his own profound knowledge of philology in order to understand the "irrational" aspects of Ancient Greek culture, but unfortunately the outcome is anachronistic (in terms of anthropology and psychology) and convoluted (in terms of philology). And it's even dangerous to let oneself impress by the author's name and erudition. No doubt is a well documented book, but what's the point of all that? A pair of sentences taken from the Appendix II may be useful to show the damages caused by what one can call "academic show-off" or still "erudition for its own sake": "That a technique for producing such alterations goes back to the Juliani may be inferred from Proclus' statement that the ability of the soul to leave the body and return (...) And that such techniques were practised also by others is shown by the oracle quoted from Porfiry's collection by Firmicus Maternus (err. prof. rel. 14) which begins, "Serapius vocatus et intra corpus hominis collocatus talia respondit." The important insights the book contains are faded away in face of that. And it's quite obvious for those who really read the book that to Mr. Dodds' theses 100 pages would largely suffice.

This book is already a classic, but one must realize what were the circunstances of its composition. _The Greeks and The Irrational_ was, above all, a development of the Sather lectures given by Mr. Dodds in Los Angeles during the 50s - i.e., at the time of McCarthy and the hysteria over the preservation of the supposedly eternal "Rational Values" of Western Civilization. Dodds wants, above all to warn his readers about how fragile the tradition of rational philosophical enquiry is, and how easily it can degenerate, given the power of what he calls the "Inherited conglomerate". The hub of the book, therefore, resides in the fact that Dodds remarks that the Greeks developed their philosophical and scientific tradition between the Vth and the IIIrd centuries BC and that - contrary to what the moderns would expect expectations - that tradition, before an onslaught of mysticism, simply floundered, having to be recovered painstakingly in the Late Western Middle Ages. Having this in mind, one could profit better from this outstanding work.

This book describes the complicated history of the concept of the soul. To summarize Dodds: Homer didn't have a comprehensive word for mind. The psyche and the conscious self had not yet been defined. He understood events as repetition of the past, and individual consciousness was not a part of that. By the time of Plato these ideas had taken shape -- the Phaedo and Timaeus are works that demonstrate a conscious separation of the knower from the known, and the dual nature of the body and the soul. Pythagoras and Orphic doctrines all came into play, because Plato was a mystic (in his own Platonic way). The pre-Socratic Naturalists saw things in terms of "stuff," but Plato's Metaphysics showed that this was not enough. An interesting dicussion.