The Homeric Gods
Walter Otto (tr. Moses Hadas)
Thames and Hudson, 1954

NOTE: this book is not about Aristotle and indeed barely mentions him, but it provides deep insights into the ancient Greek worldview.

"Not only the flow of events with its critical moments, however, but also duration itself indicated the divine. In all larger forms and conditions of life and existence the Greek perceived the eternal visage of divinity. Taken all together these essences constituted the holiness of the world. Hence the Homeric poems are filled with divine proximity and presence as are those of no other people or age. In their world the divine is not superimposed as a sovereign power over natural events; it is revealed in the forms of the natural, as their very essence and being." (OTTO 1954, p. 7) [PSA: here "form" comes close to my translation of εἶδος as "way of being"]

"[E]xistence manifests itself in infinitely various living expressions as the essence of our world. First and highest is not the power that acts, but the being that is manifested in the form of the act." (OTTO 1954, p. 9)

"The ancient Greek religion comprehended the things of this world with the most powerful sense of reality possible, and nevertheless - nay, for that very reason - recognized in them the marvellous delineations of the divine. It does not revolve upon the anxieties, longings, and spiritual broodings of the human soul: its temple is the world, from whose vitality and movement emanates its knowledge of the divine." (OTTO 1954, p. 10)

"The divine, presented with such clarity in the Homeric poems, is manifold in form and yet everywhere consistent. A lofty spirit, a noble content, is expressed in all its forms. It is not the purpose of the poems to communicate any religious revelation, to give force to any religious doctrine. They desire only to behold, and in the joy of beholding to fashion forms; before them lie all the riches of the world, earth and heaven, water and air, trees, animals, men and gods." (OTTO 1954, p. 16) [PSA: here beholding correlates to θεωρία]

"[T]he new spirit looks into existence with different eyes. For it, not happening and capacity are most important, but *being*. The divinities become figures of reality in which the manifold being of nature finds its perfect and eternal expression." (OTTO 1954, p. 39)

"The goddess who recalls Achilles to reason and dignity at the right moment is none other than she who is revolted by and turns away from a Tydeus dehumanized in dying. And she is not merely the admonisher: she herself is properly the decision, specifically on the side of reason against mere passion. Achilles himself pondered whether he should strike or restrain himself. "Even as he pondered and was drawing the sword from its scabbard" [Iliad I.193] Athena suddenly touched him. The sense of her coming is the victory of reason." (OTTO 1954, p. 48) [PSA: see below p. 213; this is an illustration of the fact that one's character is one's daimon, as Heraclitus put it]

"It is true that in later times the nature of Athena was explained as "mind and thought" (nous kai dianoia) [Cratylus 407b]. But her old connection with Metis has a quite different meaning. The word metis always signifies *practical* understanding and thinking through..." (OTTO 1954, p. 52) [PSA: φρόνησις, not σοφία]

"Athena's inclination and involvement are in the nature of the friendship that man feels for man. To this the lives of many heroes testify. In poetry the clearest case is her love for Odysseus; in plastic art, her love for Heracless. She shares in everything - advising, helping, encouraging, and rejoicing in success." (OTT 1954, p. 54) [PSA: note the connection to συζῆν as "shared living"]

"If we read Homer under the preconception that contemporary religion could have possessed nothing more than is explicitly stated of it, then indeed Apollo could have become the god of purity only at a later period, and his sharp clarity, his superior spirit, his will that enjoins insight, moderation, and order, in short all that we call Apollonian to this day, must have been unknown to Homer." (OTTO 1954, p. 65)

"We know that the Greeks habitually pictured recognition of what is right under the image of the accurate bow-shot. The simile is directly illuminating. But we find it strange to equate music and song with the art of hitting the mark, for in the latter case we do not think of what is right and of recognition. That then is the point where the nature of Apollonian music must be made accessible to us. The song of the most alert of all gods does not arise dreamlike out of an intoxicated soul but flies directly towards a clearly seen goal, the truth, and the rightness of its aim is a sign of its divinity. Out of Apollo's music there resounds divine recognition. In everything it perceives and attains form. The chaotic must take shape, the tubulent must be reduced to time and measure, opposites must be wedded in harmony. This music is thus the great educator, the source and symbol of all order in the world and in the life of mankind." (OTTO 1954, p. 77)

"Despite very great diversity in character and temperament, these gods all possess the same nature. Hence they are regularly contrasted to the human race as a unity; it is 'the gods' who determine the human lot, and frequently enough the poet says simply 'god' or 'the deity,' as if, in the final analysis, it were only a single power that affected earthly existence from above." (OTTO 1954, p. 127)

"[F]or the Greek his inmost feelings resisted such a notion [of an ancient, aged god]. For him old age was a condition of the weariness, impoverishment, and darkening of nature, that vital and holy nature from which he could never at all separate the spirit. Even the highest wisdom must belong not to a region beyond life but to life's most buoyant energy..." (OTTO 1954, p. 128)

"Eternal youth, beauty, and in addition power and knowledge, which often seemed limitless - possession of these qualities made the gods' existence blessed. They are expressly called 'the blessed.' Their dwelling is in eternal radiance on high, never visited by winds, rain, or snow; there they live in daily pleasure, high above men, whose need and suffering can never reach their height." (OTTO 1954, pp. 128-129) [PSA: by 'power' is meant δύναμις, for which I might substite 'ability']

"[A]ll the figures who, according to Homeric belief, do not possess the crown of complete divinity have this in common: they are constrained by matter and in their persons represent the sanctity of specific elements." (OTTO 1954, p. 157) [PSA: cf EE VIII.3 on turning away from a focus on mere matter and the non-rational aspects of the soul *as such*]

"The new and heavenly gods ... leave to the darkness of earth the dignity appropriate to it; but it must remain within its limits, for above it there has opened a realm of light to which the loftiest love of the human spirit must henceforward belong. The gods who now rule life as guides and ideals no longer belong to earth but to ether; and hence of the three realms and their gods ... only one remains as the place of the divine perfection, and that is Zeus's realm of light." (OTTO 1954, p. 158) [PSA: As guide the gods are δαίμων, as ideal the gods are οὗ ἕνεκα οὗ - not the beneficiary but the aim]

"The new deity does not act as a power that sets the world in motion from without; its place is rather within the world itself. Yet it is not a single, specific thing.... Always divinity is a totality, a whole world in its perfection. This applies also to the supreme gods, Zeus, Athena, and Apollo, the bearers of the highest ideals. None of them represents a single virtue, none is to be encountered in only one direction of teeming life; each desires to fill, shape, and illumine the whole compass of human existence with his peculiar spirit. For mankind as such, divinity never denotes a single duty or aspiration but always the totality of life; and in the world at large, it manifests itself even more completely and diversely. To be sure, it is never an all-pervading world-soul, a mysterious ground for the life of all earthly being, but always a defined entity; yet its special character is always the signature of a world complete in itself." (OTTO 1954, pp. 160-161)

"The Greek saw and knew: everything individual is imperfect and transitory, but the form abides. In it reposes the meaning of all being and happening. It is the true reality, it is the divine." (OTTO 1954, p. 163)

"[T]he Greek gods ... give proof of a higher insight, in which seeing and understanding are one and the same thing. This insight always discovers totalities, and in them seizes upon precisely those traits for which the intellect has no gauge - loftiness and majesty, solemnity, magnificence, kindliness, aloofness, strangeness, craftiness, grace, fascination, and many other significant and at the same time obvious values which rational thought must pass over." (OTTO 1954, p, 163) [PSA: note the connection to νοῦς as insight]

"With the idea of the being of the gods, that of the mode and manner of their effects upon human life is closely related.... [I]nnocent of conceptualism, it honors only the lively awareness of the presence of the divine in this world, without being oblivious to human freedom or to the regularity and calculability of events. Imbued with this idea, the Greek faith is the most magnificent example of a wholly undogmatic religion, which contradicts no human experience and yet penetrates and encompasses all existence." (OTTO 1954, p. 169)

"In many cases Homer (and of course later Hellenism) attributes the instigation of important events to 'gods' in general (theoi) or to 'god' (theos). The latter expression does not at all imply a definite personality, in the monotheistic sense, but rather bears the same meaning as the first - the unity of the divine world as it communicates itself, despite its diverse manifestations." (OTTO 1954, p. 171)

"The Greek image of divine-human operation contrasts remarkably with the view familiar to ourselves. The Greek deity does not operate from beyond upon the inwardness of man, upon his soul, which is connected with it in some mysterious way. The deity is one with the world and approaches man out of the things of the world *if he is upon the way* and participates in the world's manifold life. It is not through turning inward that man experiences deity but by proceeding outward, seizing, acting." (OTTO 1954, p. 174) [PSA: this is what Aryeh Kosman calls the activity of being, i.e., the primacy of ἐνέργεια]

"One who understands the objectivity of the ancient Greek view of the world, one who is capable of following its orientation outward instead of inward, towards the myth of the world instead of the myth of the soul, can only find consistency in the emphasis upon cognition rather than upon will or emotion. In the world of objective forms justice and honor, prudence and moderation, tenderness and charm, are not in the first instance subjective modes and personal attitudes but *realities*, permanent forms of being which at any significant moment may confront man with divine substantiveness. To the Greek, therefore, it is not so essential that this or that is *felt* as it is that it is *known* and *understood*.... It need hardly be said that this does not mean knowledge derived from conceptual reasoning. There must be another mode, that 'other kind of cognition' (allo genos gnoseos) which according to Aristotle is inextricably bound up with virtue - a comprehension which is not rational and yet sharply differentiated from emotion and desire, and which belongs to the realm of enlightenment, insight, knowledge. The fact that Hellenism bestowed its most distinguished attention upon this aspect of the moral problem definitely indicates that it was not preoccupied with the rational: here we have beautiful testimony to the objectivity of its perception and thought. It does not even possess a specific word for the will; the expression which properly denotes insight (gnome) is here applied equally to resolution." (OTTO 1954, pp. 179-180) [PSA: by 'rational' here Otto seems to mean deductive conclusions or formalized knowledge]

Quoting the Ajax of Sophocles, Otto notes that when the hero scorned the assistance of Athena "his thoughts were too great for man" (Ajax 758ff.). (OTTO 1954, p. 189)

"[E]ven what we regard as the expression of personal quality flows directly from the hands of the gods. It is only through action that this quality can, at each occasion, assert itself, and in the act, not in some fixed inward being, it has its reality for the ancient Greek view of the world. But every act depends on the world forces manifested in the event, eternal forms of which are the gods." (OTTO 1954, p. 190)

With regard to Achilles' quarrel with Agamemnon, Otto notes that "the intervention of the goddess was in itself the decision, according to the truly Greek mode of thought. All that others saw was Achilles starting up, struggling with himself, and his sudden composure." (OTTO 1954, pp. 213-214)

"The deity that is here the object of faith is not an absolute master over nature who exhibits his sovereignty at its loftiest when he compels nature to act contrary to itself. It is the sanctity of the natural itself.... But everywhere it presents itself in the same sense: not as the miracle of a god triumphing over nature, but rather as the experience of a great heart to whom - and to whom alone - at the height of his being and doing the deity presented itself out of the ordinary lines of nature." (OTTO 1954, pp. 226-227) [PSA: note the connection to μεγαλοψυχία]

"We moderns cannot find it easy to follow the path of the Greeks. The religious tradition in which we were brought up recognizes in nature only the field for the exercise of pious virtues whose spiritual home is found in a region beyong that of their budding, growth, and maturity. Out of the organic and teeming world our mechanical and technical mode of thought has made a mechanism of unintelligible forces. All being is resolved into a swirl of functions and strivings; man is only a being who wills or desires, endowed wiht greater or lesser capacities. The Greek at every turn of life saw the visage of a god and even in death rested among the symbols of his self-sufficient life which decorated his tomb with simple truth; for us all of life is a pursuit after ever receding goals, and the worth of man is comprised in his energy. Man's highest values must be at the farthest remove from the simplicity and directness of present existence, for which we use the pejorative expression 'merely natural.' Internal difficulties, contradictions with the external world, the insolubility of causal nexus and motives, the long travail of search and collision - these are what engage our interest. Compared to this ideal the Greek images, readily as we acknowledge their beauty, seem to us much too childlike, too uncomplicated, too empty of problems. Only what is born of strife do we recognize as significant or profound. We may find delight in the bloom of the Greek phenomenon, but we save our respect for struggle, for titanic will and demand, for all that is absolute, that pushes forward into the limitless and the superhuman, for all that is incalculable and labyrinthine in humanity. Such a conception of life can naturally find but little nurture in the Greek figures. It is indeed shut off from the large configurations which have so much to say to the ancient Greek spirit. Whereas we tend to the utmost in subjectivity - whether it be will to good or evil in its most powerful manifestations, or constraint seeking a way out and asserting itself in torment and affliction - it was the character of the Greek genius to see the realities of human existence in the eternal forms of growth and maturation, of laughter and tears, of play and earnest. His attention was directed not to forces but to pure being, and the forms of human being presented themselves with such truth that he could only revere them as gods." (OTTO 1954, pp. 232-233)

"We know that it was left for the Greek alone to look upon and comprehend man as man and that he alone coudl set himself the task of educating man to no other goal than to be himself. This is not an invention of philosophy: it belongs to the spirit that conceived the image of the Olympian gods and thus determined the direction of Greek thought. To this spirit man became, like trees and animals, a creature of eternal form whose pure lines are those of divinity. Instead of raising his powers and virtues to heaven by pious fantasy he perceived the outlines of divinity in the delineations of his own nature. All objections to Greek religion on the ground of anthropomorphism are therefore idle gossip. It did not make divinity human but regarded the essence of humanity as divine. 'The purpose and goal of the Greeks,' wrote Goethe, 'is to deify man, not to humanize deity. This is not anthropomorphism but theomorphism.' The most significant achievement of this theomorphism is the discovery of the primal image of man; this is the sublimest revelation of nature, and at the same time the most genuine manifestation of the divine." (OTTO 1954, p. 236)

"The image of divinity directs man away from the personal and towards the essentiality of nature. None of its traits calls attention to itself; none tells of an ego with peculiar will, peculiar sensibility and destiny. A definite being does indeed take shape in the image, yet this being is not of single occurrence or unique, but rather a permanent component of the living world. Hence it must always disappoint souls hungry for love who desire an intimate bond with it. Their tender longing must be chilled when, instead of an ego ready to love or hate, they encounter a timeless being, which can attribute no absolute worth to their ephemeral existence. Only a man who is touched by this reality in its loftiest and holiest sense can be drawn up to the gods in reverence and love." (OTTO 1954, pp. 236-237)

"Athena is never the divine lady of her paladin, and his prowess is not directed to win her love and honor. Like any other deity she does indeed demand that her strength and wisdom be acknowledged and that no one presume to dispense with her assistance. But she does not make it a condition of her favor that the warrior dedicated himself to her service fervently or even exclusively. Wherever a great heart throbs and rages, wherever a liberating thought flares up, there Athena is present, summoned rather by heroic readiness than by humble supplication. From her own lips we hear that she is attracted by prowess, not by good will or devotion to her person. The men who can most surely rely up on her offer her no unusual reverence, and it is unthinkable that her assistance should ever be motivated by the exemplary obedience of her protégés." (OTTO 1954, pp. 238-239) [PSA: the fact that obedient service to the god or goddess is unnecessary, is relevant to the meaning of θεραπεύειν at EE 1240b20]

"[F]or man it is dangerous to attempt to stand upon a lonely peak and be as unaffected as only gods can be. They do not require such restraint of him; they desire him to comport himself with moderation in the sphere appropriate to him, where all divinities work their effects and none will brook disdain. Differentiation between divine and human is the burden and admonition emanating from the gods. They do not speak to man of mysterious origins and ordinances, they show him no path from the natural form of his being to a superhuman condition of perfection and bliss. On the contrary, they warn him against overweening thoughts and aspirations and sharpen his perception of the order of nature.... The admonition to 'Know thyself,' which goes back, if not in the identical words, to the Homeric Apollo, means this: Observe the sacred form of nature, consider the limitations of humanity, realize what man is and how great an interval separates him from the majesty of the eternal gods!" (OTTO 1954, pp. 240-241)

"[T]he idea of divine being is not of such a nature that a man can become a god by the intensification and prolongation of his existence. Here as elsewhere the essential is not made explicit. Man is a contradictory being who participates in many conditions. Day and night, heat and cold, serenity and storm, all have claims upon him. This multiplicity, which is his delight and his torment, makes of him a limited and transitory being. He is everything, and nothing wholly - 'wholly' in the positive sense, not in the negative sense of mere exclusiveness - with the self-sufficient wholeness and abundance of the image of life. For man, singularity means distress and a forfeiture of life. Only in change can he breathe freedom and strength. It is preposterous to think of such a nature raised to the divine, the temporal to the timeless, the contradictory to the uncontradictory. Only for moments can man be wholly swept into the enchantment of singular being, and then he touches upon the perfect and the divine. Whether it be love or cognition, the higher world has begun, and as proof of its presence ego and personality are extinguished, for these belong to the transitory. But earthly nature cannot abide in this majestic singularity and wholeness; that only the god can do. Indeed, the god is this majesty and fullness." (OTTO !954, pp. 241-242) [PSA: note the connection to αὐτάρκεια as what Otto calls self-sufficient wholeness, and to Aristotle's observation that what the gods are men can attain only in divine moments of insight and fullness]

"Divinity is and remains nature, but as nature's form it is spiritual and as its perfection it is majesty and dignity, whose rays illumine the life of man. For the Greeks this is the prime meaning of insight and intelligence." (OTTO 1954, p. 247)

"[T]he spiritual is not alien to nature: in nature itself is born that sense which is expressed as nobility and majesty in the human figures of the gods. The natural may retain its abundance and vitality entire and yet be one with the spiritual, which desires to be nothing more than its consummation. Immediacy and bodily presence and at the same time eternal validity - that is the marvel of the Greek formulation." (OTTO 1954, pp. 249-250) [PSA: here 'consummation' is a fine rendering of ἐντελέχεια]

"Only a narrow and hidebound concept of ethics can lead to the view that the attribution to Athena of motives other than a will to victory was the work of later writers. Does not the character of Athena as presented by the Iliad and the Odyssey - one may say, for all time - with its essential nobility contradict such a view? Is it not significant of the ideal that she is opposed to Ares, the goddess of intelligent power as against the wild spirit of carnage? Is it not indicative of a lofty ethic that she deems only the noblest masculine characters worthy of her friendship and that she makes the nearness of her spirit felt at moments of their greatest tension of energy and thought? Do not the heroic achievements of Heracles, the clever deeds of Odysseus and the trials which he so manfully withstood breathe the nobility of Athena's character? In that case we should have to understand ethics as merely the observance of certain categorical commandments and regard all else as morally indifferent. Then, at least, Athena, like the Olympian gods generally, would take interest in anything but morality. Her divinity does not oblige this immortal to watch over strictly formulated moral laws and even less to set up a canon of what must forever be called right or wrong, good or evil. How far a powerful nature may go in a given instance remains open. Nevertheless she does raise certain requirements, and through her own being she sets them up as a living ideal before the eyes of men. In a higher sense we may call her moral, for she is not concerned with details but with the bearing of the whole man. From her we may recognize nature refined and capable of freedom, which neither follows impulses blindly nor is subjected to the categorical demands of a moral legislation. It is not to dutifulness or obedience that decision is allowed, but to insight and taste; and thus everywhere the intelligence is bound up with the beautiful." (OTTO 1954, p. 253)

"The Greek deity with its masculine temper does not assert its personality with the zeal of other gods. It does not expect that man should live only to serve it and should perform his highest achievements to glorify its person. The honor it claims is not of the exclusive sort that admits recognition of no other beside it. It rejoices in freedom of spirit and requires of human life intelligence and insight rather than devotion to specific formulae, acts, and objects." (OTTO 1954, pp. 255-256)

"Life is movement, and in movement it encounters deity as energy, revelation, and bliss; indeed the god himself is this life.... All this belongs to life's animation, to its mysterious flower, which is at every instant of its development and enrichment natural and at the same time wonderful, orderly growth and at the same time manifestation and presence of divinity." (OTT 1954, p. 285)

END