Potentially Every Culture Is All Cultures

With a focus on the role of Achilles in the Iliad, this essay argues that it is a mistake to assume that languages and cultures are closed totalities impervious to influence from the outside and from internally driven transformations. If we eliminate that assumption, several others likewise become untenable, including the assumption that precise meanings for words or concepts are available in principle. Objectivism and relativism are claimed to be equally chimerical.