Hesiod the cosmopolitan: utopian and dystopian discourse and ethico-political education

Abstract

The modern tendency to treat all Greek Golden Age textuality as apolitical and escapist has contributed to the ongoing neglect of the first Western educational text, Hesiod's Works and days. Most commentators have missed the interplay of utopian and dystopian images in Hesiodic poetry for lack of the appropriate conceptual framework. Once the escapist prejudice is overcome, the Hesiodic text appears as the first extant Occidental coupling of political utopianism with emancipatory ethico-political education. Once freed of its dated metaphysical-theological resonances, Hesiodic utopianism is compatible with a renewed political and ethical education for cosmopolitanism and justice because the embarrassingly detailed and teleological element of temporal modern utopias and the equally embarrassing rigid architecture of spatial utopias are absent. There is no strict utopian prediction and the message for change is articulated for the whole of humanity.

Keywords:

• Hesiod
• justice
• cosmopolitanism
• utopia
• dystopia
• hope
• critical reflection

Notes

Notes

1. Notice, for instance, the glaring absence of any mention of Hesiod's didactic poetry from book-length accounts of the development of educational thought such as Lawton and Gordon's A history of Western educational ideas (2002).

2. One may imagine various reasons why this archetypical educational text has been so neglected in philosophy of education, from its very didactism that seems to automatically doom it to pedagogical obsolescence down to the narrow readings to which it has been subjected from antiquity to the present, i.e. from Plato's comments on Hesiod in the Republic (see Belfiore 1985), to contemporary serious but limited engagement with him in classical studies and general philosophy.

3. It involved protreptic ideas (exhortations) encouraging him to act in specific ways as well as apotreptic ideas (denunciations) discouraging him from specific modes of thought and conduct.

4. Regarding myth, consider, for instance, Baldry's apposite remark that ‘Hesiod was a farmer-poet, who followed the traditional lore of country-folk, including their traditional picture of the “good old days”. But he was much more than this. He was a thinker, moulding his thoughts in story form, a myth-maker’ (1952, 91).

5. Naddaf's essay ‘Hesiod as a Catalyst for Western Political Paideia’ (2002) is the only study I have come across that recognizes the pedagogical dimension of Hesiodic poetry while emphasizing the political significance and revolutionary character of Works and days. Yet, apart from this convergence and some theoretical support that I draw from his reading later on, my approach is very different from Naddaf's, especially since his article does not deal with the utopia and dystopia axes that constitute the focus of my reading of Works and days. I note this as a token of the fact that the Hesiodic text is open to multiple readings not only as a poetic creation but also as an educational and political work.

6. Apart from the theoretical dimension of this attempt, there is also a practical dimension of it that relates to local concerns: since Works and days is taught in high schools (group age 14) in Greece and Cyprus and there are local curricular instructions about its teaching that could benefit from a theoretical re-reading of the text around the axis of utopia and dystopia.

7. On the issue of modern utopias and the special position of education in them see Peters and Humes (2003, 429).

8. For more on the latter exceptions and for the corresponding references see Milojevic (2003, 447).

9. Such ventures can be grouped in, at least, four main trends: (a) the educational critical response to Futures Studies (Peters and Humes 2003); (b) the renewed interest in anarchist political thought (Suissa 2001); (c) the radical transformation approach to education (which preserved the utopian element all along from Freire down to Giroux and McLaren); and (d) the reformist approach to educational practice from Dewey down to recent thinkers (Halpin 2001a and b; Demetrion 2001) favouring piecemeal pragmatist utopian change.

10. See, however, Jean Chesneaux's (1968) informative article that confirms my suspicion that the political element is very much present in non-western early Golden Age utopias but not yet recognized and not adequately theorized by western scholarship.

11. Jameson puts it concisely as follows: ‘Bloch posits a Utopian impulse governing everything future-oriented in life and culture’ (Jameson, 2005, 2).

12. ‘In the time of the old Cronus food had been abundant and toil and trouble unknown. The Homeric and Hesiodic poems had popularized a systematic version of the myth’ (Dawson 1992, 13).

13. See, for instance, how Edward Bellamy (1982) employs dystopia in this sense in his Looking backward.

14. Some German theorists, such as Reinhold Bichler (1995), rely on more comprehensive, elaborate and elastic notions of utopia and dystopia and are, therefore, in a better position to perceive the political merit and relevance of cases such as Hesiod's that have, so far, largely been dismissed as escapist.

15. For instance, there had been ancient caricatures of the Golden Age carrying it to absurd lengths, e.g. ‘Telecleides’ rivers of soup and self-frying fish, and Crates’ self-moving gadgets which will end the need for slaves’ (Baldry 1952, 86), about which we know too little, in my view, to be able to judge the degree of their political relevance and of their utopian or anti-utopian purposes. All we may notice is their resemblance to medieval fables about the Land of Cockaygne and Schlaraffenland (see, for instance, Bonner 1910, 175) and their difference from Hesiod's ‘distinct moral tone’. For his account of the Golden Age ‘is an apologue in praise of simplicity and innocence rather than of bygone sensual delights’ (Bonner, 1910, p. 177). Therefore, we cannot lump together all versions of the Golden Age or Cronos’ time.

16. I read the original Greek text and I select the English translation that I believe is more appropriate in each quotation from two sources: Hesiod, the Homeric hymns and Homerica. Trans Hugh G. Evelyn-White. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 1982 and Hesiod, Theogony, Works and days, Testimonia. Trans Glenn W. Most. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 2006. Which one is used is always indicated in my text.

17. While reading the Hesiodic interweaving of myths, it is important to keep in mind Jaeger's position as cited by Baldry (1952, 91): ‘in Hesiod we find more than passive submission to an urge for mythical narration: when he resorts to telling the old myths he has actual problems in mind which he feels he is now equipped to answer’. Equally, it is important to note Bonner's remark that Hesiod is ‘the first Greek poet to approach the raw material of myth and religion with an expressed didactic purpose’ (1910, 179). For a much shorter and more concise account of the poem's narrativity than the one I am deploying here, see Adams (1932, 194).

18. For a different response to Dahrendorf's point as well as a detailed and very apposite philosophical-educational critique of anti-utopianism, see Olssen (2003).

19. Pandora appears again in Theogony. For an account of the differences between the Pandora of Hesiod's Theogony and the Pandora of the Works and days see Adams (1932, 194–5). The issue of misogyny in the Hesiodic account of Pandora is outside the scope of interests of this article.

20. That this myth is open to so many interpretive possibilities is enhanced also by the fact that elpis in Greek does not have a standard evaluative connotation of either futile hope, or positive hope or self-deceptive hope. ‘It is established that ελπι´ς [elpis] and other similar “emotions” do not possess in their own right any moral connotation, but derive moral significance from particular contexts. This is clearly Hesiod's point of view’ (Adams 1932, 195).

21. For a plausible answer to this question–one that differs from mine (which I develop elsewhere) but is compatible with it–see Adams (1932, 196).

22. Thus, my reading recuperates this mythical figure in a way that differs from the one suggested by Donald R. Kelley (1993). On how and why Epimetheus was downplayed in Western thought and his brother took precedence as the icon of the ‘forward-looking taker of chance and agent of change’, see Kelley (1993, 101).

23. Also, happiness was not the outcome of accumulated riches but of simplicity of needs and of dependence on the bounty of nature (Baldry 1952, 86).

24. Likewise, the difference between hard toil (chalepoio ponoio, WD, 91) befalling people after the opening of the jar and the word ergon (work, labour) that marked the human activity of the Age of Cronos escapes the attention of commentators.

25. As Bichler remarks, Hesiod depicts a true dystopia (1995, 51).

26. In Naddaf's interpretation, ‘Hesiod appears to be advocating nothing short of dispensing with the kings, for they embody and indeed endorse the destructive eris [strife]’ (2002, 351). The radicality of Works and days is also shown by the fact that in it the leaders are called gift-devouring, wicked and fools and presented to issue crooked judgments (WD, 39–40 and 260–65). It is politically remarkable that such poetry was so openly recited and so didactic for generations of Greek public life.

27. This epichthonian (earthly), divine justice within human everydayness is ‘evental’ (here I adapt Alain Badiou's term) not in the sense of a transcendent disruption that is not of this world, as we know it today through the French line of continental thought, but in a sense that gives unity to action and its consequences in a more mundane manner than the modern religious counterpart or the philosophies of transcendence can do.

28. The word Hesiod uses to describe these immortal guardians in another passage of Works and Days (verse 122) is daimones, which means, amongst other things, spirits who know, establishing yet another connection with learning and wisdom.

29. This is particularly important if we realize that Panhellenism was not only available to Hesiod as an idea (not, of course, as a political-governmental configuration), but it was theoretically ‘established’, so to speak, by Hesiod himself in his Catalogues, where it is stated that Hellen was the father of all Greeks and it is further explained how the various Greek tribes (the Hellenic race) stemmed from him.

30. There is another etymology of his name also provided by the relevant ancient Testimonia. ‘Hesiod’ comes from the future heso, ‘I will cast’ and odos ‘road’. All ancient etymologies of Hesiod's name, however, are not tenable according to Most (2006, xiv). Yet, the etymology I have selected above, i.e. ‘he who travels on an auspicious road’ must have seemed to the ancients more convincing, in my view, because its being Aeolic is consonant with Hesiod's origin. My using it here has nothing to do with plausibility: it aims to echo the feeling of optimism that the Greek language is still able to associate and had always associated with Hesiod. For the relevant Testimonia see Most's translation of Hesiod (177).

31. ‘For the son of Cronos has ordained this law for men, that fishes and beasts and winged fowls should devour one another, for right is not in them; but to mankind he gave right which proves far the best’ (WD, 276–80, trans. Evelyn-White).

32. Contrast all the previous textual evidence from Works and days with Finley's assertion that ‘there is not a whisper in Hesiod of a way by which to change or transcend the present state, to re-approach the Golden Age’ (1975, 181).

33. I emphasize the dystopian contrasts so often because they are totally missed by all Anglophone commentators on Hesiod that I have researched.

34. While thus connecting the Theogony with the Works and days, I am aware of controversies over their political congruence and the characterization of the former as conservative compared to the latter (see Naddaf 2002). But it is not possible here to give this problem the place it deserves.

35. For more on the socio-political order that arises from Zeus's first three marriages see Naddaf (2002, 349).

36. Notice here how Nemesis becomes bad instead of good. This is no inconsistency on the part of Hesiod. The good Nemesis we saw in the Works is the just anger one feels at injustices. But, in a different context, righteous indignation, brewed in anger, so to speak, may become exaggerated and regressive, obstructing a just representation of the guilty party and delaying or blocking human reconciliation and forgiveness.

37. To Bichler (ibid.), it is the Works that represent most vividly Hesiod's contribution to the Western utopian canon.

38. Naddaf rightly comments that ‘Works and days, considered by many commentators as one of the most sombre lamentations ever composed, is in fact much more optimistic when one reads between the lines’ (2002, 351). More than that, I believe I have shown that reading some of the lines that other readers have bypassed adequately establishes Hesiod's optimism.

39. I shall discuss this elsewhere at fuller length. Here, the following suffices. Arendt's omission of any reference to sources and this light-hearted generalization, as if it were a commonplace self-evident view with no need for textual support, is more damning precisely because, had she referred to Hesiod, one could defend her comment as a matter of possible interpretation of Hesiod. Since she does not make apparent that she refers to him but claims rather that this supposed lack of hope concerns the whole of antiquity, she makes her remark indefensible: even if hope is missing in Hesiod (and I have shown that this is not true), hope is a central concept in Theognis's sixth century BC elegiac poetry; e.g. consider Theognis's verse (that is a pure reversal of the Pandora myth): ‘Hope is the only good god remaining among mankind, the others have left and gone to Olympus’. Hope is very much there in Heraclitus (fragment 18), in Plato's Philebus and in Aristotle amongst others.