Skip to main content

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.
Labels:

Comments

Linds said…
I've ALWAYS wondered those things about Hansen, but asking whether or not Hansen is right in our circles is rather like challenging the infallibility of Scripture. Not having time to do my homework on it, I've just kinda kept quiet.

What are your thoughts?
12:38 AM
James said…
Preface all this with the fact that I do enjoy reading Hanson and have been able to learn quite a bit from him.

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.
5:01 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Platypus Reads Part XXVII

Thoughts after reading the "Iliad" to prepare a Greece unit for my students: -Hector is a jerk until he's dead. He even advocates the exposure of Achaean corpses and then has the cheek to turn around and ask Achilles to spare his. He rudely ignores Polydamas' prophecies and fights outside the gate to save his pride knowing full well what it will cost his family and city. After he's dead, he becomes a martyr for the cause. -Agamemnon has several moments of true leadership to balance out his pettiness. In this way, he's a haunting foil to Achilles: the two men are more alike than they want to acknowledge. -We see that Achilles is the better man at the funeral games of Patroclos. His lordliness, tact, and generosity there give us a window into Achilles before his fight with Agamemnon and the death of Patroclos consumed him. -Nestor is a boring, rambling, old man who's better days are far behind him, and yet every Achaean treats him with the upmo...
15 comments
Read more

California's Gods: Strange Platypus(es)

We've noticed lately a strange Californian dialectical twist: there, freeways take the definite article.  In other parts of the country one speaks of I 91 or 45 North.  In California, there's The 5, The 405, The 10.  Each of these freeways has its own quirks, a personality of sorts.  They aren't just stretches of pavement but presences, creatures that necessitate the definite article by their very individuality and uniqueness.  They are the angry gods to be worked, placated, feared, for without them life in California as we know it would cease.  Perhaps that's fitting for a land whose cities are named for saints and angels.  Mary may preside over the new pueblo of our lady of the angels, but the freeways slither like gigantic serpents through the waste places, malevolent spirits not yet trampled under foot.
9 comments
Read more

Seeing Beowulf Through Tolkien: The Platypus Reads Part CXCIX

After spending a few weeks wrestling with Tolkien's interpretation of Beowulf , I found myself sitting down and reading Seamus Heaney's translation of the text during a spare moment.  I came to the place where Beowulf presents Hrothgar with the hilt of the ancient sword that slew Grendel's mother.  Hrothgar looks down at the hilt with its ancient runes and carvings depicting the war between the giants and God and meditates on the fortunes of men.  In a flash of insight, I thought: this is the whole poem! Let me explain.  Tolkien believed that the genuine contribution of the Northern peoples to European culture was the theory of courage.  The Northern heroes, at their best, were men who fought for order against chaos -a battle they knew they were doomed to lose.  If they were true heroes, their souls would join the gods and aid them in the final battle against darkness and its monsters and again go down fighting, spitting in the face of the meaninglessness...
3 comments
Read more