One must have courage,
they must overcome, they must achieve and they must be willing to do these things
or be these things with an end result that will benefit others. To do so is to fulfill one’s own fate; to
know that all is done that can be done.
These things, according to Professor Ambrosio, are the characteristics of
a hero in the Greek cultural tradition.
Even Zeus was limited by necessity, that is, he was
limited by ananke. In the Greek
mythopoetic tradition, ananke is only one of the central concepts: ananke,
moira and arête. Ananke creates moira
and by accepting moira people have arête.
Necessity creates one’s fate and by accepting that fate people can reach
heroic excellence. An example of moira
was, for Zeus, accepting that his son must die, that he can not intervene
because by necessity he needed to act as a god first, a father second. Though this acceptance was painful, he did
reach heroic excellence, or arête, by doing so.
He had to live out the destiny before him in such a way that only he
could do.
In the historical development of the heroic ideal, the
meaning of human existence surrounds the idea that fate is the primary goal,
the thing that will provide the human with a chance at self fulfillment and an
opportunity to fulfill their personal goal.
While reaching one’s goal does not depend on a god or on the hereafter
in any way, it is religious based on the fact that it is bound by a type of vow
or commitment, as religion is. While
working toward staying true to this vow, this fulfillment of one’s fate, there is
a struggle. This struggle is the main
point of it all. In order to be the
heroic ideal, the struggle must be pursued to the end with the hero doing
everything that he can in order to reach the goal, everything that is possible,
and everything that he is capable of doing.
During the time when the Greek city-state was emerging,
there was a change of focus.
Individualism was no longer the primary goal as it had been in the time
of tribal organization, when there was a class structure within Greek society. At this time, the Oresteia was introduced and
there began tragic drama. In the
Oresteia, there was the playing out of the first trial by jury. These tragic dramas were a new way of
honoring the gods, as well as entertaining the people. For these dramas, just like the Olympic
games, there was a competition. And in
this competition the chance did exist to fulfill arête. That is, through competition with others, one
had to compete with their own self in order to produce the best work possible.
According to Aristotle, the best of the tragic hero would
be art that should imitate life, in that people should be able to identify with
the hero character in a play. People, as
well as the gods, should be excited by either fear or pity or both. Aristotle did not feel that a true tragic
hero was neither all good nor all bad; he felt that the average citizen had to
be able to see themselves in such a person in order to be able to identify with
them.
Looking at Plato’s work, he delves more deeply into root
of what makes a heroic citizen tick. He
asks and attempts to answer the question of whether or not citizenship itself
gives meaning to one’s life, does it provide hope? In the Apology, Plato recognized and
portrayed Socrates on trial. Socrates is
well known, according to Professor Ambrosio’s lectures, as the father of
questioning. In the Apology, we get to
see Socrates and the ideal of the citizen hero play out from its beginning to its
end. Socrates was the living answer to
his own questioning. “I shall give you
proofs of this, not words but what you esteem, deeds.” (Plato, 2006) and in the Apology we get to
see what a living answer is, how he traveled about asking this question and
having dialog with others in order to find out his place in the world and what
it all means. Socrates famously died for
this, he died for living out the question of what his arête would be, and as he
accepted this fate, he became the ideal.
By the time the Roman empire took over, the questions
that Socrates, Plato as well as Aristotle had presented had been mulled over
and discussed within text and in the classroom of life for many years. The differences between Plato and his pupil,
Aristotle, were profound. Plato believed
in Socratic existence as the primary way to reach the heroic ideal, theory was
secondary. Aristotle believed theory
should come first and then one could live out the heroic ideal. For both, however, contemplation was the
highest level of human fulfillment.
Then
came Marcus Aurelis. Next to Socrates,
according to Professor Ambrosio, he most likely has the strongest claim to
living out the heroic ideal. However, by
the time of Roman stoicism, which was the time when Marcus Aurelis lived, the
rules of the game had begun to change quite a bit. People no longer had their focus on nature or
how they would draw their fate from it; they rather had their focus on the rule
of human law. Marcus Aurelis tried to
keep the idea of heroic ideal alive.
Through his beautiful meditations, he attempted to make it live on but
instead it appeared to be the last hoorah of the living out of fate that can
only come from a citizenship that existed in a world that was falling by the
wayside.
REFERENCES
Ambrosio, F. Philosophy,
Religion, and the Meaning of Life (The Great Courses Series). Lecture 3.
Ambrosio, F. Philosophy,
Religion, and the Meaning of Life (The Great Courses Series), Lecture 4.
Ambrosio, F. Philosophy,
Religion, and the Meaning of Life (The Great Courses Series), Lecture 5.
Ambrosio, F. Philosophy,
Religion, and the Meaning of Life (The Great Courses Series), Lecture 6.
Ambrosio, F. Philosophy,
Religion, and the Meaning of Life (The Great Courses Series), Lecture 7.
Plato. (2006).
Apology. Classics of Western Philosophy, 7th ed, 36.
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