From: shmage-AT-pipeline.com
Date: Wed, 25 Sep 1996 04:09:48 GMT
Subject: Re: Re: Mental illness


On Mon,Sep 23, 1996 1:09:27 PM, Andrew Wayne Austin wrote (inter alia): 
 
>> If the ancient Greeks did not have a concept of individual agency, 
>> or at most a concept of co-agency with the gods, did wholly human agency

>> *in fact* not exist?  Or to take a modern example, if people in the U.S.

>> have no concept of class agency, would that mean there is no class
agency 
>> as a real force in the U.S.?  I ask this without assuming classes are or

>> aren't actually agents: the point is whether the presence or absence of
a 
>> concept means the presence or absence of the reality. 
> 
>With regards to ancient Greece, human agency is a construction created in 
>a latter age in a different culture, as Tobin has pointed out. He asserts 
>what I would assert, that human agency did not exist, and I assume, 
>therefore, it was not an objective reality. We have now objectivated the 
>ontology of human agency. I see nothing that would prevent the social 
>scientist from applying the (relatively new) social construct of human 
>agency in understanding the Greek culture.  
 
This view (of the nonexistence of the "concept" of human agency, let alone
of human agency itself, in ancient Greece) is surprisingly widespread
despite its complete unfoundedness.  It seems to have been cobbled together
>from some metaphors in Homer,  some dramatic conventions of the tragedians,
and a 
completely literal-minded reading of some few myths.  To get this silly
idea out of your heads, consider a few instances: 
-In Homer, what agency, except his own, is a motivating force for any of
the actions of Odysseus? 
-What did Herakleitos mean by "a man's character is his daimon"? 
-What god or other-than-human agency inspired Klytemnaestra to avenge the  
      
 murder of her daughter and Aegisthos that of his brothers?   
-Where in the whole history of humanity do we find a better example of a   
 
 man fully responsible for his life, thoughts, and deeds than Sokrates? 
-Where in Thucydides, Plato, or Aristotle is there any mention, even
mention 
 of the possibility, of any agency other than other than human  for human 
 actions? 
 
Since our philosophical dialogue is meaningless except as part of an
organic intellectual process not only born but largely shaped in the Greek
world of 2500 and more years ago, it ill behooves us to treat our first
teachers as madmen. 
 
Regards, 
                   Shane Mage