The Greek Concept of Justice: From Its Shadow in Homer to Its Substance in Plato (review)

Book Reviews Eric A. Havelock. The Greek Concept ofJuatice: From Its Shadow in Homer to Its Substance in Plato. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1978. Pp. ix + 382. $16.5o. The Greek Concept of Justice continues the enterprise begun in Havelock's Preface to P/at0---"the exploration of the growth of the Greek mind." The book has two major threads of general argument. The first offers an interpretation of the function of oral epic. The second accounts for the move from oral storage to literate composition . The two are connected as an analysis of the development of the Greek notion of justice from Homer the oral poet to Plato the literate analyst. Grant that the survival of a culture depends vitally upon the storage of information about that culture. Such storage requires fixity of the information stored: if it dilapidates, the culture will erode with it. Fixity may be achieved either by means of written documents, physically resisting change and decay, or by means of memorized material. So in a nonliterate society, cultural material must be memorized. And in this way the "anthropological grammar" of the society--its common experience, its recommendations and "directives" for everyday living--may remain fixed. Suppose, furthermore, that someone--be it poet, playwright, or historian--takes it upon himself to teach his fellows the ways of their culture. His objective will be to record the "anthropological grammar" of his society; but, at the same time, he must acknowledge that his society is composed of individuals who rebel against the norms of the society to which they belong. Realism, therefore, will require him to record the conflict between individuals and social directives, while his didactic purpose will impel him to resolve the conflict in favor of the culture and at the expense of the individual. At the same time, his composition must be memorable. So the poet exploits rhythm (for a rhythmic utterance is easy to remember) and a rational sequence, to be recalled in order. Furthermore, if his audience is to care about what he says, it must be enjoyable. The result will be a narrative poem full of action and conflict. The deed is the thing, and its doer is larger than life. So the activities of anthropomorphized gods and vivid heroes will be the song of the oral poet.' Rhetoric there will be, but confrontation and resolution will be case by case. Thus there will be neither the conceptual apparatus nor the social structure to provoke a discussion of principles. The second general argument develops this analysis of oral culture into the literary age. Given Havelock's supposition about the need for a culture to preserve itself, a literate culture will do so, not by means of oral composition, but by means of Thus Homer was a didact, the composer of the "supreme tribal encyclopaedia." That term will be familiar to readers of Preface to Plato (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1963). [197] ~98 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY written documents. As a consequence, whereas in an oral culture the structure of a piece is perceived by the ear, a literate culture will rely on the eye to understand the visual architecture of a piece of literature. And without the need to memorize, the literate composer will be freed from the requirement to tell a story. As a didact he will be able to utilize generalizations. The subject of his sentences may be general, impersonal, and timeless, as may his predicates; and subject and predicate will be linked by the colorless copula "is," as the writer records facts and principles, not doughty deeds. Havelock argues that the development of Greek literature embodies the slow and gradual replacement of the ear by the eye as the instrument of appreciation and analysis. Hence come the angularities of Hesiod's "poem to justice" (Worksand Days ~a3ff. ), where aural memories and visual architecture combine to produce, in Havelock 's view, a conceptual mess. In the succeeding centuries, the concept of justice begins to emerge, but still in a mess, a field of meaning, lacking conceptual clarity. The reason for this, apparently, is the failure of Greek culture to develop the verb "to be" as a copula until the work...