The Cosmology of Hesiod

This post is one in a series on the Epistemology and Worldview Throughout History.  Previously in this series: Introducing the Theogony.

A traditional synopsis of the Theogony might go as follows.  The gods Khaos, Gaia, and Eros "come to be".  Then Khaos gives birth to Nyx and Erebos, who in turn give birth to Hemera and Aether.  Gaia gives birth to Ouranos and Pontus.  Ouranos and Gaia beget the twelve titans, as well as the Cyclopes and the Hundred-Handed Giants.  Ouranos entraps the latter two within Gaia.  Gaia is enraged, and has Khronos, the youngest Titan, castrate his father (thereby separating earth from sky, after which he becomes master of the world.  The Titans have their own children.  To forestall a prophecy of his overthrow from coming true, Khronos devours each of his children, except Zeus, who Khronos's sister-wife saves by feeding her husband a rock in swaddling clothes.  When Zeus comes to maturity, he forces Khronos to vomit out his siblings.  Zeus and his siblings then go to war with the Titans.  With the aid of the Cyclopes and Hundred-handers, Zeus overthrows the Titans and entraps them in the underworld realm of Tartarus.  Zeus later has a final duel with Typhoes.

In Hesiod's Theogony, as in much creation mythology, inanimate objects (like earth), forces (like love), and phenomena (like night) are presented to a large degree as acting beings: they are anthropomorphized.  Thus, the story Hesiod tells might seem to be dismissed as a superhuman soap opera: an interpersonal saga, in which the characters happen to have outlandish powers.  However, the Theogony can also be viewed in a vastly different way.

The great philosopher Aristotle, who wrote some 400 years after Hesiod wrote his Theogony, made a sharp distinction between two classes of thinkers: theologi and physici.  Thetheologi impute the causes of phenomena to personal, mysterious gods, the knowledge of whom is only accessible through divine revelation.  In stark contrast, the physici look to impersonal, discernible forces which can only be detected through careful observation and reasoning.  The ranks of the theologi were supposed to be filled with poets, priests and prophets.  The ranks of physici were populated by proper philosophers.  However Aristotle made a possible exception for Hesiod.  He surmised that the great poet showed his truephysicoi colors in his cosmological formulations.

When Greek myths are translated into English, the names of the gods are left in a transliterated version of the original Greek.  Thus it can be easy to miss the fact that many (if not all) of Hesiod's gods in the Theogony are anthropomorphized representations of observable objects, forces, and phenomena.  For example, Gaia is not simply the name of "the goddess of the Earth".  "Gaia" literally means "earth" in Greek (it is the origin of our "geo-" prefixes in our words "geology" and "geography"), and Gaia was thought of as the earth itself.  Thus, if you ignore the proper noun treatment Hesiod gives to his objects, forces, and phenomena, what at first might seem like a fairy tale of love and strife between gods begetting children and blood will seem more like an impersonal account of attraction and repulsion between natural objects begetting generation and dissolution.

So, a "naturalistic" telling of the Theogony might be as follows.  First there was invisible air (Khaos).  Then earth (Gaia) and attractive/generative force (Eros) came to be.  Then out of air came a dark gas (Erebos) charged with its own motive energy (Nyx).  Out of that came a bright gas (Aether) charged with its own motive energy (Hemera).  A starry firmament (Ouranos) springs up out of the Earth, as well as salt water (Pontus).  The firmament holds the earth down, and matter from the former is compelled by the attractive force to come down upon the latter.  This process generates twelve entities, including: time (Khronos) and its motive force (Rhea), fresh water (Okeanos) and its motive force (Tethys), inquiry (Koios), intelligence (Phoebe), mortality (Iapteus), natural order (Themis), memory (Mnesomyne), and sight (Theia). The same process later generated storms (Cyclopes being the lightning and thunder and Hecatonshires being the winds), which became entrapped within the earth.  Time itself brought a halt to this process.  The twelve entities, as well as the motive energy of the dark gas (Nyx) then engendered further entities.  Some were abstract forms which would later be actualized in human affairs, such as strife, rumor, etc.  Some were material beings such as rivers and mountains.

Taken thus, Hesiod's Theogony exemplifies many important strands in the history of thought regarding "natural history".  In the Theogony, there is no one special creator, and no single instance of creation.  Instead there is a gradual process of generation and change.

Of course for all his systematic and rational presentation, Hesiod still had his "Time" entity literally castrate his "Sky" entity with a flint sickle.  His audience expected the interpersonal saga of epic poetry, and this necessitated that his cosmic powers have distinctly human characteristics.

Next  in this series: History in the Theogony.

Introducing the Theogony

This post is one in a series on the Epistemology and Worldview Throughout History.  Previously in this series: The Inspiration of Hesiod.

The Theogony is likely the work of poetry which made Hesiod's name.  In his later poem Works and Days, Hesiod tells of how he won a prominent prize for poetry, and it is likely that he won by singing his Theogony.  This performance must have been quite stunning.  In the Theogony, Hesiod discloses the history of the cosmos, telling of the birth of each cosmic entity in its turn.  He traces the passing of cosmic ages, characterizing them as a successive usurpations of divine royalty.  The tale culminates in the ultimate holy order under the reign of Zeus, the final usurper, in which mankind finds itself.  It will be necessary to summarize and briefly analyze the Theogony in order to glean from it any insights into Hesiod's epistemology.

Next in this series: The Cosmology of Hesiod.

The Inspiration of Hesiod

This post is one in a series on the Epistemology and Worldview Throughout History.  Previously in this series: Epistemology in (Western) History: From Hesiod to Hoppe.

One ancient day, at the foot of Mount Helicon in Boeotia, a lowly shepherd named Hesiod tended his flock.  Upon entering a clearing, he found to his astonishment nine unspeakably beautiful goddesses standing before him.  These were the Muses, the divine patronesses of the rhythmical arts (that which we call "music" in derivation from their name).  It is by the grace of the Muses that the choir sings, the flutist trills, and the dancer twirls.  These benificient goddesses impart their own divine abilities upon the mortals they favor.  And on that day, they chose to favor a mere shepherd.  The Muses gave Hesiod a staff of laurel to signify his new status, and literally inspired him by exhaling their "divine voice" directly into the shepherd's lungs.  With the divine voice came not only the ability to sing, but the knowledge of songs themselves.  And these were not short songs of love or worship.  These were songs that told stories: true stories.  Nor were these just brutish tales of kings and wars, but of origins: the genesis of man, the births of the gods, and the dawn of existence itself.  Thus did Hesiod the shepherd become Hesiod the poet.

At least that is what Hesiod himself says happened.  We may not take his word for it, but we should be glad that he (or one of his successors), unlike most of his poet contemporaries, took the trouble to learn how to write, and to write his poems down.  His works, written some 2,700 years ago, are, along with those of Homer, the earliest surviving works of western literature.  But Hesiod's writings do not only give us a window into the superstitions of antiquity.  For strikingly, in Hesiod's writings, situated as they are at the dawn of the western literary tradition,  we have an artifact of ancient reason.  His works evince a mind striving to work out the subtleties of natural and moral philosophy through the medium of mythology.  This is especially true with his epic poem, the Theogony, which I will discuss next.

Next in this series: Introducing the Theogony

 

Epistemology in (Western) History: From Hesiod to Hoppe

This post is one in a series on the Epistemology and Worldview Throughout History.  Previously in this series: Epistemology in History.

In the forthcoming series of posts on the history of epistemological thought, I won't start with the first thinkers to consider epistemology explicitly (like the Sophists and Plato, thinkers who flourished in the 5th and 4th centuries before Christ).  Before discussing them, I will discuss earlier philosophers (like  6th century thinkers Thales and Anaximander), considering the implicit epistemologies that underlie their doctrines.  But the point at which I will truly initiate this study will predate even them.  I will start, not with philosophers, but with poets: many of whom had world-views consistent and thoughtful enough to be characterized as doctrines (especially Hesiod and Homer).  I will attempt to discover and discuss the implicit epistemologies that underlie their beliefs.  In all of this I will focus on the western tradition: the path of intellectual influence that winds from the ancient Greek poets, to the ancient Greek philosophers, to the ancient Roman writers, to the fathers of the Catholic church, to the medieval scholastics, to the Renaissance, to the Age of Reason, to the Enlightenment and finally to the post Industrial era.

Next in this series: The Inspiration of Hesiod

Epistemology in History

This post is the first in a series on the Epistemology and Worldview Throughout History

Assertions and arguments regarding particular topics (for example, ethics, economics, physics, etc) all rest on an epistemology (whether explicitly or implicitly): that is, a theory of knowledge, truth, and falsity.  Therefore, the first task of a thorough scholar is to make the case for his own epistemology.  In a series of posts that will follow, I will work towards doing that.  But I will do so in a roundabout way: through writing a brief history of epistemological thought.  I will cover the most prominent schools of epistemology and their foremost thinkers: evaluating their doctrines as I go, and picking out the choicest bits to construct my own epistemology.

Next in this series: Epistemology in (Western) History: From Hesiod to Hoppe

Night, Day, and Induction

This post is one in a series on the Epistemology and Worldview Throughout History.  Previously in this series: Hesiod and Aristotelean Demonstration.

As I discussed in my last post, Hesiod's Eros (Love) can be thought of as a motive force that brings entities to come together (much like gravity) and to create.

Khaos felt Eros, the urge or internal force that made it seek to give birth.  And what did it first give birth to?

Erebos, or Darkness, was the first baby in the universe.  You might ask yourself, "how can darkness be “born” when darkness is just the absence of light?"  But to Hesiod the materialist, Darkness was a black mist.

Erebos was born along with its own internal force, different from Love.   The force that moves Darkness was Nyx, or Night.

Nyx was often thought of as the wife of Erebos and shown as a woman in a chariot who “wore” her husband (Darkness) like a great big cloak.  When Night came to the land, riding her chariot, she would pull her husband (darkness) over the earth like a great big tent.  Night brings darkness, literally.  Erebos and Nyx then became the universe’s first husband and wife, brought together by Eros.

Together, Erebos and Nyx had a son and daughter: Aether or Brightness and Hemera, or Day.  Aether took after his father, in that he was a shapeless mist.  But he was different in that he was a bright, glowing mist.  As you can imagine, father and son had their differences.  Hemera took after her mother, in that she was a chariot-driving force of nature.  She felt that HER husband Aether deserved to cover the earth.

Thus began an eternal rivalry.  Every morning, Day arises in the east, driving her chariot, and scattering the mists of Darkness, which she gradually replaces with the Brightness of daylight, which is pulled over the earth like a great big dome tent.  As she finishes placing the Brightness of day in its proper place of glory, she completes her conquest over Darkness by driving it westward into the underworld.  But her victory is temporary, for soon Night reemerges on the east in HER chariot, scattering the Brightness of daylight in revenge, and pulling her husband Darkness to reinstall him in his rightful place.  And so to Hesiod, the ongoing cycle of days and nights is really a cosmic battle between the first two married couples in the universe.

If we think of the mists of Daylight and Darkness as mindless masses, and knock Day and Night from their chariots and think of them as Aristotelean internal principles of change (forces), then Hesiod's cosmology can be seen as a perfectly respectable mechanical theory, worthy of a 6th century Milesian proto-scientist like Thales or Anaximander.

Let us assume that Hesiod and the other Greek poets who formulated this myth did not use Aristotelean demonstration to infer the above cosmic scheme.  Is it then devoid of a reasoned basis?  Is it pure madness, with no method?  No.  Almost all cosmic myths make some kind of sense in their own way, and Hesiod's is no exception.  But it is the kind of sense humans more generally use in considerations of the natural world: induction.  Induction, as characterized by Aristotle, is reasoning from the particular to the universal.  After a child burns his hand on a flame, he infers from that particular instance that similar particular flickering lights will generally burn his hand.  He does not deduce "burned hand" from the universal category "flame".  Similarly, after a careful ancient observer repeatedly notices that the moon progressively waxes, without waning, until it is full, and then wanes, without waxing, until it is new, he will confidently predict from these particular observations that the moon will always follow this process.

The "rotating mists" conception of day and night may have made sense to the ancient Greeks, because for all they knew, the canopies of the night and day skies were material bodies.  They seemed to move, and they seemed to meet each other at a threshold.  In countless other particular instances of daily life, they have seen the movement of bodies be impelled by the movement of other contiguous bodies.  Falling rocks strike water and make waves; waves in the ocean shove ships and capsize them.  Why wouldn't the twin canopies of the sky follow the same basic pattern?

Next in this series: Introducing Works and Days.

Hesiod and Aristotelean Demonstration

This post is one in a series on the Epistemology and Worldview Throughout History.  Previously in this series: The Epistemology of Divine Poetry.

Even though Hesiod pleads "for the Muses told me so" as his chief intellectual justification, a careful reader can glean attempts at non-divine inference in the Theogony.  In fact an extremely careful reader did just that some 400 years after Hesiod: the brilliant philosopher Aristotle.

Hesiod begins his cosmic geneology by declaring that

"in truth at first Khaos came to be."

Khaos meant space, void, or air, which to the ancient Greek, forgiveably unfamiliar with vacuums, meant much the same thing.  Khaos did not mean what the modern English word "chaos" means.  Our word "chaos" was derived from misinterpretation (whether from carelessness or poetic licence) by later authors- especially Ovid:

"Ere land and sea and the all-covering sky were made, in the whole world the countenance of nature was the same, all one, well named Chaos, a raw and undivided mass, naught but a lifeless bulk, with warring seeds of ill-joined elements compressed together."

-Ovid, Metamorphoses, Book I

In other words, the primordial chaos, according to Ovid and later authors, is a mixed-up mass of solid, liquid, and gas: rather like a cosmic cappuccino.¹

But Khaos would be more appropriately translated, as Glenn W. Most did, as "chasm".  

A chasm is not, strictly speaking, cracked earth, but the crack itself: the part where there is no earth.  (Just as for the Chinese philosopher Laozi, the path (tao) was the place in the forest where there is no forest.)

Aristotle was impressed with Hesiod's placement of Khaos at the beginning of things.

Again, the theory that the void exists involves the existence of place: for one would define void as place bereft of body. 

These considerations then would lead us to suppose that place is something distinct from bodies, and that every sensible body is in place. Hesiod too might be held to have given a correct account of it when he made chaos first. At least he says: 

'First of all things came chaos to being, then broad-breasted earth,' implying that things need to have space first, because he thought, with most people, that everything is somewhere and in place. If this is its nature, the potency of place must be a marvellous thing, and take precedence of all other things. For that without which nothing else can exist, while it can exist without the others, must needs be first; for place does not pass out of existence when the things in it are annihilated. 

Aristotle, Physics, Book IV

In other words, before any thing existed there had to be a place for it to exist in.²

After Khaos, Earth (Gaia) next came to be, followed by Love (Eros).

Aristotle was also impressed at Hesiod's placement of Love (Eros) near the beginning of things.  In it, he recognized Hesiod as implying...

that among existing things there must be from the first a cause which will move things and bring them together.

Aristotle, Metaphysics, Book I

In other words before any thing underwent change, there had to have been a cause or force to bring about the change.  The first two entities were Khaos and Gaia.  Note that Hesiod never said that Khaos gave birth to Gaia: the latter just kind of "happened".  So nothing at that point had been born out of anything else yet: nothing has changed from one state to another.  Khaos and Gaia might have gone on forever without creating anything unless they felt the urge to.  This motive force, this "urge to create", had to exist first.  And Hesiod called this "urge to create" “Eros” or "Love".

So, according to Aristotle, Hesiod may have thought that the pre-existence of "place" is a necessary implication of the existence of bodies.  And the pre-existence of "cause" or "force" is a necessary implication of the existence of change.

Aristotle called such reasoning (from the universal to the particular) a deduction, or syllogism.

"Place" is contained in the category of "Body", but not vice versa; therefore, "Place" must have preceded "Body".

"Cause" is contained in the category of "Change", but not vice versa; therefore "Cause" must have preceded "Change."

What's more, Hesiod's deduction is not merely a word game (like "All As are Bs; all Bs are Cs; therefore all As are Cs").  Rather it says something about the real world.  Aristotle called a deduction that produces knowledge about reality a "demonstration."  Aristotelean demonstrations have been the holy grail of rationalist thinkers from Parmenides to Descartes to Hans-Hermann Hoppe.

As much as I respect Hesiod as a thinker with more subtlety than classicists give him credit for, Aristotle does seem to have been a tad too generous in the deductive sophistication he is crediting to the great poet.  That is not to say that Hesiod only had divine inspiration as his epistemological foundation: for the careful reader can also glean inductive reasoning from Hesiod's beliefs, as I shall discuss in my next post.

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¹Ovid and the other writers may have confused Khaos with the primeval, undifferentiated mud of the rival theogeny attributed to Orpheus, which in turn may have been influenced by the Mesopotamian conception of the world's primal state as an undifferentiated mass:

When on high heaven was not named,

And the earth beneath did not yet bear a name,

And the primeval Apsû, who begat them,

And chaos, Tiamat, the mother of them both,

Their waters were mingled together,

And no field was formed, no marsh was to be seen;

When of the gods none had been called into being

-Enuma Elish, Babylonian poem from the 18th century BC

²Someone allegedly asked Thales (considered the first philosopher) what the biggest thing in existence is, to which he replied:

"place, for it contains all things."

Diogenes, Laertius, The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers

Next in this series: Night, Day, and Induction.