The Iliad and human destiny

I'm rereading the Iliad. The first time I came upon this marvelous poem I was fourteen years old. Eleven years have passed since that great moment where I picked, without knowledge of anything, to read the most human and spectacular work offered by the Ancient world. I did not understand most of it, but I remember that I felt in love with its content. Today I picked it again and now, that I have a deeper understanding of the poem, I cannot help but be touched and inspired by this tragedy.

Many things we can learn from the Iliad, but I would like to focus on one of them which I consider to be essential: destiny. The Ancient world had a deeper and more inwardly felt understanding of that thing called destiny which terrifies the Western mind. The Iliad opens like this:

"Sing, O goddess, the anger of Achilles son of Peleus, that brought countless ills upon the Achaeans. Many a brave soul did it send hurrying down to Hades, and many a hero did it yield a prey to dogs and vultures, for so were the counsels of Zeus fulfilled from the day on which the son of Atreus, king of men, and great Achilles, first fell out with one another.

"And which of the gods was it that set them on to quarrel? It was the son of Zeus and Leto; for he was angry with the king and sent a pestilence upon the host to plague the people..."

It is a God, Apollo, who initiates the chain of events that leads toward the end of the whole tragedy, and the Gods presence is prominent from beginning to end. Every time the heroes try to free themselves from their destiny, the Gods bring them back to the course they cannot avoid. In Shakespeare's brilliant words; "As flies to wanton boys, are we to the gods; They kill us for their sport" (King Lear, 4.1.36). The Ancients had a profound faith in destiny, the reason of why oracles where so important in their cults. The idea of deciphering what the Gods had prepared for men was pervasive in their culture, and key to understand their role, not only in society, but in the cosmos as a whole. The Iliad is the greatest achievement, I believe, in this world-feeling.

The West, however, and since the discovery of free will by St. Paul, resists the idea of a destiny. It is unbearable for a Western to admit that his future is sealed by doom. There must be a way out of it, or otherwise he would not deal with the tragic reality of the human condition. He must believe that he is in control of his own destiny. I think that this world-feeling is stronger than anything else in the United States, with its creed of the American Dream. But it took a more radical form in Europe, where Communism (and Hegelianism) became the banner of a promised realm where human individuals will free themselves, at last, from the curse of historical determinism. Liberals from the other side (from Kant and Mill to recently Rawls) want to settle the conditions from which then individuals will become self-fulfilled. The Western project and its progress is a restless struggle to free itself from the unbearable burden of doom.

I must admit that in this particular world-outlook of the Western mind I have departed to rest in the tragic interpretation of the Ancients, at least as well as I remain alive in this world. It is my impression that destiny is a reality that transcends human endeavors. But destiny must be understood properly and we must avoid the simplistic understanding that most people have of it. Destiny is not about a pre-written book that says that you are going to take a step toward the left instead than toward the right on a particular moment. First of all destiny is impossible to defeat in the reality of death. This is the reason why the Ancients cared so much about glory and transcendence in a world of terrifying oblivion; the reason of why the heroes of the Iliad don't fight for mere power and wealth, but for glory and honor, the only possible way to stay alive. In this sense the Ancients can be considered to be much more individualistic than their Western counterparts.

Christianity offered a way out: the Kingdom of God, the prize gained by those that set in the journey to follow Jesus. The only way death can be defeated is by faith in the Kingdom of God and the Final Judgement. Because of that any attempt to transcend death in this life became folly and stupid. The doom of death was inevitable, but the possibility of eternal life was offered; hence the individual can be free in choosing the path toward that eternal life, and finally having control of his destiny at least after the time of its death. But Modernity and its obsession to take charge of human destiny became so ambitious that denied the promise offered by Jesus, and set on the quest to find freedom and salvation on this earth. The consequence was the greatest defeat our civilization had received. However the dream remains alive in pop culture, when we see all these movies and read all these bestsellers where the heroes manage to triumph over the forces of their environment, and rebel against the Gods in the most contemptuous way without fear of retribution. It is then when I realize how naive and arrogant our society is. The delusion of the man that controls its destiny is one of our greatest weakness, and now that Communism and Capitalism have failed in delivering the promised freedom to us all, we have turn toward technology, a destiny controlled by machines that are dead as rocks; that impress us with their fancy shapes and glittering lights, so that we remain in a state of sopor at our tragic ending: that we never had control of our lives and destinies, and we are already in a world where machines control our movements and our interaction with other human beings, without possibility of return but through holocaust/Apocalypse.

In this future visage of desolation where humans become an appendage of technology I have returned to the Iliad as my personal retirement to find repose in times of heroes and conquerors when I'm surrounded by noise, concrete, metal, electricity and waves.

My Statement on Gay Marriage

The law by virtue of being it I must respect. And it is expected from everyone else in a free society to do the same; because only the law has supreme earthly authority. Even in autocratic regimes the figure of the autocrat is the origin of the law. I will skip the problem of what would be a legitimate origin of the law, and just state as principle that the law, whatever it happened to exist according to the common consent of those being subject to it, remains the supreme earthly authority. But the Church (of Rome) has the monopoly of my conscience, the place where only God reaches. The law can only ask from me to obey it, but it cannot claim my conscience, my self. Recently gay marriage was approved in the State of New York, the place where I presently reside. And for the previous mentioned reasons I respect gay marriage by being sanctioned according to the law of this land, and having supreme earthly authority. But I cannot concede in favoring it in my conscience, because that part of my self belongs to my devoted faith in the Church; and the Church does not recognize as warranted the union of same-gender couples.

However I cannot judge others' love. Doing that is always deeply unchristian. The authority to judge others' love, and weather it is right or wrong, belongs only to God. That is why the inclination of gays is not my concern nor does it demands my opinion on the subject, because simply I cannot know better, because I am no better. My opinion only rests in regarding the institution of gay marriage and it is guided by the Holy Doctrine of the Catholic Church. For that reason I don't support with my conscience what the law forces me to respect nonetheless (and I willfully do respect it): the institution of gay marriage. But the judgment of others' love goes beyond my reach, as it is well explained by the Pauline theology from the teachings of Jesus.

The difficulty in explaining this is that our society has become to fond of judging others, coming from every orientation in politics, ethics and religion. The difference between the judgment of a court of law is that it rests upon the earthly authority of the law. If the law has a moral content, it is not morality which makes the law binding, but the law which makes morality binding. In itself the only moral court where the individual stands is that upon God. But this difference goes completely unnoticed by many who think that an opinion regarding a subject of ethics or morality, almost like by necessity, implies a judgment on those others that break what we consider to be the moral norms. This must be rejected, because there is a difference between a statement of morality, where basically the subject states what he believes to be the frontier between right and wrong, and another one is having the authority to point at some other person and rightfully say "you did wrong". Morality is a claim of the self in the his relation to God, but never to other men. To other men only law and conventions are binding, but the deep meaning of human morality lies hidden inside the conscience to a level that only God can pierce.

To put it more simply; when a person breaches the law, he goes to court. The law is recited to the person, but the person still remains innocent. In order for any judgment to be imposed on the person, it must be shown that the person actually broke the law. The sole speaking of the law does not make the person guilty. What makes the person guilty is the judgment based on the law. As it stands the law is just a statement of will (general will if you may) but it does not finger any guilty. It just creates the possibility and basis for the guilty. But the actual materialization of the guilty emerges from the judgment. And the judgment is only warranted when it has been proven that the person did break the law somehow (if there are enough doubts, it will always be better for the person to walk free). But with morality we face an insolvable problem: it is impossible to prove that inside another person's conscience there has been a real breach in the moral norms. A breach in convention can be proven, as well as with the law; but never a fault in morality, because we have no way of knowing what happens inside the depth of another human's mind (heart, soul, conscience). That is why blaming another for hypocrisy is most of the time a very bold judgment.

Morality does no warrant anyone to judge other people. Christianity teaches so, and the philosophical basis were built by St. Paul already a long time ago. When I state what I think to be right or wrong is a moral statement, but it does not imply a judgment (however many do that, and others interpret it that way). A true Christian morality will always point the difference between right and wrong, but stay there as when the courts of law have still not passed a judgment on a defendant. Because the only and truly possible authority in morality is God, the only force in the universe conceivable to penetrate inside the human heart and know their deepest truths. I think this more than enough to justify and explain my previous statement in gay marriage: why is it possible for me to oppose gay marriage and gay love as concepts contrary to Christian morality and still welcome any person without distinction of sexual inclination, without remorse or judgment upon them. Morality cannot be used as a weapon to judge without losing completely its true meaning, but as the relation between our individual consciences and God. The Church states the maxims of Christian morality, but it has no authority to produce any particular judgment on anyone. So the same with all of us.