Sunday, June 14, 2009

Achilles & Patroclus as Righteousness & Peace

Due to member requests, the Facebook discussion group "Do It Again - Rereading the St. John's Program" will remain a private group for members only, and no summary or paraphrased synopsis shall be made available.


I am of course free to post my own personal observations at my blogspot regarding my re-reading of The Great Books program, but my own comments shall have nothing to do with the private group, or what has been posted by any of its members.

(my recent thought on The Iliad)

I am reminded of the Glaukos-Diomedes battleground dialogue of the generation of men as leaves of a season which fall and pass away, and all the remains is the "glory" of their memory. Camus in "Myth of Sisyphus" uses that wonderful phrase "that paltry eternity, posterity". In Homer's day, posterity surely seemed an eternity. Now we know that it is a mere 1/2 billion years until our sun, a growing white dwarf with only 8 billion years remaining, will render Earth uninhabitable. And what rosetta stone if any shall we leave behind for some future intelligence, if any, to unearth, decipher and say, ah, the glory that was Greece and Rome, and America.

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