Christmas Haul: The Platypus Reads Part LIV
Christmas, in our house, is a time for amassing books. They're our primary work tool and our primary means of entertainment. This year's haul includes:
"Who Killed Homer" by Victor Davis Hanson
"The Western Way of War" by Victor Davis Hanson
"The Coming of Conan the Cimmerian" by Robert E. Howard
"Tolkien and the Great War" by John Garth
"Writing the Breakout Novel" by Donald Maass
"A History of France" by Guizot
The Hanson books have been fun, but I don't understand two things:
1.) Why he systematically ignores the Middle Ages
2.) How he gets around the charge that the Homeric worldview leads not to change and dynamism, but stagnation, oppression, and ultimately societal collapse.
"Who Killed Homer" by Victor Davis Hanson
"The Western Way of War" by Victor Davis Hanson
"The Coming of Conan the Cimmerian" by Robert E. Howard
"Tolkien and the Great War" by John Garth
"Writing the Breakout Novel" by Donald Maass
"A History of France" by Guizot
The Hanson books have been fun, but I don't understand two things:
1.) Why he systematically ignores the Middle Ages
2.) How he gets around the charge that the Homeric worldview leads not to change and dynamism, but stagnation, oppression, and ultimately societal collapse.
Comments
What are your thoughts?
You know, I found that Allan Bloom has the same problem with the Middle Ages; he skips over them. I think both he and Hanson are English or Scottish Enlightenment secularists at heart. They're not the more virulently atheistic French variety (Voltaire, Diderot, Robespierre, Rousseau, etc.) but they're no friends of a strong, vibrant Christianity (such as that found in the Middle Ages). Hanson stresses again and again in "Who Killed Homer" that things work best when the Church is merely separate from the state (as in Christendom) but subordinate to the state (as in Ancient Greece and Rome). I think he's too honest a scholar to outright lie about the Middle Ages, and so he ignores them. Christians should see Hanson the way he seems to see us: as catious allies against the hard-core continental-style secularists (see Hanson's lecture at Biola), but definately parting ways after that.
As to why Hanson denies the destructiveness of the Homeric world-view, I think he equivocates (a serious charge, but hence my public question so that I can be corrected if I'm wrong). Homer (note his cold attitude towards Plato; perhaps because of Platonic philosophy's tight relationship with the rise of Christianity? In fact, Hanson seems to woefully underplay the role of religion in Greek life and thought.) gets all the credit, but he actually doesn't take the "Iliad" for his "gospel." What he really believes in is American/Scottish/English Enlightenment Secualrism; scraps of Homer filtered through Rome and over a thousand years of Christianity and then re-interpreted by 18th century deists.
That's my two cents in truncated form. Does that ring true? I almost think, looking back, that Reynolds' "When Athens Met Jerusalem" is sort of an oblique counter-thurst to Hanson's thought.