Odysseus: the First Western Man

“Odysseus is the first recognizably Western man.”

“Now halt the strife of inexorable war.”

– Homer, The Odyssey

“Let our brilliance make them look dark. No, let us not become darker ourselves on their account, like all those who punish…Let us look away.”

– Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science

Homer ends the Odyssey with an exhortation from the god Cronus to Odysseus to stop perpetuating the cycle of wars of revenge and initiate a new era of peace and love, supervised by the goddess Athena. In Greek mythology, Cronus had ruled the Titan gods during the mythological Golden Age that had vanished long before the Trojan War; and Athena was the goddess not only of war but also of wisdom and the arts. The implication is that Odysseus became a wise and just ruler, dispensing kindness through strength.

Homer is presenting an argument on two levels. The Golden Age might be gone, but great men can strive to regain it through heroic means that are a departure from the unrestrained brutality of mortal combat between nobles―the result of an honor culture that made endless revengeful blood-feuds a major preoccupation for those of noble birth. And the means of attaining this new golden age will be a culture of amity and harmonious relations that celebrates human achievements other than war, maintaining peace through wise leadership, even if the capacity to wage war is one of the principal means of maintaining peace.

This sentiment is a major departure from the cultural milieu explored in the Iliad. It represents an awareness that mortal conflict and brutal heroism, cruelty, and continual strife might give way to a new age prompted by the emergence of a new kind of human being, an individualist and cultural innovator. A prototypical Nietzschean life-affirming heroic individual but also one who transcends partisan identities to achieve an integrated, unitary sense of being. In doing so, this individual brings out the best in people. He is capable of forging a harmonious society of peaceful cooperation: one committed to seeking excellence of being, rather than conflict based on identity distinctions.