Η ανακάλυψη του πνεύματος Ελληνικές ρίζες της Ευρωπαϊκής σκέψης

by Bruno Snell

Στο βιβλίο αυτό ο B. Snell μελετά τον αρχαίο ελληνικό πολιτισμό κατά την πορεία του από τη μυθική σύλληψη του κόσμου στη λογική ερμηνεία του, επισημαίνοντας παράλληλα τις σπουδαιότερες συμβολές του πολιτισμού αυτού στη συγκρότηση της ευρωπαϊκής σκέψης. Η μελέτη εδράζεται στα δεδομένα τα οποία προσφέρουν τα αρχαία κείμενα, γιατί δεν χωρεί αμφιβολία ότι από τα μνημεία που αφήνει πίσω του ένας λαός η λογοτεχνία προσφέρει στο μελετητή τις περισσότερες δυνατότητες για τη διερεύνηση του πολιτισμού του λαού αυτού, τόσο σε εθνικό όσο και σε διεθνικό πλαίσιο. (. . .) Η αρχαία Ελλάδα είναι η χώρα όπου δημιουργούνται οι προϋποθέσεις για την ανάπτυξη των επιστημών χάρη στο σχηματισμό των απαραίτητων γλωσσικών κατηγοριών και του αναγκαίου εννοιολογικού οπλισμού. (. . .)

Genres: Philosophy, History, Nonfiction, Psychology, Greece, Ancient History, Classics

456 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1948

About the author

Bruno Snell (18 June 1896 – 31 October 1986) was a German classical philologist. From 1931 to 1959 he held a chair for classical philology at the University of Hamburg where he established the Thesaurus Linguae Graecae research centre in 1944.
After studying law and economics at University of Edinburgh and University of Oxford, Snell gained interest in classical studies and finally changed his major to classical philology. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Göttingen in 1922.
Snell served as the inaugural president of the Mommsen Society from 1950–1954. In 1953, the Europa-Kolleg Hamburg, an institution promoting research and postgraduate education in the field of European integration, was founded on Snell's initiative. Since 1989, the Mommsen Society awards the Bruno Snell Prize to young classical scholars.
His book, The Discovery of the Mind: The Greek Origins of European Thought (Die Entdeckung des Geistes, Hamburg, 1946, trans. T.G. Rosenmeyer, 1953) argues that the development of Greek literature from Homer to Aristophanes and Plato shows a gradual discovery of the inner mental life, a developing understanding that humans have a unique and individual inner world of thought.

Reviews

[BlackOxford · Rating 5 out of 5]

Revelation Gone Wrong

Consciousness is a term of variable meaning. It cannot be pinned down in an unambiguous definition. Like ‘time,’ it is something we think we know about as long as we don’t take it seriously. Snell takes consciousness seriously. And what he finds is not a biological but a sociological source for what we presume is our most private possession. Consciousness, that is to say the recognition of mind, is a cultural phenomenon. It does not exist except it is recognised by those around us.

According to Snell, mind is a “metaphysical happening.” In a sense, he says, such an event is indistinguishable from a religious revelation. It seems to come from elsewhere, not in response to human striving but as an unexpected “grace.” It has no proximate cause but simply appears and is then accepted as real, true, and obvious.

But the discovery of mind is not a consequence of divine action. It is a result of the use of language. It is the communal facility in language which provokes a recognition of something which is ‘there’ but not before it is named and connected to other names within the language. Then mind appears among us as something which has always been.

We casually conceive of mind as a property of individuals. But this is only because we have no where else to physically place it. We presume it is something private and intimately our own. Of course it is not. It only exists among us. The place in which it exists is literature. And, according to Snell, its appearance, its birth, can be dated more or less precisely to the Homeric epics.

In other words, mind is a story we tell ourselves: “Outside of history, and outside of human life, nothing could be known of the nature of the intellect.” Consequently the story we tell ourselves about what mind is constantly evolves. What we mean by consciousness, mind, soul, or intellect (ψυχή = undifferentiated psyche, the force which keeps human beings alive) is not what Homer meant. But it is he who began the conversation about them. And “the ancient legacy is stored in us, and we may recognize in it the threads of our own involved patterns of thinking.”

These stories, nominally about the self but actually about a society or culture, are imaginative but not fantasy: “the discoveries of the Greeks which constitute our topic, affecting as they do the very essence of man, take shape as vital experiences.” It is the transformation of experience into language that creates the culture in which mind can exist at all.

This transformative process is not without pain. We pay a price for the culture of mind: “πάθει μάθως, ‘wisdom through suffering’.” This shows most clearly in religion. “In Christian thought God is intellect; our understanding of God is beset with grave difficulties, and the reason for this is a view of the intellect which was first worked out by the Greeks.”

The idea of ‘grace’ for example in Homeric narrative is that of the gods filling characters with irresistible emotion. “The Homeric hero stands free before his god; he is proud when he receives a gift from him, and again he is modest in his knowledge that all great things accrue to him from the deity.” Christianity takes this up but changes the connotation to one of enabling individuals to do good. It thus has all sorts of problems reconciling this with the other Christian idea of free will which is essential to its idea of sin.

Even more fundamentally, Christianity highjacked the Greek notion of πιστις, faith. In Homer the appearance of the gods give heroes confidence, faith, not in the gods but in themselves. The gods are just there. They may be ignored but they self-evidently influence events. There is no dogma and therefore no need for belief which has the status of opinion rather than principle. Consequently “the problem of faith never became an issue.”

Although Snell does not analyse this moment in any detail, it seems to me a critical part of the discovery of mind. Homer’s narratives were stories, not things to be considered as other than that. St. Paul’s redefinition of faith transformed some stories into truths. Since such truths as he claimed were entirely beyond human intellect, they are superior to intellect. Intellect must submit to them as a matter of faith.

It is at this point that the discovery of mind in Western culture makes its most painful turn. Essentially it idolises the language it has used to discover itself. Christianity imposes dogma, statements that are incontrovertibly true, upon the culture of mind. It makes mind an individual, isolated thing which is elemental and accountable only to God. We are still, very painfully indeed, trying to escape from this burial of mind under a mountain of the language that created it.

[Katie · Rating 5 out of 5]

For a very long time, I’ve told myself that I just wasn’t all that interested in Greek and Roman history. It’s overrated, I would tell myself. It got glorified by a bunch of snobby Renaissance poets way beyond its actual historical value. It’s boring. Being a medievalist will do things like this to you.

More and more, I’m realizing that this attitude probably set itself up predominately on the grounds of self-preservation. I study medieval and early modern history, which already takes up a solid swath of 1400-odd years. If I was interested in ancient history too, well, man, then I’d have to read about everything.

Because, in all honesty, the Greeks are an interesting bunch. I do still think that some classicists will try to convince you that they were more important than they actually were, or that they were more unique than they actually were (more on that later), but that doesn’t negate the fact that the Greeks were important, and the Greeks were cool. They were also kind of lovely, if you take a look at their poetry: based on their verses, Greek poets often appear as if they lived in a world that seemed to shimmer.

Bruno Snell’s The Discovery of the Mind has stolen a coveted spot on my Goodreads favorites shelf, and I’ll recommend it wholeheartedly to the philology nerds of the world. Others may want to tread a bit more carefully, as I’d imagine it’s a rather rough and dense read if you think philology is boring (you would be wrong, but to each his own). Snell’s work covers the period from Homer to Virgil, but narrows in specifically on the centuries between Homer and Socrates, and perhaps right after. He argues, based predominantly on linguistic evidence, that the fifth century marked “the discovery of the mind:” the moment in which people began to develop and self-consciousness and independence concerning their own intellectual capabilities. Homer’s heroes are described as an aggregate of limbs, they have three intellectual ‘organs’ instead of a clearly conceptualized soul, and all they key moments of decision are spurred by exterior agents, particularly the gods. In the lyric poems of Sappho or Archilochus, agency remains out of reach, but we start to seem deeply personal reactions to situations. The ‘mind’ fully emerges, though, in the Greek tragedies, particularly those of Euripides, who hinged his dramas on moments not of battle or divine intervention, but on singular moments of personal interior choice.

He then moves along to look at how this development, in conjunction with the Greek language, gave rise to Greek ethics, logic, and natural science. My favorites were the chapters on logic and natural science, which are impossible to do justice to in a summary – in essence, though, Snell argues that Greek logic grew out of the grammar of Homeric similes, and that Greeks founded our conception of natural science essentially because they possessed a definite article that allowed them to make substantive nouns out of abstract concepts. This part absolutely blew my mind.

I know almost nothing about philology, and whenever I come across it I treat it essentially as if it’s magic: I kind of love it, and think it’s all-powerful, but I’m also a bit wary. I’m not sure that all of Snell’s arguments really hold up – particularly problematic is trying to figure out the exact relationship between a culture’s language and its and mental attitudes. It seems at least plausible, for example, that other cultures had a developed conception of the human soul and intellect, but literary convention hadn’t yet caught up. I’m also not convinced that the Greeks were quite as singular as Snell seems to argue. Snell wrote this work in Germany in 1946, and I think he sees the Greeks as potential cultural saviors for his country, an attitude that perhaps doesn’t hold up quite as well today. But regardless, this is a wonderful and fascinating book. I guess I have to read more about Greeks now.

[Joseph Hirsch · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of the few books I've read that can truly be described as mind- and life-altering, without an ounce of hyperbole. Mr. Snell (or maybe Doctor Snell?) sets himself the nigh-on impossible task of parsing Greek philosophy and literature (to include plays and poetry) to try to delineate moments in which human thought (or at least Western thought) evolved, on concepts ranging from the soul to the idea of a metaphor. I say the task is "nigh-on impossible" hedging my bet, if only because Snell succeeds where pretty much everyone else would have failed. Most would be sensible enough not even to try.

The author's command of language (both German and Greek) as well as the breadth of his knowledge on everything from Attic history to German romanticism and aesthetics is really awe-inspiring. That he can communicate his knowledge and his complex ideas in a relatively straightforward manner makes the book nothing short of remarkable. It's hard to select standout chapters, since the work is uniformly good. But if held at the point of a spear and forced to choose, "From Myth to Logic" and the final chapter, "The Discovery of a Spiritual Landscape," were the most illuminating.

The value and purpose of our inheritance from the Greeks and their literary and cultural artifacts is sometimes in debate, with younger artists and thinkers occasionally feeling they need to cast aside all that has come before in order to start anew, but most of those who swear off this "dead" culture usually make a return to it at some later point in their intellectual development. I include myself in this number, and as a young man I frankly grew weary of many myths told second-hand (in every realm from psychology to science fiction to high school courses). Bruno Snell's book has rekindled the fire for me, and this one is definitely going into the reread pile. It's the kind of book you can finish in a week, and then meditate on for decades. Highest recommendation.

[Dimitris Passas (TapTheLine) · Rating 5 out of 5]

"The rise of thinking among the Greeks was nothing less than a revolution. They did not, by means of a mental equipment already at their disposal, merely map out new subjects for discussion such as the sciences and philosophy. They discovered the human mind".

Ancient Greek thinking is indisputably the primary foundation of Western science and philosophy and the source in which the seeds of the later European art, literature, ethics, and religion can be traced. The study of the ancient Greek texts was Bruno Snell's passion and the German classical philologist, who has also been the establisher of the Thesaurus Linguae Graecae research center, devoted his life in the fastidious examination of the Greek intellectual creation and his books became a point of reference for philology and philosophy scholars who still deem his body of work as one of the most influential pertaining to this field of academic knowledge. In The Discovery of the Mind in Greek Philosophy and Literature, which is Snell's most prominent work, the German academic presents a cartography of the ancient Greek thinking in regards to the concept of mind that is inevitably linked with that of the soul and the consciousness of one's self. Beginning with the epic poems written by Homer, Snell analyzes the development of the perception of mind and self as outlined in ancient Greek art and more specifically in Greek poetry that consists of the epic, the lyric, and tragedy which constitutes the last stage before the philosophers of the 5th century elevated the subject and his experience to the only true cause of human action and behavior.

In the first chapter of this intellectual chronicle, or as the author himself describes it "a close inquiry into the realm of intellectual history", Snell turns his readers' attention to the Homeric poems that illustrate the more primitive stage of Greek thought for a variety of reasons. Nevertheless Homer's significance as an artist and intellectual is vigorously stressed by Snell: "Homer gave to the Greeks their lingua franca of literature" and "created the intellectual world of the Greeks". Both in Iliad and in Odyssey, the grandfather of epic poetry reveals to the meticulous reader the truth about his contemporaries' notions of the mind, soul, and self and through his texts Snell detects the beginnings of those concepts' journey within human history. The main differences that distinguish Homer and the philosophers of the 5th century is the lack of the mind and body dualism, an idea that constitutes the backbone of the theories expressed by philosophers such as Rene Descartes and today is considered to be an accepted certainty in the Western world, with the Christian religion also acknowledging the division. Snell writes that "the distinction between body and soul represents a discovery which so impressed people's minds that it was therefore accepted as self-evident".

The author favors the use of the word "discovery" in lieu of invention or revelation as "the European way of thinking did not come into being until it was discovered; it exists by grace of man's cognizance of himself". The concept of the mind has no meaning outside the context of human history and life. The intellect reveals itself in the course of history and it is not similar to a religious epiphany, that inadvertently presupposes the existence of a god, it "grants us only a limited manifestation, always dependent on the individual and his personal characteristics. The emergence of a new understanding of the individualized mind and soul leads to the enlightenment of the classical period and the rationalization of thinking. In Homer, we find three words which are related to the concept of soul as we currently define it: "Psyche", "Thymos", and "Noos". The mental and spiritual activity of a human being is contained in those words and each one corresponds to specific physical organs and has a distinct function. This explanation of the processes of mind by analogy to the bodily organs and their operation is evident in the etymology of the verb ειδεναι, which means "to know", and originates from the Greek word εἴδω which means "to see". Snell concludes: "The eye as it appears, serves as Homer's model for the absorption of experience".

This perception of the mind and soul leaves no room for the use of abstraction and metaphors in Homer's work, even though the ancient Greek poet makes a heavy use of similes that are the precursors of the metaphor: "The chief function of these similes is to emphasize on the purity or the (...) intensity of an attribute". The motions of the soul are represented by analogy with the animal life and throughout the Homeric corpus is evident that "human behavior is made clear only through reference to something else which is in turn explained by analogy with human behavior". That principle is also applicable to all metaphors as "man must listen to an echo of himself before he may hear or know himself". Snell places simile and mythical paradigm side by side and writers that "similes, i.e. those which apply to human behavior, illustrate the behavior of a third person or persons; the paradigm helps the speaker to reflect upon himself or to assist another in grasping his circumstances". The former corresponds to the aforementioned "primitive" mode of thinking, while the latter is used by the poets that represent the more advanced stages of the art. The paradigm allows a deep dive into the individual's motivations and is the appropriate narrative vehicle for an author who wishes to explore the psychological aspects of his characters. It is, Snell concludes, "a more suitable instrument for interpreting the fate of man un simple and natural terms".

As far as the motivation that lurks behind human behavior, Homer places the Olympian gods as the inciters of human action as the subject himself doesn't possess a unique, individualized mind or soul to direct his own demeanor. His choices are the gods' choices and as Snell writes: "The soul of the man is the deity transplanted into him". It is not until the evolution of the Greek poetry to the form of Attic tragedy that the man becomes conscious of his own self and sees himself as the origin of his actions. Snell writes: "This progress of thinking toward philosophy was effected at the sacrifice of the gods themselves. They lost their natural and immediate function in proportion as man became aware of his own spiritual potential". Nevertheless, tragedy was preceded by lyric poetry, the artistic genre that succeeded the Homeric epics and developed its ideas about the individual. Snell writes that the greatest difference between epic and lyric poetry is the fact that "the lyricists announce their own names; they speak about themselves and become recognizable as personalities". Furthermore, lyric poets emphasized on the present and its glees rather than heroic deeds of the past as Homer did: The purpose of lyric poetry is "to lend an air of permanence to the joy of the moment". Snell cites verses from some of the most significant representatives of the genre such as Archilochus, Sappho, and Anacreon, writers of monodies who were "evidently concerned to grasp a piece of genuine reality: to find being instead of appearance".

Snell juxtaposes the views on war as expressed by Homer and Archilochus and infers that while the former focused on the bravery and the virtues that lead to the victory, the latter lamented the misery and loss, both inextricably linked with the battle. Equally divergent are their perception of the concept of love and this is happening perhaps because the lyrics stop treating the soul by analogy with human organs, paving the way for the emancipation of the subject that would follow in the tragic plays. The tragic also embraced the broad notion of universality that, according to Aristotle, is connected to poetry rather than history which deals with the unique. In order to better understand Aristotle's assertion, we can take a closer look to the plays written by Euripides, the most humane among the triad that further consisted of Aeschylus and Sophocles. Euripides' hero become the center of action it is his "passions and his own knowledge that are the only determining factors" of the choices that he makes and the subsequent deeds done by him. The problem of human action which is the main theme of ancient Greek tragedy acquires a universal character as "the human situation which it expresses are no longer, as in the archaic lyric, fixed in time and place by victory, marriage, or cult". It concerns each and every single human being around the world and this pervasive quality of the tragic is what distinguishes it from its predecessors, the epic and the lyric.

The universal determining the particular will become a key theme in the works of the most notable philosophers of the classical period who will shape the concept of the mind in the form that since then became the foundation upon which various theories were developed. Heraclitus was the first philosopher who used the expanded concept of soul and in his work the body and soul constitute a dichotomy. Each one is attributed with distinct properties and for the sage from Ephesus "the soul, as contrasted with things physical, reached into eternity". The kinship between the soul and the image of depth visualizes this fresh perspective on the idea: "In Heraclitus the image of depth is designed to throw light on the outstanding trait of the soul and its realm: that it has its own dimension, that it is not extended in space". In the chapters that follow, the author explores the origin of scientific thought and its relation to language as his approach is based on linguistics and doesn't aspire to be a history of science. For Snell, the language involves an ontological dimension as a thing only exists after it is named as such. Language provides ontological hypostasis to whatever is human. It is the use of the article that "helped the concrete noun to attain the character of a universal concept" and he adds: "the universal character of the concept is, therefore, already latent in the concrete noun. Snell summarizes his linguistic analysis:"The pregnant vitality of the verb is given up in favor of conceptual clarity (...) The evolution was slow and complex; in the course of it, the verb and the noun were blended into one, and the three basic forms of the noun-name, concrete, and abstraction noun- were themselves, as we have shown, poured into the same mould. The new product which the crucible gave forth was the rational, the concept".

Snell devotes a whole chapter to the topic of ethics in the ancient Greek world, again beginning from Homer, and more specifically from a scene taken from Iliad and in which the goddess Athena warns Achilles not to attack king Agamemnon with his sword, putting a restraint on his impulse. He stresses that Athena doesn't command the Homeric hero, but rather "gives Achilles something to think about". Even though Achilles's retreat has little to do with morality, this fragment provides the first sperm of the subsequent Western pondering on ethics. Snell points out the dominant notion of profit in ancient Greece which is connected with the words for virtue and good, "Arete" and "Agathos". When Homer uses these words he implies that the agent is "useful, proficient, and capable of vigorous action". Nevertheless, their connection with the moral realm is because they "designate qualities for which a man may win the respect of his whole community". Actually, it was the discussion of the aretai, the virtues, that "produces the concepts of state and justice". For Snell "the figure of Socrates constitutes the turning point from the moral thinking of the archaic and classical periods to that of post-classical and Hellenistic ages". Socrates advocated the individual's search of the morally good. As the Greek sage left no written legacy, we learn about his doctrines through Plato and Xenophon. For him, the knowledge of the good is enough for the individual to act on it, nobody was born evil and nobody commits a transgression voluntarily. Understanding should be placed above the various passions and hold them in check. Socrates' ethical philosophy presupposes the perception of the individual as the sole responsible for his behavior. There is no external factor the Homeric Olympian Gods who motivate human actions. People have consciousness of their deeds and their self and they should be the only ones held accountable. It is a prime example of how the new perception of mind and the individualization of the soul altered the traditional ethical conceptions that dominated Greek society in the previous centuries.


The Discovery of the Mind in Greek Philosophy and Literature is a much debated study in the academic circles and Snell has been criticized by his peers for a number of issues pertaining to the book's assumptions and speculations. The fact that Snell seems to readily dismiss the argument that the Greeks owed some of their intellectual achievements to the Oriental philosophies, his over-analytical philological scrutiny which sometimes becomes tiring, and his exclusion of the irrational aspects of ancient Greek heritage, best diagramed in E. R. Dodds notorious book The Greeks and the Irrational, are only some of the arguments against the German philologist's work. In his article on the book, Brooke Holmes contemplates whether it would be valid to rank Snell's study as an Undead Text. Undead Texts are those "ambitious, erudite works that boldly set forth big, original ideas but were written as much for other scholars as for a broad public". Holmes wraps up his paper arguing in favor of the book's addition to the Undead Texts as "it still functions as a postwar matrix for plotting and replotting the coordinates of Self and and Other in the relationship between "The Greeks" and shifting reception communities and their differing approaches to the past and hopes for the future". I found this title to be one of the most engaging books on Greek antiquity and I consider it as one of the truly classical texts that will be read and re-read among scholars for the following decades. Even though there are some parts that are a bit hard to follow, mainly due to the extended philological inquiries made by the author, it is a book that can be easily devoured by a layman who is simply interested on the subject. It would be great if you read The Discovery of the Mind in Greek Philosophy and Literature in conjunction with E. R. Dodds' incisive research on the "Other" side of Greek tradition, the one which involves the absurd and the illogical, presented in his book The Greeks and the Irrational.

[Larry Hinman · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of the first books, along with From Religion to Philosophy: A Study in the Origins of Western Speculation, that drew me into philosophy as an undergraduate. His chapter on Homer and the emerging Greek concept of the self is superb and helped me to understand just how profound a change occurred with the emergence of early Greek philosophy.

[Daniel · Rating 5 out of 5]

A brilliant collection of essays, each of them is worth being revisited. Some claims are certainly outdated or at least controversial but the overall picture Snell gives from Homer to Virgil was ground breaking and is still eye opening in so many ways.
Highly recommend.

[Tyrone_Slothrop (ex-MB) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Le magnifiche e progressive sorti della grecità

Questo saggio non è una lettura per tutti e richiede una certa preparazione e un minimo di conoscenza della letteratura e della storia dell'antica Grecia. E' infatti necessario avvicinarsi a questo saggio con la distanza critica del tempo passato dalla pubblicazione e fruirne con un approccio storico-critico. Per fortuna la meravigliosa introduzione di Roberto Andreotti permette anche al non-professionista (quale io sono) di comprendere sia l'importanza di questo testo, sia (in parte) il suo non essere più completamente attuale.

Stabilire dunque un’equidistanza storico-critica da Snell, praticando una lettura il più possibile elastica.

Il testo di Snell ha un impianto generale ormai desueto, una visione hegeliana della storia dove l'uomo europeo discende direttamente da quello greco, il primo ed unico popolo al mondo ad aver scoperto "Der Geist" (lo Spirito del titolo, così scomodo da sparire nel titolo della versione italiana per parecchi decenni, come splendidamente narrato da Andreotti). E' a tutti gli effetti un libro a tesi, il cui obiettivo è ben presentato nella pagine aggiunte da Snell nel 1975:
il cammino dal mito al logos, l’“illuminismo” dei Greci, quel “progresso della coscienza” che Hegel ha ritenuto essenziale per la storia della cultura greca

Sia l'eurocentrismo che il progressismo rigido sono punti invecchiati male e superati, ma molto interessante e utile è capire il metodo filologico di Snell, che basa tutta la sua discussione sulle parole (ed ovviamente, masticare il greco antico permette di apprezzare molto meglio questo testo).

Certo, ci sono posizioni un pò estreme nella linguistica di Snell che argomenta che gli eroi omerici non decidono, perchè se non avevano un verbo per esprimere questa funzione, vuol dire che questa, per la loro coscienza, non esisteva . Affermazione un pò categorica e semplicistica, che rappresenta il cosiddetto principio lessicale: se Omero non ha una parola per qualcosa, allora non ne possiede neanche il concetto. Punto che suscitò parecchio dibattito e che verrà in sostanza smontato da altri studiosi nell'ambito degli studi saussuriani sulla lingua.

Però Snell scrive molto bene e sa rendere con agilità e ottime argomentazioni i vari passaggi della cultura, della letteratura e della filosofia greca, mettendo in evidenza gli snodi fondamentali del pensiero antico tra le varie forme espressive (dall'epica omerica alla tragedia che proviene dai riti dionisiaci, dall'Eschilo religioso all'Euripide "corruttore del popolo" fino ai filosofi presocratici e a Parmenide e Socrate).

Per Eschilo Zeus è ancora il vigile protettore della giustizia, ma si sta ormai staccando dalla realtà immediata del mondo. Non è più il dio che guida gli avvenimenti con l’azione e con la parola, è già quasi un ideale, prossimo a identificarsi con l’immagine della giustizia. L’interpretazione sentimentale-romantica che pone Eschilo contro Euripide non tiene conto insomma del contributo di Eschilo all’illuminismo.

Punti di particolare interesse e molto attraenti per me sono stati:
- la descrizione di come la tragedia nasca da mitologia omerica innestata su rappresentazioni magico religiose arcaiche (ma in essa entra già ragione ateniese e concetto di uomo non succube totale degli dei),
- l'osservazione che Parmenide abbia "bloccato" lo sviluppo dell'osservazione empirica, ritardando parecchio lo sviluppo della "scienza" greca (ben diversa da quella moderna)
- il valore dell'articolo determinativo per la nascita della filosofia, il cui essere fondamentale è molto ben spiegato
- l'attenzione alle parole e ai significati ad essi legati (pur se con qualche semplificazione):
Dobbiamo sempre circoscrivere con precisione in quale senso usiamo le nostre parole per descrivere epoche lontane.

[José Manuel González Pacheco · Rating 5 out of 5]

Monumental ensayo que, mediante la filología, literatura y filosofía, explica la génesis del pensamiento y civilización europeos a partir de los griegos; grandísima obra, y todo un clásico, este «El descubrimiento del espíritu» de Bruno Snell, en @Acantilado1999.

[Hiéroglyphe · Rating 4 out of 5]

« The gods are the measure of all things: this dictum signalizes to the Greeks that the world is a cosmos and that everything is controlled by a stable order. It is a concept of nature upon which the Greeks pinned their faith; but more than believing in it, they also attempted to comprehend its principles. The more deeply they probed into the mystery, the clearer it became to them that behind these gods there existed an even more universal plan which controlled the life of man and gave it its meaning. Our European culture may well be said to rest on the discovery of the Greeks that this plan takes different manifestations: to the intellect it appears in the shape of law, to the senses it is beauty, to the active spirit it is justice. The persuasion that truth, beauty and justice exist in the world, even though their appearance is largely hidden, is our ever-present heirloom from the Greeks, and even to-day the power of this conviction is unimpaired. »

« If we hope to be Europeans —and such an intent must be implied in our desire to read and write, and to preserve the arts, technology, philosophy— the question which looms before us is: ‘What were the Greeks?’ And especially if we are dissatisfied with this or that aspect of our modern European culture, we must ask with an added emphasis: ‘What was the original form of this culture, at a time when the modern distortions had not yet marred its face? »

[Franz · Rating 5 out of 5]

Snell argues that the literary and philosophical writings of the early Greeks peeled open the mind within men bit by bit. In the Homeric epics and tales of Hesiod, the thoughts of the various heroes arise as speech of the Olympic gods and goddesses within the heroes' minds. The poet is the instrument through which the immortals speak inside men's heads. Gradually, over the course of the 5th century BCE--as revealed in the lyrics of Pindar, Sappho, and other poets; the traditional portrayal of heroes in Aeschylus's plays; the jettisoning of mythical explanations about the cosmos by the presocratic philosophers; the emergence of individuals with free will in the plays of Euripides; and culminating with Socrates insisting on each man's responsibility for the values they act on, and Aristophanes's comedic rage against Socrates and the diminishment of the gods in the plays of Euripides--the rational mind exploring the physical cosmos emerges as the alternative to mythic conceptions of the world. Aiding in this development is the Greek language which evolves into a tool for expressing concrete thoughts and logical thinking. By the beginning of the 4th century BCE, producing plays for the stage that retold the old myths had been largely abandoned for the playful and profound dialogues of Plato with their emphasis on our reason having the ability to figure out how the world works. This ultimately influenced the European emphasis on science and logic which we in the West inherited. This is a wonderful book filled with interesting insights drawn from Greek poetry, plays, and philosophy. Readers already familiar with some of ancient Greek literature will profit greatly from this book.

[Darin Stevenson · Rating 3 out of 5]

It is a startling moment when one realizes that ‘consciousness’ as we understand it, is fluid and changing over human developmental time. By readings in Julian Jaynes, and other authors who speak towards the evolution of consciousness... one begins to glimpse this strange terrain, which we, ourselves, recursed upon in our own developmental arcs during our childhood... but also throughout our lives in cycles that, themselves, re-iterate histories otherwise unimaginable.

Snell is useful in sketching some of the anchors and pivots that connect the Greeks to aspects of our own ‘modern’ consciousness and by so doing reveal amazing features of perspective and thought that while they may predate our own, are uncannily rich, intelligent and deep.

I am particularly fond of the way that, in an early part of the book, Snell highlights a variety of Greek words for seeing or gazing, emphasizing their active, penetrative nature rather than the passive receptivity we too easily associate with this sense. And goes on to demonstrate how they quickly collapse into a smaller and smaller set of terms whose meanings homogenize.

[ἄμβροτος · Rating 5 out of 5]

I wish I had gotten to this book when I first started being interested in the Greek legacy. This book helped to clarify the steps they took on the long path to the modern world, and it renders clearer their significance which, though frequently praised, can seem remote and impertinent to us now.

I thought the first 3 chapters were fascinating and explained themes which I had picked up on in other discussions of Homer. Snell's philology give fascinating examples of his wider point. I thought some of the chapters on drama and the final 3 chapters were great as well.

Some of the chapters on the history of science and logic didn't hold my attention as well, and I felt they were a little broad and confusingly argued, but I think any of the chapters would be worth revisiting.

[José Miguel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Tremendo libro sobre la evolución del pensamiento!

[A YOGAM · Rating 4 out of 5]

Die Grundthese: Der Geist als geschichtliches Werden
Auf das folgende Buch wurde ich Mitte der 1980er Jahre durch Prof. Franz Vonessen (1923–2011), einen profunden Kenner der antiken Philosophie und Mythenforschung, aufmerksam. Snells (1896 - 1986) zentrale und kühne These lautet, dass der menschliche Geist (im Sinne eines reflexiven Selbstbewusstseins) nicht einfach „da“ war, sondern von den Griechen erst entdeckt und damit überhaupt erst geschaffen wurde. Er vergleicht dies nicht mit der Entdeckung Amerikas (das Land existierte bereits vorher), sondern versteht „entdecken“ als einen Akt, in dem der Geist erst im Bewusstsein des Menschen Wirklichkeit erlangt.
Stationen der Bewusstwerdung
Homer: Der Mensch als Fragment
Snell analysiert die Sprache Homers und stellt fest, dass der homerische Mensch noch kein Wort für „Leib“ oder „Seele“ als Einheit hat. Er versteht sich als Summe von Gliedern (melea) und Organen wie dem Thymos (Organ der Regung) oder dem Noos (geistiges Auge). Entscheidungen werden nicht autonom gefällt, sondern als göttliches Eingreifen erfahren: Wenn Achill innehält, ist es Athene, die ihn am Haar zurückzieht.
Die Lyrik: Das Erwachen der Persönlichkeit
Bei Dichtern wie Sappho oder Archilochos entdeckt Snell den Moment, in dem der Mensch sich seiner Hilflosigkeit und damit seiner Innerlichkeit bewusst wird. Gefühle erscheinen nicht mehr nur als äußere Kraft, sondern als persönliche Spannung (das „bittersüße“ Verlangen) und als Tiefe der Seele.
Die Tragödie: Die Geburt der Entscheidung
In der attischen Tragödie, insbesondere bei Aischylos, tritt der Mensch erstmals als ein Wesen auf, das Entscheidungen trifft und Verantwortung übernimmt. Snell zeigt, wie hier der Übergang vom mythischen zum rationalen Handeln vollzogen wird, der schließlich in die Philosophie mündet.
Philosophische Kritik und Bedeutung
Snell verfolgt einen Weg „vom Mythos zum Logos“. Er zeigt, wie der bestimmte Artikel im Griechischen die Bildung von Abstraktionen („das Gute“, „das Seiende“) ermöglichte und damit das Fundament für die europäische Naturwissenschaft und Philosophie legte.
Kritische Würdigung (auch im Geiste Vonessens)
Snells Ansatz wurde oft vorgeworfen, er spreche dem homerischen Menschen die „Persönlichkeit“ ab. Doch Snell geht es um die Reflexionsstufe: Der homerische Mensch handelt zwar, weiß aber noch nicht um seine Autonomie. Für einen Philosophen wie Vonessen, der stark an der existenziellen Bedeutung des Mythos interessiert war, bietet Snells Werk eine faszinierende Reibungsfläche: Es zeigt die griechische Aufklärung nicht als trockenen Prozess, sondern als leidvollen Durchbruch zu einer neuen Selbstauffassung des Menschen.
„Die Entdeckung des Geistes“ ist eine Einladung, die Fundamente unseres Denkens zu hinterfragen. Es lehrt uns, dass unsere Begriffe von Freiheit, Wille und Individualität keine Naturtatsachen sind, sondern die mühsam errungenen Früchte einer geschichtlichen Entwicklung, die bei den Griechen ihren Anfang nahm.

[Mark Lisac · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great erudition and intelligence, in the tradition of the best academic work. Snell shows how the ancient Greeks' conception of the human mind shifted from the time of Homer to the time of Euripides. He also argues persuasively that the structure of Greek language was instrumental in developing scientific understanding of the world. Both developments involve language and profoundly affected later culture.
Reading the book requires concentration but that challenge makes taking it on even more worthwhile. And despite its dense nature, Snell's prose is quite understandable, unlike many of the intentionally obscure or even impenetrable books by critics and social scientists of the last few decades; some of the credit for this has to go to the translation by Thomas Rosenmeyer, which reads as if the book were originally written in English rather than in German. One chapter on the poet Pindar feels a little superfluous but that's a minor issue. The analysis rests on surviving examples of ancient Greek writing. Who knows what the less literate segment of the population thought?
This is an example of a book I would probably never have heard of unless I'd seen a recent Goodreads review of it, which shows one of the values of the service.

[Malvina Papadaki · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ομολογουμένως δύσκολο βιβλίο για κάποιον (όπως εγώ) που δε σχετίζεται άμεσα με τις ανθρωπιστικές επιστήμες. Αξίζει ωστόσο για τα πολύ ενδιαφέροντα θέματα που αναπτύσσονται.

Ο τρόπος που ειναι δομημένο, σε μικρά δοκίμια που εχουν μεν μια συνέχεια μεταξύ τους αλλα μπορουν να σταθούν και αυτόνομα, επιτρέπει να εστιάσει κανείς περισσότερο σε θέματα που τον ενδιαφέρουν πιο πολύ. Μερικά κεφάλαια έχουν πράγματα πολύ φιλολογικό-γλωσσολογικό περιεχόμενο για να ενδιαφέρουν ένα τυχαίο αναγνώστη όμως άλλα όπως οι αναλύσεις για την εξέλιξη της σκέψης από τον Όμηρο και τη λυρικη ποίηση έως την τραγωδία και τη φιλοσοφία μπορούν να διαβαστούν αρκετά εύκολα.

Γενικά πρόκειται για ένα βιβλίο στο οποίο μπορεί κανείς να ανατρέξει περισσότερες φορές, αφού είναι σχεδόν απίθανο να αφομοιώσει τα πάντα με την πρώτη ανάγνωση.

[parmezan litterator · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've never read such a lucid scholar as Snell. I was blown away by his diligence and source material and clarity in expressing complex thought backed by evidence and his own induction. True scholarship. What a great mind.

I think this is one of those academic works not only insightful for scholarship in classics, but also insightful into the study of history and human nature, how new words emerge and function as indicators for where we as humans stand in our understanding of our condition. I've never read an academic work, besides Leo Strauss, that has so much significance with insight into life.

Thank you, Bruno Snell.

[German DarthSith · Rating 4 out of 5]

Este es un ensayo imprescindible para quienes estén interesados en el desarrollo y evolución del pensamiento occidental .
Toda una revelación fue descubrir que Homero, no tuviera el concepto de alma y voluntad de las personas. ¿Cómo se va descubriendo este concepto, el de alma, voluntad, albedrío a través de la lírica, comedia, drama? ¿Cómo las metáforas dan paso al desarrollo de la abstracción? Y ¿Cómo la abstracción dió paso a la filosofía? ¿Cómo la filosofía práctica dió paso a la ciencia e investigación? ¿Cómo es que el griego y no el latín (Grecia y Roma arrancan más o menos en la misma época 753 AC) permitieron el desarrollo hacia la filosofía y ciencia? ¿Cómo ocurrió esta transmisión del pensamiento griego al romano y después hacia el renacimiento? Todos estos puntos están finamente descritos y ejemplarizados con textos originales en el libro. Es realmente disfrutable

[Ilaria · Rating 4 out of 5]

Raccolta di saggi fondamentali per lo studio del pensiero classico. Snell pone le basi per alcune categorie interpretative ormai consolidate nello studio della lingua e della cultura greca. Pure alcune teorie sono datate o necessitano di una correzione alla luce dei nuovi studi. L’ordine in cui sono posti i saggi rispetta la successione temporale, per cui si parte da Omero e si arriva alla poesia alessandrina, ma non si rinuncia ad approfondire certi argomenti specifici e trasversali. Imprescindibile e fonte di ispirazione anche per comprendere i fenomeni della cultura contemporanea.

[Alexandre · Rating 5 out of 5]

4,5/5
uma excelente exploração sobre como os gregos antigos foram lentamente chegando a uma noção de mente humana e consciencia, uma espécie de self-awareness construída à medida que o relevo do mito e da ação dos deuses foi perdendo terreno. depois de um mês a ler literatura africana ou sobre áfrica, soube bem recarregar a bateria do eurocentrismo. acho que também mereço um bocadinho, as a treat.

[Roberto · Rating 2 out of 5]

Sulla scia dell'entusiasmo da precedenti letture sull'argomento, e nonostante i limiti della mia cultura tecnica, iniziai con tanto entusiasmo questo libro. Entusiasmo che si arenò davanti alle tante frasi in greco senza traduzione e spiegazione. Non per profani.

[John Williams · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating book that traces the development of human thought in classic Greek literature.
This book will be especially interesting for readers already familiar with Greek epics. For everyone else, this book will undoubtedly spark an interest in discovering classic Greek literature.

[Maan Kawas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent read!

[Fred Jenkins · Rating 4 out of 5]

This remains one of the best books that I have read on Greek literature, especially on Homer. Snell had a thorough knowledge of the texts and contexts. Rather than the mess of theory and politics that too many current scholars serve up, Snell observes what is actually in the texts. His main theme is the Greeks' gradual discovery of mind, motivation, and self, beginning with Homeric heroes who are "directed" by the gods, and working through early lyric, tragedy, and philosophy. He returns to Homer throughout the book, closely examining his use of language and elucidating the precise meaning of many words in Homeric Greek.

[Paulo Henrique · Rating 5 out of 5]

Livro excelente. Uma verdadeira odisséia do pensamento.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very enlightening book about how Greek philosophy changed the world.

[gufo_bufo]

Sono sicura di averlo letto ai tempi del liceo. Sono sicura che è un libro importante. Gallina beccami se me ne ricordo qualcosa.

[Iqra Tasmiae]

PDF https://archive.org/details/discovery...