The Odyssey and the Fall of Man

 

Over my trip back to the East Coast, I went to see Christopher Nolan's Odyssey with my friend, Lionel Spiegel. For a film about Greek mythology, it is remarkably biblical. This should not surprise readers of classical literature as there is a long-running tradition of reading Greek mythology in Christian terms. This is important for understanding C. S. Lewis' project, made quite explicit in Till We Have Faces. Lewis was a Christianized pagan, who saw mythology as an essential part of the Christian story. Whether Nolan is a Christian or a post-Christian, telling a Christian story that he no longer personally believes in, is difficult to determine and irrelevant for our purposes. We can ask similar questions about J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter or Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol. In both cases, regardless of the authors' personal beliefs, these are deeply Christian stories. 

Like The Passion of the Christ, The Odyssey is an incredibly violent film, beyond conventional R-rated action movies. This is violence meant to make viewers uncomfortable, but this does not mean that the violence is gratuitous; on the contrary, it is meant to horrify the viewer and make them feel as if they are the ones committing the violence. In the case of The Passion, we are meant to be aghast at the death of Jesus but also at the sin that made his death necessary. We are meant to feel that we are the Roman soldiers beating Jesus and putting nails into his hands. 

The Odyssey can be read as a retelling of the Fall of Man in Genesis. Odysseus is an Augustinian villain. For Augustine, Adam and Eve seem like innocent children who ignored a seemingly pointless command. In truth, they consciously chose to rebel against God, despite God giving them everything, and tainted the entire world, including their descendants, with sin. Similarly, we like Odysseus as a person; he is a good husband, father, and king to his people. Because of this, we are inclined to minimize the nature of his sin. He was forced to go to war, but he figured out a way to eventually bring it to an end. In reality, he chose to ally himself with Agamemnon, a man who murdered his own daughter and put her spine on his helmet. In service to this satanic being, Odysseus spends ten years raiding the Eastern Mediterranean around Troy before putting the entire city to the sword. This destroyed the entire network of trade that his Bronze Age civilization relied upon.  

On top of the physical crime is the spiritual crime. Odysseus violated the "Law of Zeus" to treat strangers as if they might be gods. The Trojan Horse is an act of religious sacrilege. Odysseus relied on the fact that the Trojans would not reject something that had been sanctified as a gift for Athena and not examine it too closely. Here is where the subplot with Sinon becomes important. Sinon, the innocent kid who should never have been sent to war in the first place, revered the gods and trusted in Odysseus' decency. Odysseus used that innocence to manipulate him and ultimately fool the Trojans. In Nolan's telling, Sinon is not a trickster. He honestly believes that the horse is an offering to the gods. The Trojans believe him, because he is so clearly genuine. 

The publicity of this trick through bards telling the story, as we see in the beginning of the film, is now destroying belief in the gods in a Nietzschean "God is dead" sense. Just as modernity robs people of the ability to truly believe, even as they still go through the motions of religion, the Trojan Horse story is making it impossible to truly revere the gods as beings that one could never contemplate blaspheming. Note that Nolan, unlike Homer, never gives the gods the opportunity to punish the Greeks and reaffirm their power. For Nolan, bad things happen to the Greeks; what else can you expect from a world in which people have not only lost their material prosperity, but also the reverence for the gods that made their lives meaningful?  

Our willingness to identify with Odysseus comes to work against us as the true extent of his crimes is slowly revealed and the excuses that we have been making for him are stripped away. By the end of the film, we have become complicit in Odysseus' bloody deeds and his actions become ours. We are good people who would never hack apart an unarmed woman. The fact that our world seems to be falling apart cannot be our fault. What if we are wrong; what if we are the barbarians who have irrevocably torn down the material and spiritual foundations of our civilization? 

Odysseus can be thought of as Cain. There are two sides to Cain's character. He is a murderer who kills his own brother out of simple jealousy. On the other hand, perhaps because of the extraordinary nature of his crime, Cain is the first person to repent, declaring: "my sin is too great to bear." (Genesis 4:13) By contrast, we never hear Adam or Eve repent, but only their excuses. Despite this repentance, Cain is never allowed to find redemption, but is forced to wander the world until he is killed by his own descendant.  

In the traditional version of the story, Odysseus is forced to wander the ocean and is kept from returning home for ten years because he blinded the son of Poseidon, the cyclops Polyphemus. In Nolan's retelling, Odysseus is someone overwhelmed by the enormity of the crime that he knows he is guilty of. As with Dr. Ernst Janning in Judgment at Nuremberg, it is a fair question whether his awareness serves to justify forgiving him or if it makes his actions worse. One can argue that Odysseus, as the Greek leader who was not a moral monster, had a special responsibility for not stopping the Trojan War and bears ultimate guilt for the destruction of Troy. 

Overwhelmed by guilt, Odysseus is fed the lotus by Calypso to cause him to forget what he had done. As such, leaving Calypso, instead of being about the gods deciding to release Odysseus, becomes about Odysseus being willing to face his actions. For such a crime, there can be no atonement. Odysseus returning home does not rectify his actions. On the contrary, he allows himself to sink even further into blood by murdering the suitors. Here Odysseus becomes a scapegoat. He performs the sin, knowing that his soul is already damned beyond salvation so that his son, Telemachus, can rule untainted. In the end, like Cain, Odysseus goes into exile, though, in his case, he does get to take Penelope with him.   

Odysseus attempting to protect Telemachus is an interesting play on Machiavelli's essential dilemma. Every dynasty was founded on a crime at some point in the past. The advantage of established kingdoms is that they can pretend to be innocent even though their rule is ultimately just as tainted as the person who seizes power and personally has people killed. In the case of Telemachus, it is hardly clear that the families of the dead suitors really hold him blameless. Regardless of whether or not he personally fought, Telemachus' reign is still founded upon the violence of Odysseus and bears the stain of his sins. 

Nolan leaves us with an irredeemable world where individual heroism is incapable of holding up a civilization once the pillars have been brought down. Without a shared reverence for the gods to guarantee hospitality to strangers, there can be no trade. This is a culture that must now be allowed to collapse into a dark age, even to the point of losing writing, in the hope that a better one might one day arise. 

Can Pacifists Be Citizens? A Jewish Solution

As previously noted, I view government as a devil's bargain. I accept the existence of an institution with the power to engage in violence and whose main purpose is violence. This applies to fighting wars and even the punishing of criminals. Government authority means nothing if, at the end of the day, they are unable to physically harm those who defy them. The main reason why I endorse government violence is that I see it as the alternative to private vendettas. I am not about to accept a world in which "every man does what is right in his own eyes." I can fathom turning the other cheek precisely because there is a police officer out there who can strike the person for me. Thus my purpose is not to engage in violence, but to do whatever I can to limit it. Openly acknowledging the necessity of violence puts me in much the same situation as Machiavelli, begging to be misunderstood as endorsing tyranny. I would argue that, on the contrary, my willingness to acknowledge the Machiavellian reality of government allows me to be a true defender of liberty and limit government violence. I recognize what kind of deal I am making and have clear boundaries. This is different from the person who pretends to deal with government and not make compromises with liberty. Such a person has no protection when faced with the real moral dilemmas of a tyrannical government.

 It is the common practice in times of war to grant draft exemptions to pacifists and "consciousness objectors." I fail to see the reason for this and fully agree with Richard Dawkins on the absurdity of giving people special protection simply because of "religion." By agreeing to be a citizen you accept the legitimacy of the government to fight wars and agree to help it do so. Since pacifists cannot agree to this, they cannot be citizens in any meaningful way. This is not a violation of anyone's religious liberties. Religious liberty only exists when you pay the door fee of becoming part of the system by accepting its validity. If you cannot pay that price then you are not part of the conversation.

The citizenship question really goes far beyond military service. If pacifists were consistent in their beliefs they would become "conscientious objectors" from jury duty and voting. By serving on a jury the government is asking you to accept their legal authority to punish people even with physical force. The government is also asking you to honestly declare whether you think a person is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. Maximum security prisons are directly connected to the threat of physical violence; prisoners who do not comply face being beaten and if they try to escape they may be killed. How can a pacifist ever convict someone of a violent crime? I would add that since we can assume that any violent criminal was brought in by police licensed to engage in physical violence, such violence was either used or implicitly threatened. Thus a pacifist would have to automatically throw out any case rather than be an active participant in this system of government violence. If you let a person go who you believe beyond a reasonable doubt is guilty because you object to prison conditions and police tactics you are not keeping your end of the bargain you struck with the government.

When you vote for your congressional representative, you are voting for someone licensed by the Constitution to vote to declare war. The President is the Constitutional Commander in Chief with the power to lead the United States military in battle. Participating in an election means declaring the moral validity of the Congress to declare war and the President to wage it as put down in the Constitution. Since the Constitution is a war validating document, no pacifist can ever accept the legitimacy of the Constitution without making a hypocrite of himself.


Rather than forcefully expelling or killing pacifists, I would suggest a solution from Jewish history. Up until the end of the eighteenth century, Jews even when tolerated and allowed to live in peace, were not accepted as citizens. In each city Jews lived under the authority of their own kehilla system, operating as its own semi-autonomous government. It was the kehilla that negotiated with the Christian authorities for Jews to be allowed to live in the city and practice their own religion. These negations usually involved monetary payment, call it taxes or bribery. "In the pre-modern world, there was no such thing as rights. There were privileges that you paid for." Jews were also subject to blasphemy laws which barred them from making statement offensive to Christianity. This was not due to "intolerance," simply a matter of Jews, by definition, not being able to accept the legitimacy of a Christian State, whose claim to authority rested on Christian theological claims.

Pacifists should be allowed to live in peace within this country; not because of any right to religious liberty (they lost that right the moment they rejected the government, which gives allows for religious liberty to exist), but because they are non-threatening producers, whose presence benefits society at large. Pacifists should not actually be citizens. They should not have the right to vote, they should not serve on juries but should pay an extra head tax to cover their lack of military service. They would also have no free speech protection and be barred from making any statements deemed "subversive." Since they are outside the political system they have no reason to involve themselves in it or even speak about it. Every American would have the right to put themselves down as a pacifist and pay the consequences. (Children of pacifists should have the option of going to court and rejecting the beliefs of their parents and immediately take the test and oath of citizenship without having to wait five years.) Those who do not and instead decide to enjoy the full benefits of citizenship, lose all claim to ever being "conscientious objectors."

Secular Theodicy: A Review of Day of Empire (Part II)

(Part I)

I hope my readers will forgive my long discourse, but I felt it served a useful purpose; I wished to make it very clear how this theodical history game is played, who benefits from it, and to make sure that I am not accused of being a defender of religious fundamentalism (Haredi or any other brand) or of intolerance. On the flip side, I do not want anyone to think that I was simply going after Haredi Jews as my target here is not Haredim but Amy Chua, a Chinese-American Law Professor who teaches at Yale. Chua may not be Haredi but, in terms of playing the theodical history game for all of its intellectual dishonesty, she is every bit their equal. Not that she is interested in defending divine providence; rather, walking in the Whig tradition, she has adapted the game for the cause of tolerance.

Her book, Day of Empire: How Hyperpowers Rise to Global Dominance and Why They Fall, analyses what Chua likes to refer to as “hyperpowers” and argues that their rise was due to their tolerance, or at least their relative tolerance, and their subsequent downfall was due to the fact that, when faced a crisis, they chose to turn away from tolerance. This is comforting in that the people who do the decent, pious and moral thing come out ahead in this sort of narrative. It must overcome the hurdle of all such narratives namely that, as political thinkers such as Glaucon and Machiavelli recognized, misbehavior often does pay off in the political realm. Kicking the Jews out of your country and seizing their property or claiming Church land for yourself is a good way to raise money; money that can be used pay for an army, fight wars, oppress people living in other countries and gain even more power and renown. In effect Chua has set for herself the task of correcting the “misimpression” that one may have gotten from the casual study of history that great powers are created by being “intolerant” and being better at it than anyone else.

To play her game she has, at her disposal, two moveable pieces, tolerance and hyperpowerhood. Which societies count as being tolerant and which ones count as being hyperpowers? These concepts are so wide open that Chua can have them mean whatever she wants them to mean. She goes through the pretense of defining these things. In her introduction, she defines three conditions to be a hyperpower:

Its power clearly surpasses that of all its known contemporaneous rivals; it is not clearly inferior in economic or military strength to any other power on the planet, known to it or not; and it projects its power over so immense an area of the globe and over so immense a population that it breaks the bounds of mere local or even regional preeminence. (xxii)

She defines tolerance as: “letting very different kinds of people live, work, and prosper in your society – even if only for instrumental or strategic reasons.” (xxiii) Not that Chua is actually serious about trying to stick to these parameters. When you can say that the seventeenth-century Dutch counts as a hyperpower, but sixteenth-century Spain does not then the concept of a hyperpower has no meaning. (more on this later) If we were serious about using her definition of tolerance we would have to admit that Nazi Germany was a tolerant society. They did let many different people live, work and prosper in their society. The Nazi army contained people from dozens of different countries. The Nazis worked with Frenchmen, Poles, Hungarians, and Russians, and many non-Germans prospered under Nazi rule. The Nazis were even willing, on occasion, to work with Jews. What becomes clear very quickly about Chua is that what matters for any given society is not if you were really “tolerant” or a “hyperpower” but if Chua wants to make you out as one of the good guys, if she can use you as part of her morality tale that tolerance is a good thing.

If Chua was a real historian and not writing Whig propaganda for modern liberals she could have easily written a book about the paradox of tolerance and intolerance faced by great powers. Almost all great powers have found themselves ruling over multiple societies and cultures, often even hostile ones. This presents a problem. On the one hand, people are not likely to meekly submit to a power that tries to suppress their culture, ban their religion and physically wipe them out. On the other hand, in order to maintain oneself as a great power, one is going to need to create a common society with a common cause. This requires that the various societies and cultures under one's dominion must, in some sense, yield and agree to merge into the general culture. The solution is to try to balance these two requirements. One makes the overt gesture of tolerance while at the same time, usually less overtly, one tries to bring pressure in order to force dissenting groups to knuckle under. One can easily show how different powers such as the Roman Empire, the Catholic Church, Spain, and the United States have faced this problem of dealing with multiple cultures and have followed this line of reasoning, while practicing different models of tolerance/intolerance. In essence, such a book would be an expanded version of Michael Walzer’s On Toleration. This line of argument avoids a number of problems. It makes no absolute claims so it does not have to deny exceptions. This allows for one to be somewhat open-ended about what counts as a great power or as a tolerant society. This argument merely tries to describe a given phenomenon; it does not judge whether tolerance is good or bad, it does not try to create some sort of historical law, it makes no predictions as to the future nor does it proscribe any given course of action or ideology. As with all good history, it offers a method of analysis but affirms no dogmas.

(To be continued …)