Wait, you mean the Iliad's NOT a textbook?

Plato’s against memor’zation

Insisting on deliberation,

For without analysis

You risk pushing fallacies

In teaching to each generation

There is a lot of great stuff going on in the Havelock and in the Homer. By way of context, I’ve read the Iliad in whole or substantial parts at least three times in my academic career—once in high school and twice in college for different courses on literature and philosophy—so I am pretty familiar with the text and decoding it. That said, it was a pleasure to read it again bearing in mind Havelock’s points and the discussion question.

Not being very familiar with the Greek educational system, it was absolutely fascinating to view the Iliad as a means of passing on a cultural history, albeit one meant to be memorized rather than analyzed. On its surface, Plato’s antipathy towards Homer’s lack of absolute expertise seems absolutely bizarre. However, when total memorization and empathic absorption is the only way to effectively incorporate information, deliberation is less important than reaction and rote recitation. Or as Havelock put it, “He asks of men that instead they should examine this experience and rearrange it, that they should think about what they say, instead of just saying it. And they should separate themselves from it instead of identifying with it; they themselves should become the 'subject' who stands apart from the 'object' and reconsiders it and analyses it and evaluates it, instead of just 'imitating' it.” Plato is attempting to completely overthrow the pedagogical norm, and has quite a challenge ahead of him.

Within the context of the Iliad itself, the question of deliberation in action is a fascinating one. Characters don’t actually deliberate or analyze situations—they act. Gods act regardless of consequence and men act in response to situations set up by the gods or their baser impulses. The only time any character demonstrates a moment of deliberation in his action (lines 90-215), it is represented by the appearance of the goddess Athena. Athena is recognized as the goddess of wisdom, to be sure, but the important thing to note is that Achilles did not deliberate on his actions of his own accord—he was swayed from an impulsive decision by divine counsel. Had he even been remotely tempted to act counter to Athena, doubtless he would have learned from the humbling decimation the Greeks had just suffered at the hands of Apollo. So what is Homeric deliberation then? Is it action without critical analysis? Is it a mark of a hero that they act solely based on either instinct or divine decree?

From a pedagogical perspective, the Havelock reading got me thinking a lot about the purpose of rote memorization at all. It has gone in and out of fashion recently, especially in basic mathematics and vocabulary building. It seems that as access to written fact has become the dominant paradigm in the educational environment, it is far less relevant to teach facts than it is to teach how to interpret them and analyze them. In a world dominated by today’s aggressively pervasive technologies, this becomes moreso as the available source materials have increased infinitely. Today’s students have to learn to research, discern and decode the wealth of information at their fingertips and memorization becomes irrelevant in a society with devices that permit portable near instantaneous recollection.