300 Epics Response Paper

My topic is the morality used in the decisions making and actions in the Iliad and Odyssey. I also think that this topic greatly ties into the question of solidarity vs community/ living with family and friends. I will be arguing that solidarity is key in making correct decision making and that social standards for morality only mutter the issue. First off I’d like to look at what is the definition/definitions of moral. It is defined by the Merriam-Webster Dictionary as “concerning or relating to what is right and wrong in human behavior: based on what you think is right and good: considered right and good by most people; agreeing with a standard of right behavior”. Most of these ideas of morality link greatly into who surrounds you and what influences you, along with social standards of the time.
This gives us a very broad brush to paint with when it comes to analyzing the actions of the people in the Iliad and Odyssey. Per the first definition you have to dive into what is “human behavior” to which there is no time constraint on, you could reference human behavior decades before and still have legitimate claim to your argument. This could be used to justify Achilles actions in the climax of the Iliad when he maims and disfigures Hector. It can be achieved under the basis that Achilles was showing his dominance on the battlefield through symbolist violence at a premoral level which establishes him as an alpha male amongst the hordes of other soldiers. You can also attribute this broadly to the origins of the Trojan War and say that it is morally correct, because it is human nature to react when something is taken from them (especially if it’s Helen from Menelaus). This does justify the Trojan War and would somewhat justify Achilles actions against Hector if not for the fact that the third definition is the widely accepted meaning of morality.
This definition of morality (considered right and good by most people; agreeing with a standard of right behavior) being socially constructed for the individual is one that has many fallacies including Ecological fallacies and fallacies of Division and composition. Ecological fallacies are inferences about the nature of specific individuals are based solely upon aggregate statistics collected for the group to which those individuals belong. An example would be to assume that when Achilles rejects the convoys from Phoenix and Odysseus in book ten he is doing so solely because of his Greek Ideology and not his own. This is also an extremely common problem in current day assessments

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