Customer Reviews

Who Killed Homer: The Demise of Classical Education and the Recovery of Greek Wisdom

5 star:		(24)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

It may seem that another readers review of this book is superfluous. The battle lines are clearly drawn. You either hate Hanson or you love him. When I say that I love him, I am simply saving those who hate him the trouble of reading further.

But for those of you who are new to the debate, there may be some value in reading on. Victor Davis Hanson emerged on the scene in the early 1980s with a wonderful little book called The Western Way of War: Infantry Battle in Classical Greece. This readable, engaging tome was taken up by, among others, John Keegan who embraced some of the ideas and began to publicise them.

Who Killed Homer emerged much later. It is a brilliant polemic  a fact that is often missed by the critics who belabour Hanson with the charge of being too controversial  I think that was rather the point. Hanson wrote in despair and anger. He despaired of the state of education in our colleges and universities. And he has written an impassioned, polemical diatribe on the subject. As Stephen Ozment remarked, this is a book for anyone who has loved or hated a college or university.

Like Bernard Knox who as a young man lashed out at the excessive technicality of classical studies (after reading an extended study in a classical journal entitled The Carrot in Ancient Greece), Hanson is incensed at the dearth of true learning at universities. He would have us go back to general principals. He would have professors stop publishing and start TEACHING.

First and foremost, Hanson makes the case for Greek civilisation. However we get our Greek, he would say, we must get it. Western Culture, he says, is largely founded on Greek ideas, filtered through intervening civilisations and systems of thought. I despair of the school curriculum I see these days. My young nephews are offered, through something called social studies, the fleeting opportunity in Grade 4 and 5 to learn about ancient cultures. The problem is that it is left to the teacher to decide WHICH cultures they study. It is entirely possible for students in Ontario to go through school without EVER studying Greek or Roman history. And whatever benefits may be derived from the study of meso-american culture or Chinese culture, they pale beside the importance of those which can be obtained through a study of the Greeks. For the study of other cultures does not speak to the core values of western civilisation. The values which, transmitted down through the centuries to us from the Greeks, have made our culture (for the time being) the dominant culture in the world.

Here is Hanson on the subject: Yet as magnificent and accessible as the Odyssey is, the Iliad is the greater poem, the more difficult and important challenge to teachers of Greek, who, if they be teachers or Greek at all, must teach the Iliad and teach it frequently. Most subsequent Greek ideas  learning comes through pain, reason is checked by fate, men are social creatures, the truth only emerges through dissent and open criticism, human life is tragically short and therefore comes with obligations, characters is a matter of matching words with deeds, the most dangerous animal is the natural beast within us, religion is separate from and subordinate to political authority, private property should be immune from government coercion, even aristocratic leaders ignore the will of the assembly at their peril  start with Homer, especially the Iliad, but never again are they presented so honestly, and without either apology or elaboration. And these Greek values, he maintains were UNIQUE in the world. Democracy, free speech, separation of church and state, a civilian army  these idea (and others) ALL began in Greece and nowhere else. And yet the general public in the west knows less about itss origins that EVER before.

The dust jacket notes, the formal study of the origins of Western Culture is disappearing from American life at precisely the time when it is most needed to explain, guide and warn the public about both the wonders and dangers of their own culture.

What you will come away with from this book, if you have an open mind at all, is either a new (or perhaps renewed) appreciation for Greek culture. You will want to read the Iliad again and you will want your children to read it.

I've gotten a kick out of reading others' impressions of this book. As a former Classics B.A., I can sympathize with lots of sides of this argument, and so the book comes off a little bombastic. That said, the message that classical education should be saved from extinction is a very important one, and deserves as wide an audience as possible.

The issue is relevant to everyone, on one of any number of levels: the importance of history, the value of translation, the psychological insights into ancient culture and therefore human nature, I can go on. Studying ancient languages,as a general exercise, can serve a valuable individual, and en masse cultural purpose in the pursuit of meaning and the construction of better ways of living for the present. It runs the gamut of educational value: as philosophy, as politcal science, as psychology. I think most people, at least in theory, would agree with this.

All the authors are saying is that the value of studying ancient languages is simply not being preserved by any particular stewards, as in centuries past. They are concentrating on Greek and Latin because those ancient languages are the key to understanding our Western culture. They are not saying that Chinese or South American ancient languages are less import PER SE, they are simply saying that Greek and Latin are the MOST RELEVANT languages to our Western culutre, whose values have influenced more and more cultures across the world. These values- democracy, equality, freedom, etc.- are taken for granted by my post-Vietnam generation, and so studying their roots may not seem very PRACTICAL. But one can only hope that some cultural awakening may open more young peoples' eyes to the value of understanding the past and the rich intangible personal rewards of initimately knowing an ancient text.

Which brings me to the point of contention most fervently drawn out by the authors: that the intrinsic value of classical stewardship (as "the keepers of the flame") seems to have been lost in a selfish, uppity, ridiculously esoteric publishing game that leads the profession, and its subject matter, into a dead end. Although it is important to find new ways of looking at things to reach new understanding, the authors seem to suggest that it's more important at this point in time to abandon the incestuous pursuit of arcane, often boring and largely irrelevant dintinctions and "discoveries" and re-assume the duty of passing on tradition.

I'm not saying that comparative studies of literature and language are without purpose; rather, the degree to which it has become the focus of Classics departments in the US seems to have reached the point of absurdity. Granted, there is intense competition for very few jobs, so who could be blamed for scraping the bottom of the intellectual barrel for kernels of academic novelty? But at what price? Whatever it is, it's too great. That seems to be what the authors are saying, and I think the authors say it courageously. The need for this book being great as it is, its sometimes extreme tone and POV can be overlooked.

On a personal note, If there were more jobs in academe, especially Classics, I would have probably foregone the business world. But there is a culutral amnesia that belittles the value of understanding the past, and thus the demand for Classics classes is just low. This book is very valuable, in that it courageously draws first blood against the cultural forces threatening the preservation of the historical roots of the West.

The core of WKH? (as Hanson and Heath charmingly call their own book) is a savage indictment of university Classicists. The answer to the question "who killed Homer and why?" is classicists, and for filthy lucre. For money, career, fame and professional advancement, classicists have betrayed the Greeks by preferring academic heights to actual teaching, by turning Classical Greece into one more subject for multiculturalist, postmodernist, queer theorist, what-have-you studies, by ignoring the greatness and uniqueness of Greek culture and not caring what the Greeks actually have to say. The professors don't live like Greeks, they fail to match word and deed. So disinterested grad students (with their eyes firmly on the professorial heights) do all the actual teaching, and the students aren't coming anymore.

And Hanson and Heath confess that they don't believe that university Classics can be saved.

(Incidentally, the authors make it pretty clear that taking the Greeks seriously is antithetical -- and may be a good antidote -- to nonsensical multiculturalism. There is truth, there is virtue, and all things are not equal.)

Interestingly, this core is sandwiched between introductory chapters which set out the unique importance of the Greeks and also the history of Classical Studies, emphasizing the sometimes revolutionary contributions of amateur classicists and a closing chapter giving an introductory syllabus and commentary to aspiring amateur classicists, ten books by Greeks and ten books about Greeks. Hanson and Heath say they hope for another Homer, but they seem to be sending out a homing beacon to another Schliemann, Parry or Ventris.

Good for them. Their devastating scorched earth criticism and their fluent, accessible writing make this book a fun read as well as a compelling one.

This an excellently researched and written book which keeps the reader's interest strong from the beginning to the end. I come from an Economics background with a strong amateur interest in ancient greek history and mythology, but after reading this book my experience during the six years of studies in Canadian and American Universities came back to me to remind me of the problems and challenges facing higher academic education, which I had sensed back then(early 80's). I feel there is a common pathology in all academia in the west and the lack of proper classical training, from the early years, may account for that. The book offers an excellent account of the contribution of greek wisdom to western culture, and for modern Greeks (it has already been translated in modern Greek)it is also useful to see that they are not the only inheritors of ancient Greece, and rightly so, language and customs apart. In addition, the book answers accurately to the recent resurgence of the supposedly "afro-asiatic" roots of classical civilisation and gives the right perspective to the whole debate. This book should form a basis for a reexamination of university education and all education for that matter. By stressing our common western heritage, feeling proud of it, we can interact more fruitfully with the other traditions in the world. Cultural mix-ups do not offer solutions to problems facing the world today. The forces of ignorance, superstition and the irrational loom large. The world has benefited by the Greek spirit and should not discard it too easily, in view on new "millennia" promising ideas. The books has a very good section on recommended readings in ancient greek wisdom at the end.

Having majored in 'penniless student of Greek' in college I was surprised to read here that I was in what could be the last generation of this tradition. Although much of the diagnosis is open to debate, perhaps faulty on several points, the controversy has perhaps obscured the basically accurate point the authors seem to be making, that of the passage of a great tradition of learning. The author's indictment of the method of teaching certainly rings true. I arrived with a lot of advanced placement and my knowledge of classics peaked the first week of my freshman year as I ended in a permanent huff over pedantic Wilamowitz style philology and disappointed that that was all there was going to be. So university was at least an opportunity to educate myself in the Western tradition by ignoring the professors. Majoring in classics was a big risk, what a waste.
This is such a provocative and interesting book that one need not agree at all points to find it important reading. And it is strange and sad a high tech civilization seems both unaware and indifferent to the disappearance of this form of education. Part of the problem is that for all its science modern society has no coherent view of history and the authors attempt to rescue the study of Greece from faddish theory is convincing. Their 'utopian' proposal to remedy the university graduate scene is radical indeed, small wonder irate colleagues counterattacked.
This book raises questions beyond its basic thesis. We need a new type of university educational system, that's for sure.

An immensely amusing critique of higher education in general and classical eduction in particular. The authors are classics professors and this tome is a flaying of modern academia. From professors who can't or won't teach to academic articles written in an unreadable gibberish, their targets will be familiar to all who have had the misfortune to waste, at incredible cost, several years of their lives being miseducated at many of our elite universities.

The authors write with considerable verve and anger: no dry example of "collegese" in this book except as satire. I recommend this book to all parents before they take out a third mortgage to send Jack or Jill off to Ivy League U only to have them emerge five years later no wiser than before, and any enthusiasm for true intellectual achievement beaten out of them by the pretentious mediocrities who infest the professoriate.

My ultimate accolade for this work: Juvenal couldn't have said it better.

Victor David Hanson's and John Heath's devastating expose of the Anglo classicist establishment, 'Who Killed Homer? - The Demise of Classical Education and the Recovery of Greek Wisdom' (San Francisco: Encounter Books, 2001. ISBN 1893554260) is a book which infuriated classicists because - and as an ex-academic myself I can vouch for this - what it tells us about them and about their utterly baleful influence on our culture happens to be true.

Classicists as a class are here accused of being idle, arrogant, greedy, irresponsible, amoral careerists. They are cads who care little if anything for Greek thought and who have nothing but the most extreme contempt, not only for the general public which pays their salaries, but even for their students since they would rather disburden themselves of the distasteful task of teaching by passing it to an underclass of slaves known as 'graduate teaching assistants' while (when not gadding about the world on an endless round of international 'conferences,' i.e. mutual back-slapping canape-munching cocktail-slurping gabfests) they themselves engage in what they fondly describe as 'research' (i.e. the scribbling of esoteric monographs on utterly trivial matters which no-one is ever going to read) since they would blanch at the thought of actually doing something useful.

The laziness, greed, and arrogance of these elitists have pretty well destroyed the classics as a subject of study and hence as a profession. Many of their former colleagues and most of their ex-students are now flipping burgers or driving taxis, and I think one may confidently predict that it won't be long before the remainder of this elite are looking for similar work since no society can be expected to indefinitely support such a useless class of parasites.

Since their collective efforts have helped to effectively undermine and destroy the foundations of Western Civilization, the demise of classical education being simply one facet of the larger ongoing demise of the West, one wonders if they will perhaps feel a twinge of remorse for what they have done when the tentacles of the New Dark Age they have helped to spawn reach out to coil about them ...?

Two distinguished classicists address three core issues in university-level education today. The first is the role of the classics in contemporary academic life. The other two issues involve us all.

In the first, Hanson and Heath offer a sustained argument on the problem of post-modernism. They explore the issues of historical research and reasoned evidence in contrast with interpretive assertion and critical theory.

They also consider the relationship between research and teaching. This issue heads the agenda of the formerly independent schools of art and design that are now developing university-level programs.

Hanson and Heath assert that university education requires reverence for truth, a concept of the good life, a model of appropriate education, and an understanding of how education gives rise to excellence in societies and individuals. These arguments demand the attention of everyone who teaches at university. The authors call for a rebirth of the concrete Greek values of public discourse and democracy, even though they neglect the equally vital abstract virtues of theoretical inquiry and scientific speculation.

This is a sustained argument from reasoned evidence. A serious philosophy of education requires understanding how and why we agree -- or disagree -- with the authors on any given point.

Book review published in Design Research News, Volume 6, Number 7, July 2001 ISSN 1473-3862.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. Itawoke in me a new desire to reclaim a classical education (which I am now doing by learning Ancient Greek!).

It is important in today's era of "multiculturalism" to recognize that not all cultures are created equal. The Greco-Roman tradition gave us the foundation for our own form of a Democratic Republic. While it is the PC fashion now to criticize the Greeks for their treatment of women and slaves let us not forget that many countries/cultures still engage in slavery (West Africa), or brutal treatment of women (Islamic). As so elegantly pointed out, the *only* culture which took major steps to eradicate these inequities were the Western ones and most specifically the United States.

Even in Ancient Greece, many voices (Aristophanes, Euripides) can be read as speaking out against social injustice. If we let the classics die in our colleges and universities upon the sacrificial altar of feminism, multiculturalism, or political correctness, we will have lost part of the American soul and more importantly - our intellectual heritage! This book is a clarion call to what is so wrong in academia today and to the fact that we had best wake up before it is too late!

By the way - I am a liberal, but not a radical leftist!

Even if, as the author now admits, the main argument was a bit overplayed, this is a delightful rant, bristling with wit and wisdom and marvelous asides. It remains on my "most beloved" shelf and I reread it every year or so since buying it in first edition hardcover in 1998. A downbeat message delivered in bracing, upbeat prose. Cheers.