Abstract

As a founding poem in Western civilization, Homer's Odyssey has served as a source and a point of departure for political philosophers, beginning with the Greek philosophers and continuing to this day. This dissertation traces how the Odyssey is adopted or co-opted by such thinkers as Plato in his Republic, Rousseau in the Emile, and Horkheimer and Adorno in their Dialectic of Enlightenment. Each chapter offers a new interpretation of these works by reference to an introductory chapter on the political theory of the Odyssey. ;In many ways, each theorist's reference to the Odyssey reflects the political and cultural crisis of its time. Plato writes at a moment when city-states are giving way to empire; he turns to the Odyssey to recommend the embrace of limits and the central importance of political community to humanity. Rousseau sees the inevitable destruction of most local forms of life: rather than recommend a return to ancient models , he proposes rather to preserve the integrity of the individual against increasingly imposing State structures. Horkheimer and Adorno write during and in the aftermath of the Second World War and Auschwitz: both philosophy and politics have proven, at their worst, to be horrific. They cannot recommend any positive project, but cling rather to uncompromising negativity and pessimism to forestall any recurrence of modern barbarism. In the process, they also forestall any possibility of political redemption, however imperfect. ;The very recurrence of a work such as Homer's Odyssey belies arguments by those critics of the "canon" who claim that the works of "dead white males" are irrelevant. At the same time, the flexibility of this text reveals the paucity of vision of those who contend that the "canon" is a fixed and immutable statement. While we can argue over the relative excellence or maliciousness of interpretations, by no means can one conclude that one interpretation has full access to the Truth. If the canon--and particularly the Odyssey--can teach us anything, it is to respect our own limits as imperfect human beings living in imperfectible but cherished communities