The Beginnings of European Theorizing: Reflexivity in the Archaic Age: Logological Investigations: Volume Two

448 Pages·1996·1.75 MB·English

by  Barry Sandywell

THE BEGINNINGS OF EUROPEAN
THEORIZING: REFLEXIVITY IN
THE ARCHAIC AGE

One is enthralled by the way in which a complex and powerful intellectual
argument is unfolded with magisterial dignity. This must be one of the
outstanding productions of British sociology in recent years.
David Chaney, Professor of Sociology,
University of Durham

With equally brilliant scholarship Sandywell reconstructs the origins of
‘European’ reflection in Homer, Hesiod, Pindar and the Orphic texts
with particular reference to the ‘genesis of the self’.
John O’Neill, Distinguished Research Professor of Sociology,
York University, Canada

How did the cultural practices of early Greek society construct the self? How
does the self appear in the earliest forms of Greek poetry and literature? What
are the relationships between the art of the Archaic age and the emergence of
autonomous political and theoretical institutions? How did these practices of
self-reflection shape the emergence of later forms of theorizing, science and
philosophy?
In Reflexivity and the Crisis of Western Reason, Barry Sandywell outlined
and defended a central place for reflexivity in the human sciences. In this
second equally outstanding and challenging volume of Logological
Investigations, he reconstructs the origins of European reflection.
The author’s central claim is that the world does not exist independently
of human practices, but that it is constituted through the terms of our discursive
categories. Rather than research being a triumphant exploration, it is more
fully understood as agonized self-reflection on the grounds of knowledge
production. Sandywell argues that this approach has been inherent throughout
Western philosophy and in so doing, he shows that the reflexive character of
human experience in Western culture can be traced through the desire for
intelligibility that animated Greek drama, poetry, philosophy, and science as
explorations of the cosmos, body-politic, and the soul.
Barry Sandywell is Lecturer in Sociology at the University of York.

THE BEGINNINGS
OF EUROPEAN
THEORIZING:
REFLEXIVITY IN THE
ARCHAIC AGE

Logological Investigations
Volume 2

Barry Sandywell

London and New York
First published 1996
by Routledge
11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2003.

Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001

© 1996 Barry Sandywell
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted
or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic,
mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented,
including photocopying and recording, or in any information
storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing
from the publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from
the British Library.

Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book has been requested

ISBN 0-203-42479-4 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 0-203-73303-7 (Adobe eReader Format)
ISBN 0-415-10169-7 (Print Edition)
And a man who is puzzled and wonders thinks himself ignorant (whence
even the lover of myth is in a sense a lover of wisdom, for the myth is
composed of wonders).
(Aristotle Metaphysics 982b11–22)

Wonder is a seed out of which knowledge grows.
(Francis Bacon, 1985)
For Miriam
CONTENTS

Acknowledgements ix
Abbreviations x
Introduction: towards a sociological poetics xiii
1 MYTHOPOIESIS: THE PRAXIS OF MYTH 1
1 Introduction 1
2 Mythopoiesis in oral culture: obscure moons in the
firmament of reason 2
3 Myth as the matrix of early Greek thought and philosophy 27
4 The public and political nature of Greek religion 30
5 The dialectic of myth and philosophy: early Greek
institutions of reflection 34
6 Myth—the logos of the life-world 35
7 Narrative strategies in Greek myth 38
8 Conclusion—Myth as the matrix of logos 43
2 HOMERIC EPIC REFLEXIVITY: SELF AND
SELF-REFLEXIVITY IN THE ILIAD AND
ODYSSEY 47
1 Introduction 47
2 The logological significance of the Homeric texts 48
3 Epic narrative form(s) 58
4 The world of the poem: the Homeric life-world as a
videological universe 77
5 Self and self-reflexivity in the Homeric world 94
6 The civilizing powers of Homeric discourse 136
7 Conclusion: Thersites’ revenge 157
3 HESIOD AND THE BIRTH OF THE GODS 160
1 Introduction: mythos-logos 160
2 Theogonic myth as discourse and prototheorizing 163
3 The discovery of the ‘I’: self-reflexivity in Hesiod’s writing 169
4 The poetic ‘I’ and divine authorization 174
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CONTENTS
5 Hesiodic symbolism and the ‘mythological world-view’ 180
6 The violence of differentiation and the appearance of the
gods 182
7 Hesiodic ideology: the valorization of justice and work 202
8 Hesiodic utopianism 204
4 LYRIC REFLEXIVITIES 206
1 The genealogy of individual lyric voices 206
2 Choral lyric: from collective to individual forms of
self-reflection 217
3 From choral lyric to monody: the social construction of the
individual lyric voice 222
4 Conclusion: the ‘concept’ of lyric reflexivity 247
5 PINDAR AND THE AGE OF LITERARY
CONSCIOUSNESS 250
1 The life-world as a theatre of reflexive praxis 250
2 The heroic ethic in reflexive mimesis 257
3 Gods and men 263
4 Death and the Elysian fields 265
5 Death and the poetic logos 268
6 Conclusion: Pindar’s world 274
6 ORPHISM: ORPHIC DISCOURSE DURING THE
ARCHAIC PERIOD 278
1 Introduction: the appearance of Orphism in Greek culture 278
2 Orphic cosmogony as an allegory of cosmic alienation 287
3 The Orphic body or the doctrine of cathartic reflexivity 289
4 The tropes of Dionysus 298
5 The Orphic background of the logos 299
Notes 302
Bibliography 386
Name index 411
Subject index 415

viii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I am grateful for permission to publish extracts from the following books:
Sappho and the Greek Lyric Poets by Willis Barnstone, copyright © 1962, 1967,
1988 by Willis Barnstone, reprinted by permission of Schocken Books, published
by Pantheon Books, a division of Random House, Inc.; Greek Lyrics, translated
by Richmond Lattimore, second edition, 1960, copyright © 1949, 1955, and
1960 by Richmond Lattimore, reprinted by permission of the University of
Chicago Press.
NOTE ON END NOTES
Notes to the main text have a variety of functions, among these: to provide
further and more specialized bibliographical information; to suggest more
advanced sources and investigations of related points; to comment upon and
occasionally question the text; and to open up other lines of thought for anyone
wishing to engage in further research on these topics.

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