Homer
c. 8th century BC · Early Greek Thought · Renowned
Homer is the poet credited with the Iliad and the Odyssey, the founding epics of Greek literature. Whether one man wrote them is argued to this day; the poems came out of generations of oral performance. What they hand down is a code: warriors chase honor while they live and a fame that outlasts them, while gods meddle for their own reasons above a fate that even the gods cannot cancel.
Signature
The position Homer is most identified with in the Profiler:
- War
- leans Militarism
- Highest Good
- Honor
Positions on the 4 axes the sources answer
- The Divine
- leans Describable (18 on a 0–100 scale from Describable to Indescribable)
- Ground of Being
- leans Immanence (25 on a 0–100 scale from Immanence to Transcendence)
- Ethics
- mildly leans Means (69 on a 0–100 scale from Ends to Means)
- War
- leans Militarism (85 on a 0–100 scale from Pacifism to Militarism)
16 of 20 axes are left blank: the sources do not answer them, or Homer refused the framing. Nothing is imputed; a blank is not a middling score.
Foundational questions
- Theology
- Polytheism
What is your position on the existence and nature of God or gods? - Government
- Monarchy
What is your ideal form of government? - Highest Good
- Honor
What is the highest good? - Good and Evil
- Moral Tragedy
What is the fundamental nature of good and evil? - End of Things
- Age of Decline
What is the ultimate end of all things? - Knowledge
- Grounded in God
What is the ultimate foundation of knowledge? - Ethics Basis
- Virtue
What is the ultimate basis of ethics? - Agency
- Synergism
What is the nature of human agency and freedom? - Time
- Mythic Time
What is the fundamental shape of time? - Economy
- Gift Economy
What is the ideal organization of economic life? - Authority
- Hereditary
What is the legitimate source of authority? - Law
- Customary Law / Divine Law
What is the ultimate source of legitimate law? - Death
- Multiple Souls
What happens at death? - Role of Emotion
- Irrational Driver
What is the proper role of emotion?