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IV. Homer (1967) Lecture Given By Heinrich Blücher HOMER In the mythical time we have been considering the whole human development of God consciousness, world consciousness, and man consciousness had been one. There had been no clear distinctions developed within one body, and so in that way no progress was possible. All of the lines of development of the fifth, and sixth centuries B.C. in different countries signaled the breaking of myths, and as we have observed, this meant that distinctions, and sharp distinctions were made between the three factors of man's gaining consciousness. A gaining consciousness of himself (human consciousness), a gaining consciousness of the world (world consciousness), and a gaining consciousness of God (God consciousness). Buddha took the idea of God, heightened it a little bit in the absolute, and then put it beyond the world, not personalizing it, not really developing it, even refusing to develop a God consciousness, but maintaining it only as a kind of background against which man consciousness and world consciousness could be developed. It was one of the first sharp distinctions and we have seen the results. Lao Tze did the same thing. He kept the idea of God consciousness impersonal and in the background. The idea of the Tao still means a unity (or possible unity) of world consciousness and man consciousness. Zarathrustra's idea was clearer than most, but it didn't have any real effect. He separated God consciousness and man consciousness by making God the maker of man, but then he left him alone. There was no contact possible, no further development of God consciousness, but only the development of man consciousness and world consciousness. The Hebrew solution was a tremendous one sided development of God consciousness, at the cost of the development of man and world consciousness. Man consciousness was developed in a certain way, but it was restricted. Even with the absolutizing of the Hebrew religion; namely, making God even greater than in the Christian religion, the freedom for which man was created could not really be used. It could be used in both religions for only one purpose: Obeying God or disobeying God. The choice between good and evil. There was no other choice what so ever. The development of those religions (Judaism and Christianity) brought about a relationship to God that was one of servitude. Only Abraham made a distinction (between worship and servitude) but the Jews never took it up and developed it. You will always find in the Bible "thy servant, thy servant, they servant, thy servant". We have seen how the secularization of this in western history has led to the permanent sustained servitude (of the Jews), and readiness for servitude, before absolute kings (who claimed to be the vicars of God on earth), and the Pope (who claimed to be the vicar of God on earth). Whatever they were teaching, it amounted to one thing: Servitude. So the progress of man consciousness was very restricted. He was the crown of creation. He was the highest being. It was said of him that he ruled the world, but he couldn't rule the world as long as he was kept in servitude. In that respect, we will look now at the beginning of real freedom, and we will find it here also limited. But at least in the development of the whole Greek (or Hellenic) culture, there was one iron clad will at the bottom. That Hellenes would never be slaves. That they would never be servants. They insisted on their independence, and were the first people in the world to create a polis (which means a community of free men). It was achieved at the price of slavery; alright, that is a very bad thing, but it was done for the very first time. People lived together in agreement on certain aims. The main aim for them was [blank in transcript--greek word?], or freedom. They decided to live in freedom under the law. What did they understand by the law? The law, as it existed for the Hebrews, was a law given by God, by an absolute power and an absolute person. A law that was held to be inviolable and unchangeable. The law of the Greeks is another idea. It is an idea copied from their notion of the cosmos, that there are evolving laws in nature, and that we can agree upon them (we can see them to be so) and if necessary, we can change them in order to keep up our freedom. It is an entirely different context. The man we meet who built the foundation for, what we call here the metaphsyical assumptions (that means: the consistent world view and life view) that led the Hellenes to the development of their culture, was, strangely enough, a singer. We have met up to now only personalities as the breakers of myths, great thinkers like Buddha, Lao Tze, Zarathrustra, Abraham, and the Hebrew prophets. They are all breakers of myths in their own way, but they are primarily thinking or prophetic personalities. No one of them was a singer. We meet now a singer: Homer, and we find the strange phenomenon that he also belongs among the breakers of myth. He designed, in an almost unbelievably poetic way, a new position of man in the world; a new relationship between world consciousness, man consciousness, and God consciousness, almost as if he had been (not only a singer) but a philosopher (a great thinker). He must have been. That it could happen that the Greek, or Hellenic culture (whose sole development lasted only five hundred years and then broke down) was built by this person, a singer (a poet) must be explained. It is anchored in the difference of Greek myth from all other kinds of myth. Greek myth was a development of mythical thinking that concentrated more on the human being than any other kind of myth. That is what Homer inherited. It is the material that he takes into his epics. It also has another side (which seems to contradict the idea of the development of humanity, or human consciousness), and that is the strange hatred that runs through all Greek (Hellenic) myths of monsters. The heroes of Greek myth are monster slayers. Here we have an early symbol of the fact that they wanted a world (a cosmic world) without monsters, and that slowly the human being (including the human body), was to become the model of that world. When Homer appeared on the scene in the eighth century BC (it is in that sense that we are considering him one of the breakers of myth, perhaps, except for some of the Hebrew prophets, one of the earliest) he wrote his poems. There is another indication in Greek myth (of what we have been saying), and it has been rendered to us by the Greek poet Pindar who lived in the fifth century BC He records, out of memory, a myth the Greeks once believed in. He might have interpreted it, he might have added something, we cannot find out. The myth goes this way. Zeus put the world into order. He found it in
chaos, and he It is a story about the origin of the muses. The consequences of this is that the Greeks were inclined to call all human occupations (that is, what we are calling here in this course the human creative gifts, or creative faculties) poetry, including politics. There is a muse of politics, a muse of rhetoric, there is [Urania?], the muse of the natural sciences. All the occupations that man engaged in were called poetry, and although we don't think so any more, this belief led to the consequence that they could only believe (and finally only wanted to believe, this highly artistic people, the first plainly artistic people that we see) in a singer. When the Greeks came to Egypt, and talked with the Egyptians, the Egyptians proudly said to them that "our gods are the oldest gods in the world". "We have always admired them and adored than, but what about your gods"? And the Greeks answered "oh, our gods are the youngest in the world". "They have been fashioned for us by Hesiod and Homer". |
