[[{“value”:”My three-part essay for Liberty Fund continues, here is the opener: n the previous article, I outlined what an economic approach to reading Homer’s epic, The Odyssey,1 might look like. I also noted that what most strikes me about The Odyssey is Homer’s treatment of comparative political regimes. Looking at the wide variety of regimes Odysseus encounters is the focus
The post An Economic Approach to Homer’s Odyssey: Part II appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.”}]]
My three-part essay for Liberty Fund continues, here is the opener:
n the previous article, I outlined what an economic approach to reading Homer’s epic, The Odyssey,1 might look like. I also noted that what most strikes me about The Odyssey is Homer’s treatment of comparative political regimes. Looking at the wide variety of regimes Odysseus encounters is the focus of this article.
Given that human behavior, at least in The Odyssey, can be understood in terms of the non-standard assumptions described in my previous essay, what are then the possible states of affairs? Which polities might we look to for arranging human interactions and maintaining political order? Utopia is not readily achieved, not only because of material constraints, but also because human behavior is too restless and too desirous of alternative states of affairs. A straightforward order based on political virtue is also beyond human grasp, again because it clashes with the nature of human beings as we understand them. What then might fit with a vision of humans as restless, intoxicating, deceiving, and self-deceiving creatures? The travel explorations of The Odyssey can be understood as, in part, an attempt to address this question.
I will now consider the major and some of the minor polities described by The Odyssey, roughly in the order they appear in the story.
The discussion starts with Pylos and Sparta…
The post An Economic Approach to Homer’s Odyssey: Part II appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.
Books, Philosophy, Political Science, Travel, Uncategorized
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