Achilles and the Good Life

In the latest issue of Dappled Things , Robert T. Miller reflects on what the Iliad can teach today’s youth :

In even considering the possibility, therefore, that the life of quiet enjoyment with family might be best, Achilleus is suggesting a radically new understanding of the good life, an understanding that may even undermine the political foundations of Homeric society. Achilleus is leaning towards this radical alternative and is persuaded not to sail back to his homeland in Phthia only when Aias appeals to him in terms of these new values, accusing him of forgetting his friends’ affection for him and averring that they desire most of all his love and friendship.  Achilleus postpones his decision, agreeing to remain at Troy, though not necessarily to reenter the battle. Of course, as the battle continues, Hektor kills Patroklos, and in his explosive wrath, Achilleus effectively loses the opportunity to choose. His only option is to kill Hektor—and thus to die himself on the plains of Troy.

Read in this way, the  Iliad is an ideal text to help young people begin thinking about the central philosophical and moral questions about the good life for human beings and the relation of these questions to the conventional morality of our society. Students taking core courses like Columbia’s  Literature Humanities or Villanova’s  Augustine and Culture Seminar are generally only eighteen years old (about the same age as Achilleus, incidentally), and, self-consciously or otherwise, almost all of them are asking themselves for the first time the same kinds of questions that Achilleus is asking: they want to know what makes for a good human life, what kind of life is worth choosing, which things are good and should be pursued, which are bad and ought be avoided. They want to know how they should live. The alternatives Achilleus saw are, of course, quite different from the alternatives young people today see (though in balancing the demands of career and family, our modern problems can sometimes bear an eerie resemblance to Achilleus’ dilemma), but the problem of determining which is the best kind of life is essentially the same. Read in this way, the  Iliad is very much their book.