Greeks and the Irrational

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Summary: A History of the Concept of the Soul
Review: This book describes the complicated history of the concept of the soul. To summarize Dodds: Homer didn't have a comprehensive word for mind. The psyche and the conscious self had not yet been defined. He understood events as repetition of the past, and individual consciousness was not a part of that. By the time of Plato these ideas had taken shape -- the Phaedo and Timaeus are works that demonstrate a conscious separation of the knower from the known, and the dual nature of the body and the soul. Pythagoras and Orphic doctrines all came into play, because Plato was a mystic (in his own Platonic way). The pre-Socratic Naturalists saw things in terms of "stuff," but Plato's Metaphysics showed that this was not enough. An interesting dicussion.

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Summary: A plea for the development of the Rational Mind in the 50s
Review: This book is already a classic, but one must realize what were the circunstances of its composition. _The Greeks and The Irrational_ was, above all, a development of the Sather lectures given by Mr. Dodds in Los Angeles during the 50s - i.e., at the time of McCarthy and the hysteria over the preservation of the supposedly eternal "Rational Values" of Western Civilization. Dodds wants, above all to warn his readers about how fragile the tradition of rational philosophical enquiry is, and how easily it can degenerate, given the power of what he calls the "Inherited conglomerate". The hub of the book, therefore, resides in the fact that Dodds remarks that the Greeks developed their philosophical and scientific tradition between the Vth and the IIIrd centuries BC and that - contrary to what the moderns would expect expectations - that tradition, before an onslaught of mysticism, simply floundered, having to be recovered painstakingly in the Late Western Middle Ages. Having this in mind, one could profit better from this outstanding work.

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Summary: Dodds - the ideal communicator
Review: This is a work that can't fail to grip. It's not a work just for the historian or the classicists. It's a book for anyone with an interest in the mind and the civilisation of Europe and America. Our notion of the ancient Greeks as an intensely rational people doesn't begin to do them justice. They too had their deeper, psychic side, on the basis of which their philosophy developed, and which even the modern culture continues to demonstrate. The Greek view of madness (mania),and possession, not necessarily as a curse, is explored from original sources. 'Madness' could be viewed as even a blessing in this ancient culture. So too the 'Sacred Disease' of Hippokrates (i.e. epilepsy). We find his treatment of what may be the first description of an out-of-body experience - in Pindar (c.470 B.C.E.) and the poetic double vision and causation, the Muses' gift. Not to be missed by anyone with an interest in the human mind.