Virtue And Justice:The Ethical Theory In Homer’s Epic

The era of Homer was in the “dark ages”, when the Mycenaean civilization was almost lost. Homer’s Epic was the only light of civilization at that time as well as the birthplace for western ethical ideas. Two main parts make up the spirit of the Homeric Epic: virtue and of justice.There is a close relationship between the idea of virtues and the historic background. During the time of Homer, economic recessions, political and military conflicts were quite common. Tribes mainly resorted to war to get wealth, where people won their honors and achievements. Those struggles resulted in people advocating violence and admiring heroes. As for Homer’s Epic, it gives a detailed description of heroes’ lives of that time.Fighting is the core spirit of the heroes’ ethic. Those heroes fought bravely and by any kind of means on the battle field with strong self-awareness and purposes. They fought for personal honor fearlessly. Strong personal consciousness and the human-oriented spirit ran through their lives until they were dead.The idea of justice is the other main part of the spirit of Homer’s Epic. Actually there was not a general rule of justice at that time, which could be explained in three ways. The first is also the basic desire for revenge which is a form of retributive justice. In Homer’s Epic, although killing for revenge and death were described in a very poetic way, the brutality of original revanchism was vividly shown. The second part of the explanation is justice was assigned on the basis of social position. During that time, the society was an orderly hierarchical society. The social position helped safeguard the interests of various classes especially those of the aristocratic. Here, power and order stand for justice. The third part of the explanation related to military contracts, which is shown as compliance with the contract. In this context, if someone violated the contract, he or she would definitely get punished.There is a distinguishing feature of the ethics described in Homer’s Epic, that is, the tension between virtue and justice.In this tension, heroes were often put into ethnical conflicts and it was hard to solve those conflicts. Several factors led to this tension. The first is that the idea of virtue lacked moral value with respect to justice. The second factor is that the idea of justice covered a quite limited field. The third factor is that the idea of goodness lacked moral value and connation. The ideas of virtue and justice at Homer’s time were inherited and developed by people in the Classical Greek AGE. However, the concept of virtue in Classical Greece was developed into a generally held value which not only referred to bravery but also included many social moral values and emphasized rational thought. During the Classical Greek Age, there was still the concept of hierarchy, but justice covered more fields in life. The tension between justice and virtue was much less at that time.