Introduction
“Who Killed Homer?” is a book by Hanson & Heath (2001) that seeks to explain why classics are dying. The authors of the book resolve the imperative issues of the untimely end and demise of classical Greek education in the West. The book discusses the actions that must be taken to take the Classics off life support and what has to be done to teach the newer generations about this concept. The authors are Classicists who have worked as professors in the Classics faculty to teach learners between 1970 and 1980. Hanson and Heath (2001) argue that the cause of the fall of Classical learning in the contemporary world is ignorance of Greek wisdom. They further maintain that the fall of Classical education is quantifiable and actual and that the Classicists should blame themselves for why most students do not major in classical courses. The authors claim that if people lose the knowledge of the Greeks, they risk losing knowledge of who they are. This report aims to cover the key points and concepts that Hanson and Heath (2001) portray to the audience in “Who Killed Homer?” through the narrative, characters, and setting.
Reasons Why Classics is Dying
Hanson and Heath (2001) claim that Homer is dead and has been killed by the classists, and by so doing, they have more broadly destroyed American education and its way of life. The authors use the term Homer as a synonym for Greek wisdom. It is a dedication to self-criticism, open inquiry, free expression, anti-aristocratic thinking, and disinterested science and thought, immune from the educts of a priest, king, and general (Hanson & Heath, 2001, p.79). According to the authors, until the 1960s, classics, having tolerated a series of assaults, enabled individuals to preserve the integrity of their households, individual honesty, and political responsibility. Classical studies have reinforced the best of the Western tradition, although it has been killed by greedy materialism.
Additionally, Hanson and Heath (2001) claim that the classicists have murdered Greek wisdom by allowing continental theory and multiculturalism to infect the discipline. Similarly, the classicists have placed and prioritized their ambitions ahead of pedagogical commitment by publishing more professional works and teaching fewer learners. In addition, the classicists are more focused on publications and conferences instead of engaging directly with texts and learners. The modish poststructuralist hypothesis and multiculturalism were used to aid the classicists in advancing professionally. Provided that those in power, according to Hanson and Heath (2001), it should appeal to their sensibility to obtain the grants and release time that results in more publications, in turn leading to a salary increase.
What Needs to be Done to Revive the Homer
According to the authors, the best solution to bring back Greek wisdom and the American values it used to exemplify is by raising the standards of the university curriculum and academic profession. Even though Hanson and Heath (2001) emphasize the significance of educational breath, they need to pay more attention to the importance of specialized, close analysis to sharpen the learners’ intellects. The authors of the book also insist that classicists have a moral responsibility to disseminate knowledge of antiquity for the sake of Western culture. In addition, young American generations must be taught that the key aspects of their culture originate from the ancients. Surprisingly, most of the new ages do not understand that the apex court cannot interpret the American constitution and its history without referring to the fifth-century Athenian governance and Polybios and Aristotle on the mixed constitution. The authors fail to explain why this knowledge is crucial and forget to mention the enormous impact of Puritanism and the Torah on shaping modern culture in the United States.
Key Points and Central Concept
Both authors attempt to cure the ills facing people in several different ways. First, Hanson and Heath (2001) seem to attack the present state of the classics, and secondly, blame the decline of the classicists’ courses, especially for the individuals who refer to themselves as politically right. Thirdly, they claim that regardless of the present endeavors to deny or undermine the Greek legacy, the Greeks were genuinely tremendous and should be acknowledged. Finally, they recommend specific actions for revamping the discipline of classics and the university system in America by adhering to a strict core curriculum. The putative targeted attack by the book authors is the scholars who engaged in feminist studies, psychoanalysis, deconstruction, rhetorical studies, and narratology. Their attempts to demystify and critique Romans and Greeks make them traitors to the cause of classical learning, who have put the dismembered limbs of the Greeks on a silver platter. They have offered them up on the altars of higher theory and selfish careerism (Hanson & Heath, 2001, p.82). Thus, Greek wisdom plays, at best, a crucial part in the modern American cultural landscape.
Moreover, the authors are right to identify the last half of the 20th century as a period of radical social upheaval, even though the scholars who remain politically aware and active shall find their pessimistic history of the 1960s tendentious. According to Hanson and Heath (2001), classicists made minimal or no attempts to respond to these changes. They started to tailor their research and course offerings to pander to the increased relative values of the American community and academe. The scholars abandon the problems facing the classics and American intellectual discourse in support of a foggy discourse on modern ethical decay. Instead, they should question a history of the late 20th century that chiefly ascribes its major social transformations to a moral cause.
The behaviors and language associated with political correctness bear the brunt of the authors’ attack, which are the essential crippling aspects of the Greek legacy: free speech and the power to differentiate wrong from right. By contrast, Greek wisdom must be admired for its accurate labeling of words: neither the poet nor the Greek audience had time for the mitigations of old age, disability, and poor upbringing that corrupt contemporary ethical sensibility and legal judgments. Thus, the satirical dismissal by the authors of the complex current developments in legal and social ethics blinds them to what even the first-time reader of the narrative observes.
The authors concur with Nietzsche that the emergence of Judaism on the world horizon was bad for Western culture, but this should not be ignored. However, the authors gave their best lip service to the culture and literature of the ancient Romans. That is illustrated when they take up the contradiction between the nature of humankind and social justice (Hanson & Heath, 2001, p.45). They contend that innocent liberals seem to make a seam where none exists and fail to understand that the law is the solution and that the Romans established the grand edifice of law. Another overstated topic is that the modern residents of the world are the American way of life and wish to immigrate to the U.S. shores, which the authors argue is the triumph of the tradition of ancient Greece manifested in the U.S. In this section, Hanson and Heath (2001) criticize the translation of the excerpts from the Bible, which, in their opinion, distorts, weakens, and bowdlerizes the texts by replacing race and gender-sensitive language with hurtful words.
The status of females in Greek times was sadly inferior to that of males; the appearance of influential women personalities in Greek art virtually balances out a phenomenon that the authors think. The existence of characters including Antigone, Medea Clytemnestra, and Alcestis proves to the authors’ satisfaction that the Greeks can reason critically about their gender hierarchies (Hanson & Heath, 2001, p.104). Historically, the authors argue that females have been discriminated against and cannot enjoy their responsibilities and equal rights. From this perspective, the true legacy of feminism is the destruction of the community and family values. When classicists engage in gay, feminist, and cultural studies, that unpacks how ancient texts speak to the current practices and beliefs. That implies that they do so partially in response to the cultural imperatives of postmodernity.
The authors suggest that one of the ways by which the Greek intellectual tradition continues to impact 20th-century discourse would be its valorization of self-criticism. As the defenders of Greek values, Hanson and Heath (2001) argue that individuals should look at their insistence on the unadulterated greatness of the Greeks and the open nature of their cultural production. Generally, their view on this premise discloses gaps of knowledge that seriously compromise their critiques of the scholars. Another theme the authors are getting to the readers is the tragic sense of life. The authors constantly thunder against a worldview that shall not accommodate itself to tragedy. Alternatively, an individual may argue that this theme is fundamentally anti-democratic and thus irrelevant to the American lifestyle. Others might claim its grip on 5th-century Athens was a holdover of the aristocratic resistance to revolutionary, active democracy. This is contrary to what the authors argue that most American learners are face to face with more misery that appears to have existed in the halcyon age.
Conclusion
In conclusion, the authors love the Greeks and believe that Western culture is the unadulterated and direct descendant of the Greeks. They do not speculate on the fascinating complexities of the influence of Greece on the constitutions, the state of modern science and philosophy, notions of private property, and consensual government. The study of classics conventionally covers the time from Greek wisdom to the decline of the Roman empire. While the writers argue individuals revive classics as more conventionally taught, they frequently equate this resurrecting Homer. The authors conflate the different ethical visions that a person found in this vast expanse with those of the so-called classical period when Athens flourished as an artistic and political center. The authors appear insensitive to one of the primary ethical considerations of the greatest classical thinkers. They further question the consistency of the system of values at the center of their culture and their values themselves, finding ambiguity. Lastly, the conservatives have destroyed classical studies, lavishing the traditions that shaped Western culture and ruining a dignified profession rather than keeping the Roman and Greek flame burning.
Reference
Hanson, V. D., & Heath, J. (2001). Who killed Homer?: The demise of classical education and the recovery of Greek wisdom. Encounter books.