DETERMINATION OF THE LIFE STRENGHT IN HOMER’S POETRY

Abstract

The gods from Homer’s epics are not something opposite to or excluded from nature (φύσις). Their world is an expression of nature (φύσις), the world from which аrrangement will the term cosmos arise where the geometric order will connotate a justice (δίκη) and its limit. Identity from the topic comes from the indetermination and not from the considering of that divine and natural in itself. The identity of divine and nature (φύσις) is substantial insofar as divine exists in the Homer world in a natural way, just as natural exists in the divine way. Moreover, we can say that Homer understands the life strength as the expression of the natural, which in his epic is nothing other than the expression of the divine. But they, the gods and the nature, are not intertwined only by a simple epic image, nor are the terms that this work forms within the frame of Homer's understanding of the life strength, just metaphors. They are united by the events of the world, contain the reflection of a living event, determine the causes that trigger events, and in that sense they are on the other side of ontological dualism. Therefore, the paper considers the thesis that the ontological dualism of the soul and body finds its roots in antiquity, and explores, through an analytical diachronic and hermeneutical method, whether and in what context we can recognize it in Homer's epic poetry. The basic thesis, of the previous studies in the literature, about Homer's psychological terminology is rejected. Instead, the work starts from the aforementioned organic unity of the divine and the nature (φύσις) in the terms of the life strength which the Iliad and Odyssey sing about. The question of the distinction between the soul and the body this work sees as a consequence of the metaphysical reduction of the term of life strength, and not as the original homeric question. The paper makes the classification of terms that describe the life strength on: the life strength of heartbeat (ἦτορ, κῆρ, φρένες/φρήν, κραδίη, πραπίδες.), the life strength of observation (βουλή, νόος, ψυχὴ i θυμός) and the life strength of limbs (δέμας, γυῖα, μέλεα, χρώς, σῶμα). Homer's rich terminological mismatch, which shows the first explanations of movement and driving forces inseparable from the notions of life and death, allows us to understand the connection between soul (ψυχὴ) and life (ζωή) and to make a way to the philosophy of the nature of early Pre-socratics.