Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-m8qmq Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-17T22:27:42.278Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

11 - Early interest in knowledge

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 May 2006

By
J. H. Lesher
Edited by
A. A. Long
A. A. Long
Affiliation:
University of California, Berkeley
Get access

Summary

POETIC PESSIMISM AND PHILOSOPHICAL OPTIMISM

The Greek philosophers were not the first to reflect on the nature and limits of human knowledge; that distinction belongs to the poets of archaic Greece. In Book XVIII of the Odyssey, for example, the failure of Penelope's suitors to sense the disaster awaiting them prompts some famous remarks on the mental capacities of the species from the disguised Odysseus:

Nothing feebler does earth nurture than a human being,

Of all the things that breathe and move upon the earth.

For he thinks that he will never suffer evil in the time to come.

So long as the gods grant him excellence and his knees are quick;

But when again the blessed gods decree him sorrow,

This too he bears with an enduring heart,

For such is the mind (noos) of human beings upon the earth,

Like the day the father of gods and men brings to them. (130-37)

Here, as on other occasions in the Homeric poems, the thoughts of mortals reflect only their present experiences,- the events that lie ahead lie also beyond their powers of comprehension. Conversely, when the gods choose to endow an individual with superhuman powers of insight, his knowledge is distinguished by its vast range:

Calchas, the son of Thestor, far the best of diviners Who knew the things that were, that were to be, and that had been before.

(II I.60-70)
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Companion to Early Greek Philosophy , pp. 225 - 249
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 1999

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×