Personality Before the Axial Age

The psychological qualities of the peoples who lived before the Axial Age, before about 550 BCE, may have been quite different from out own.

Last week, I characterized such ancient individuals as different from us. Elaborating a bit:

First, some psychologists believe those pre-Axial people may often have interpreted the voices generated by their own minds -- the same voices we hear when we are talking to ourselves -- as coming from outside themselves. Pre-Axial peoples lived in cultures that accepted that voices emanated not only from other people such as parents, but also (in the absence of other people) from gods and goddesses who spoke to them from the rivers, streams, bushes, winds, and other places beleived to be inhabited by gods.

Second, such pre-Axial people were more outer-directed psychologically than we are today. The ancients fully responded to the voices of other people and from the gods as they perceived them. Their conscious self-awareness, however, was limited relative to that of contemporary people. They were mostly non-reflective and appeared to lack the need or the language to describe most internal motives or feeling experiences, with the exception of feelings of overwhelming emotions such as fear, terror, shame, and strong familial attachment.

Third, their identities were limited to a few simple characterizations. When describing themselves and others, the key facts communicated were family lineage (and perhaps a family creed), social position or occupation, and a sequence of life events.

The nature of such peoples and their behaviors are revealed in part in the accounts of the early Hebrew prophet Amos and in the Greek historical poem, the Iliad, both dated to about 800 BCE.

In the Iliad, for example, the characters often are said to be driven by gods and goddesses. Agamemnon was blamed for robbing Achilles of his mistress, and creating unnecessary strife as a consequence. He replied, "Not I was the cause of this act, but [the god] Zeus and moira [fate]...". And later, when preparing for battle, Achilles decides he will fight "...when the thumos [breath or spirit] in his chest tells him to and a god rouses him."

Sigmund Freud was a keen observer of the explanations people provide of their seemingly-irrational behavior. Freud might have said that these people (had they been contemporary) were evading responsibility for their own motives, assigning instead the responsibility to gods and superstitious omens seemingly outside their control. Pre-Axial-Age peoples, however, may simply not yet have developed a language of interior, self-directed intentionality.

Judith Weissman, a professor of English at Syracuse University, notes that in the Iliad the gods speak directly to the characters over 30 times, often when the characters are under stress. Many of the communications are short, brief, exhortations. The most common godly command, issued when the men are fearful in battle, is to, "fight as your father did."

At one point in the Iliad, the god Apollo picks up Hektor, who has fallen in battle, and says, "So come now, and urge on your cavalry in their numbers / to drive on their horses against the hollow ships" (15.258-59). Later in the poem, Hektor follows the god's instructions, telling his men:

Dear friends, be men; let shame be in your hearts and discipline in the sight of other men, and each one of you remember his children and his wife, his property and his parents.

This focus on instructions from others (or one's own thoughts attributed to others) is just one instance of an inattention to one's own inner life. Each person's identity is similarly seen from the outside, with little reference to any psychological qualities. For example, one soldier was described in this way:

Medon was a bastard son of godlike Oileus
And therefore a brother Aias, but had made his home in Phylake
Away from the land of his fathers, having killed a man, a relation
Of Eriopis, his stepmother, the wife of Oileus

And, something with a bit more psychology to it, the Trojan Glaukos describes himself before his death this way:

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But Hippolochos begot me, and I claim that he is my father;
he sent me to Troy, and urged upon me repeated injunctions,
to be always among the bravest, and hold my head above others,
not shaming the generation of my fathers, who were
the greatest men in Ephyre and again in wide Lykia.

The Greek Philosopher Plato was a true Axial-age thinker, possessing a more nearly contemporary self-understanding (though he still could depict Socrates as hearing approval of his speeches in the chirping of cicadias).

Plato lived just a few hundred years after the Iliad was written -- but on the other side of the Axial transformation. Perhaps being so distant from, but still near enough in time to when the Iliad was recorded, was one reason that Plato found the epic and similar poetry so disturbing: a reversion to the non-reflective state of the pre-axial person seemed close by, and something to be avoided.

For Plato, such poetry was oral, rhythmic...and seductive; it worked by depicting action rather than by including analysis; such poems failed to explain why a given character's actions were right or wrong. He believed such dramatic portrayals, when left unexplained and absent moral commentary, were dangerous to the governance and citizens of the state.

Once the Axial Age was in progress, the new wisdom writings that emerged attempted to address just this defect that Plato perceived in earlier writings: the lack of reflection and lack of ethical awareness.

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Notes

The quotes from Agamemnon and Achilles are cited in Sleutels, J. (2006). Greek Zombies, Philosophical Psychology, 19, 177-179. They are referenced as: Iliad, Book 19, lines 86-87, and Iliad, Book 9, lines 702 ff, respectively.

Judith Weissman's book is: Weissman, J. (1993). Of two minds: Poets who hear voices. Hanover, NH: Wesleyan University Press.Weissman's headcount of god-speeches and the injunction to fight like your father both appear on p. 6.

The lines, of the god Apollo, "So come now, and urge on your cavalry in their numbers / to drive on their horses against the hollow ships" (15.258-59), and "Dear friends, be men..." (15:661-63) are from Lattimore, R. (1951). Homer's Iliad. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, cited in Weissman (1993, p. 7). The lines "Medon was a bastard" 15:332-336 and "But Hippolochos begot me," 6.206-10 are similarly from Lattimore cited in Weissman (1993, pp. 10 and 12).
The characterization of Plato's reactions to the Iliad and other pre-Axial poems comes from Weissman (1993, p. xii).

Copyright © 2009 John D. Mayer