Odysseus, Hero of Practical Intelligence: Deliberation and Signs in Homer's Odyssey

In dramatic representations and narrative reports of inner deliberation the Odyssey displays the workings of the human mind and its hero's practical intelligence, epitomized by anticipating consequences and controlling his actions accordingly. Once his hope of returning home as husband, father and king is renewed on Calypso's isle, Odysseus shows a consistent will to focus on this purpose and subordinate other impulses to it. His fabled cleverness is now fully engaged in a gradually emerging plan, as he thinks back from that final goal through a network of means to achieve it. He relies on "signs"—inferences in the form "if this, then that" as defined by the Stoic Chrysippus—and the nature of his intelligence is thematically underscored through contrast with others' recklessness, that is, failure to heed signs or reckon consequences. In Homeric deliberation, the mind is torn between competing options or intentions, not between "reason" and "desire." The lack of distinct opposing faculties and hierarchical organization in the Homeric mind, far from archaic simplicity, prefigures the psychology of Chrysippus, who cites deliberation scenes from the Odyssey against Plato's hierarchical tri-partite model. From the Stoics, there follows a psychological tradition leading through Hobbes and Leibniz, to Peirce and Dewey. These thinkers are drawn upon to show the significance of the conception of "thinking" first articulated in the Odyssey. Homer's work inaugurates an approach that has provoked philosophical conflict persisting into the present, and opposition to pragmatism and Pragmatism can be discerned in prominent critiques of Homer and his hero which are analyzed and countered in this study.

Table of Contents:
Chapter 1 Preface Chapter 2 Introduction Chapter 3 Part I: The Heart of Intelligence: Anticipating Consequences: In medias res: Two Critical Passages; Wily Yet Single-Minded; Recklessness vs. Consideration; Metis as Thinking Ahead and Then Back; Noos as Purpose in Odysseus and Zeus Chapter 4 Part II: The Contest of Philosophies: Plato and Chrysippus Claim Homer; Chrysippus's Conception of Human Motivation; Discourse and Division Within the Homeric Self; 'Mind'less Pragmatic Odysseus: Snell; German Pragmatisms: Leibniz and Kant; German P Chapter 5 Part III: Signs and Identity: Cognition and Recognition: Reconnaissance and Recognition; Homer's 'sema' and the Aristotelian and Stoic 'semeion'; More Shifts in the Foundation of Signs; Signs in Hobbes' 'Discursion' and 'Prudence'; The Scar as Sign: Chapter 6 Appendix: Writing and Oral Tradition Interact in Homer Chapter 7 Bibliography Chapter 8 Index of Names Chapter 9 Index of Concepts

About the Author :
Jeffrey Barnouw is Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of Texas at Austin. Professor Barnouw holds a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from Yale University. He is also author of Propositional Perception: Phantasia, Predication and Sign in Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics (University Press of America, 2002).

Review :
Barnouw…offer[s] insight into Stoic psychology from an unusual intellectual standpoint; the most original feature is the analogy with the ideas of the American Pragmatists. Attempting to demolish Bruno Snell's view—and seeing Odysseus's behavior as a harbinger of pragmatism—Barnouw contends that the wily-yet-single-minded, crafty-yet-persistent hero manages to return to Ithaca as a husband, father, son, and king, using a complex stoic strategy of exchanging present pain for future pleasure (as opposed to a Platonic hierarchical model)....This is a book for specialists in Homeric, historical, and philosophical studies. Summing Up: RECOMMENDED. Graduate students, researchers, faculty. This important book presents a vast panorama of contexts for the reading of the epic. [This book] is an interesting contribution to the understanding of Homer and, perhaps more, of a set of later philosophical and psychological theories which, as Barnouw convincingly demonstrates, have much in common with Homer's poetic descriptions.