Yamamoto, Kazuhiko, “An Alternative Analysis of Ancient Greek Philosophy in terms

of the Ethical Structure of the Kanun,” Challenges 1: 6-22, 2013.

An Alternative Analysis of Ancient Greek Philosophy in terms of the

Ethical Structure of the Kanun

Kazuhiko Yamamoto
Kyushu University, Japan

The people in the northern highlands of Albania, who speak the Gheg dialect, had retained tribal
structures based on the family (shpi), brotherhood (vllazni) and the clan (fis) until the Albanian
dictator, Enver Hoxha destroyed it after World War II. The people in this region were said to have
been subject to the tribal customary code called the Kanun since the Middle Ages. The Kanun had
been orally transmitted among the Albanian clans until the Franciscan father, Shtjefën Gjeçov,
eventually compiled the code, which was posthumously published in 1933 under the title of Kanuni i
Lekë Dukagjinit (GJEÇOV 1989, YAMAMOTO 2008: 230-259). However, the Kanun seems to have
originated before the Middle Ages, as it is supposed to serve well for creating a sense of justice,
peace and order in a society without state power, such as ancient societies, archaic societies and
tribal societies, which have the social and cultural conditions as follows: 1) there is no functioning
state power, 2) the kinship system is of great importance, 3) the kin group is a transcendental
commune consisting of the living and the dead, 4) the kin group has the obligation to keep its
existence in the community, 5) animism and ancestor worship are prevalent, 6) the ethos of warriors
is highly regarded, 7) spoken words are appreciated more than written words, and 8) the population
of the area where the customary code operates is not crowded so that the segmentary, acephalous
lineage society is neatly preserved (YAMAMOTO 2011: 215-233).
The Kanun is deemed to represent the ethical value system of a society without state
power with a logic of its own, which has spontaneously developed on the basis of pagan religions
such as animism and ancestor worship (YAMAMOTO 2008: 230-259). It is assumed that the ethical
structure of the Kanun was the first form of ethics that humans have ever had, and that the history of
western philosophy, for more than two thousand years, has been one of struggle between the ethical
structure of the Kanun and the forces trying to destroy it. This struggle between the ethical structure
of the Kanun and western philosophy seems to have begun in ancient Greek world. It first exploded
in Athens in the fifth and fourth centuries B.C., when Plato sharply criticized Homeric epics because
they had an ethical value system structurally identical to the ethical structure of the Kanun
(YAMAMOTO 2008: 260-289). However, his sharp criticism against Homeric epics affected ancient
Greek society, destabilizing it by making people dwindle in their faith to the gods. The ethical value
system of Homeric epics began to crack in the polis, resulting in a crisis of the people losing ethics
which had been passed on since ancient times. The crisis in their faith and ethics was explicitly
shown in the Aeschylean and Sophoclean tragedy written in the fifth century B.C. for the Athenian
play-festivals in honor of Dionysus, in which the struggle between the logic of a society without

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state power and the logic of the polis has been unfolding (YAMAMOTO 2008: 290-334). In this
regard, the zenithal epoch of Athens in the fifth century B.C. was an age of crisis and turmoil. This
line of discourse, referring to the ethical structure of the Kanun, may enable one to make an
alternative analysis of ancient Greek philosophy. The following survey of ancient Greek literature
from Homeric epics to Aristotle has been made, bearing the ethical structure of the Kanun in mind,
in an attempt to reinforce the discourse made previously (YAMAMOTO 2008: 260-289, 290-334,
383-394) as well as to search for a clue, which may enable the finding of new implications in ancient
Greek philosophy for western philosophy.

Homeric Epics and the Ethical Structure of the Kanun

It has been assumed that the Iliad and the Odyssey as they appear today were first composed in
writing based on the orally transmitted heroic poetry the bards had chanted for many generations
before Homer (FINLEY 1991: 26-50), while no fragments of the earlier Greek epics other than
Homeric epics have survived (Hesiod, Homeric Hymns, Epic Cycle, Homerica ix-xlii). The epics
which the bard, Homer, composed as he chanted were dictated to the scribe, and the written heroic
poetry was heard or read by the rhapsodists who recited the memorized lines of the Iliad and the
Odyssey (FINLEY 1991: 26-50).
The Iliad and the Odyssey, supposed to have been composed in the second half of the
eighth century B.C. (FINLEY 1991: 15-25, LATACZ 1996: 15-21), are the greatest epics of ancient
Greek world, which have been recited or read for over two thousand years. Homer’s epics are
deemed to represent the ethical value system of the ancient Greek world. Homeric society, as
described in the Iliad and the Odyssey, is assumed to be a society without state power, consisting of
kin groups of various lineages. It is inevitable that conflicts between people occurred in the society.
However, there was no judicial system in Homeric society which was authorized to use power to
resolve conflicts. It was the customary code that presided over the conflicts in order to not let them
escalate, preventing the society from slipping into chaos (YAMAMOTO 2008: 230-259, 260-289).
In Homeric society, kin groups are considered to have existed in an orderly manner under the guide
of the code of a society without state power, guarding the temporal existence by observing the rituals
of ancestor-worship and securing the spatial existence by coexistence and rivalry with kin groups of
other lineages. The ethical value system of Homeric epics is deemed to belong to the category of the
ethics of a society without state power (YAMAMOTO 2008: 260-289).

Hesiod’s Justice and the Gods

In the eighth and early seventh centuries B.C. (FINLEY 1991: 26-50), Hesiod praised Homeric
society as the ideal generation, saying “the fourth, upon the fruitful earth, which was nobler and
more righteous, a god-like race of hero-men who are called demi-gods, the race before our
own,…they live untouched by sorrow in the islands of the blessed along the shore of deep swirling
Ocean, happy heroes for whom the grain-giving earth bears honey-sweet fruit flourishing thrice a
year,…” (Works and Days 156-173). According to Hesiod, people in the heroes’ generation, being
satisfied with the status quo, lived happily, though grim war and dreaded battles destroyed a part of
them, some in the land of Cadmus at seven-gated Thebes when they fought for the flocks of Oedipus,

 The word ‘polis’ in this paper signifies ‘city-state.’ Taking Athens as an example: an independent political unit consisting of a city
and surrounding countryside in ancient Greek world.
 All citations in this section are from Hesiod, Homeric Hymns, Epic Cycle, Homerica, Harvard University Press, 1936.

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and some, when it had brought them in ships over the great sea gulf to Troy for rich-haired Helen’s
sake (Work and Days 156-173).
However, when the age of the fifth generation commenced after the heroes’ generation,
men of a race of iron could never rest from labor and sorrow by day, and from perishing by night
(Works and Days 174-180). This age of the fifth generation, to which Hesiod belonged, was an age
of trouble and confusion with some good mingling with the evils, for example: “there will be no
favor for the man who keeps his oath or for the just or for the good; but rather men will praise the
evil-doer and his violent dealing. Strength will be right and reverence will cease to be; and the
wicked will hurt the worthy man and, speaking false words against him, and will swear an oath upon
them” (Work and Days 179-196). He deplored that he had to live among the men of a race of iron,
saying “would that I were not among the men of the fifth generation, but either had died before or
been born afterwards” (Work and Days 174-175). Hesiod, who seemed to have little idea or scheme
for rectifying the society of a race of iron, expected Zeus to punish wrongdoers and to favor whoever
knows the right way, saying “if a man take great wealth violently and perforce, or if he steal it
through his tongue, as often happens when gain deceives men’s sense and dishonor tramples down
honor, the gods soon blot him out and make that man’s house low, and wealth attends him only for a
little time…truly Zeus himself is angry, and at the last lays on him a heavy requital for his evil
doing” (Work and Days 321-335).
Hesiod seems to have had a staunch faith in the gods’ power to punish wrongdoer in return
for his prayer and sacrifice, stating “as far as you are able, sacrifice to the deathless gods purely and
cleanly, and burn rich meats also, and at other times propitiate them with libations and incense, both
when you go to bed and when the holy light has come back, that they may be gracious to you in
heart and spirit,…” (Work and Days 336-343). The gods’ wrath against men who commit the act of
injustice and the gods’ punishment on wrong-doers were only means for rectifying injustice in the
society to which Hesiod belonged. He expected that Zeus knew everything, saying “the deathless
gods are near among men and mark all those who oppress their fellows with crooked judgments, and
reck not the anger of the gods. For upon the bounteous earth Zeus has thrice ten thousand spirits,
watchers of mortal men, and these keep watch on judgments and deeds of wrong as they roam,
clothed in mist, all over the earth” (Work and Days 248-255).

Crisis of Justice and Order the Gods Established

While Hesiod ardently expected the gods to punish wrongdoers, people in the ancient Greek world
seem to have experienced many times that the gods failed to punish wrongdoers while they were
alive, as implied in Solon’s poetry in the seventh and sixth centuries B.C. (Solon, W4, Lines 1-10,
W13, Lines 25-32). In regard to the punishment from Zeus on wrongdoers, Solon expressed a small
amount of uneasiness, saying “unlike a mortal man, he is not quick to anger at each thing, but he
never completely forgets a man who has a wicked spirit, and that man is always exposed in the end.
One man pays right away, another later. Others may escape in their own lifetimes, and the gods’ fate
may not catch up with them, but it always comes back, and their blameless children will pay for their
deeds,…” (Solon, W13, Lines 25-32). Accordingly, Solon imbued a new idea into the political
system of the polis, saying “good government (eunomia) makes everything fine and orderly, and
often puts those who are unjust in fetters; it makes rough things smooth, stops excess, weakens

 All citations in this section excepting Xenophanes are from Early Greek Political Thought from Homer to the Sophists, Cambridge
University Press, 1995.

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hubris, and withers the growing blooms of madness (ate). It straightens crooked judgments, makes
arrogant deeds turn gentle, puts a stop to divisive factions, brings to an end the misery of angry
quarrels” (Solon, W4, Lines 26-39). He is said to have written laws for Athens, though he was forced
to leave there without accomplishing his aim (Solon, W 36).
If a wrongdoer may not be punished in his lifetime, he might become so insolent and
reckless that he will not be afraid of the gods. Theognis lamented this situation in the sixth century
B.C., saying “It is natural (eikos) that a bad man should think badly of justice, and have no dread of
the punishment (nemesis) hereafter, for a wretched mortal can take up many things he should not
touch that lie at his feet, and think he sets everything right (Theognis, Lines 279-282)…But if god
gives a bad man a livelihood and then adds wealth, he is foolish, and cannot keep his wickedness in
check” (Theognis, Lines 319-322). Theognis seems to have had the idea that men should have the
will to take revenge on wrongdoers with their hands, saying “May Zeus grant me the power to repay
my friends who love me and my enemies, Cyrnus, even more. This way I will be considered a god
among humans, if death does not catch me till I have paid my debts” (Theognis, Lines 337-340).
The gods who were unable to appropriately punish wrongdoers for their offenses, began to
be blamed and ridiculed, resulting in the further loss of faith in the gods among people. Xenophanes
criticized the gods in the sixth and early fifth centuries B.C. by saying “Homer and Hesiod have
attributed to the gods all sorts of things which are matters of reproach and censure among men: theft,
adultery, and mutual deceit” (Xenophanes, Fragment 11). He also ridiculed the gods, saying “if
horses or oxen or lions had hands or could draw with their hands and accomplish such works as men,
horses would draw the figures of the gods as similar to horses, and the oxen as similar to oxen, and
they would make the bodies of the sort which each of them had” (Xenophanes, Fragment 15). He
expressed further skepticism on the gods, saying “of course the clear and certain truth no man has
seen nor will there be anyone who knows about the gods and what I say about all things. For even if,
in the best case, one happened to speak just of what has been thought to pass, still he himself would
not know. But opinion is allotted to all” (Xenophanes, Fragment 34). Xenophanes, apparently the
first person in the ancient Greek world that attacked Homeric epics, deplored that people were
singing and hearing Homeric epics, saying “as they sang of numerous illicit divine deeds: theft,
adultery, and mutual deceit” (Xenophanes, Fragment 12), though he knew very well that people
learned ethics and social norms through Homeric epics, as indicated in his saying “Since from the
beginning all have learned according to Homer…(Xenophanes, Fragment 10).
At around the beginning of the fifth century B.C., Heraclitus expressed his concern about
the suitability of the poems for teaching people the good and the bad, saying “They believe the
popular poets and treat the crowd as their teacher, not knowing that the many are bad, and few are
good” (Heraclitus, DK 104). Though Heraclitus implicitly attacked the popular poets such as Homer,
he seems not to have had a clear-cut idea on how to preserve order in his community. While he
acknowledged the necessity of a coercive force for preserving order, saying “Every animal on earth
is driven to pasture by blows (Heraclitus, DK 11)…The Sun will not overstep his measured limits. If
he did, the Furies, those allies of Justice, will find him out (Heraclitus, DK 94)…The thunderbolt
governs all things” (Heraclitus, DK 64), he seems to have hesitated to use the coercive force, saying
“Those who are polluted with blood and try to purify themselves with blood do so in vain, as if one
who had stepped into mud tried to clean himself off with mud” (Heraclitus, DK 5). In contrast to
Heraclitus, Democritus insisted on the necessity of using coercive force on wrongdoers in the fifth
century B.C., saying “One should punish wrongdoers as best one can and not pass over them, for to
do so is right (dikaios) and good (agathos), but not to do so is wrong and bad (Democritus, DK

4
261)…Anyone who kills a highwayman or a pirate with his own hands, or by ordering another, or by
voting, would suffer no penalty” (Democritus, DK 260), though he did not articulate who should use
the coercive force to punish wrongdoers. At the same time, Democritus advocated the importance of
teaching morals in order to preserve order in the society, saying “It is clearly better to promote arete
by means of exhortation and persuasion than by law and compulsion (Democritus, DK
181)…Refrain from wrongdoing, not from fear but from duty” (Democritus, DK 41).
In the fifth century B.C., especially, the ethics and order of the polis began to be focused
on the discourse of politics in the ancient Greek world. Protagoras insisted that justice was
indispensable for preserving order in the polis, saying “Respect and Justice would bring order to
cities and be the communal bonds of friendship” (Protagoras 322c). He put an emphasis on the
concept of arete as the apparatus for achieving justice and keeping order, saying “Justice and
Soundness of Mind and Piety – this is one thing, and in a word, I call it a man’s arete…” (Protagoras
325a). According to Protagoras, though “human beings in general do seek vengeance and punish
those they think have done wrong” (Protagoras 324c), if people in the polis may seek to attain arete,
they would begin to think that they were using “punishment for the sake of the future, so that the
wrongdoer and anyone who sees him punished will be deterred from doing wrong again” (Protagoras
324b). Arete was to be achieved through education, and the polis had an effective method of
educating the children about it. Protagoras spoke with fervor about poems and music as a method to
teach children arete, saying “the teachers put works of good poets before them to read at their
benches, and require them to learn by heart poems that are full of good advice, and stories and songs
in praise of good men of old, so that the child will be eager to emulate them, and will yearn to grow
up to be a man like them (Protagoras 325e-326b)…the music-teachers set those poems to the music
of the lyre, and make sure that rhythm and harmony dwell in the souls of the children, so that they
will grow more gentle and their speech and their behavior will improve as they gain grace in rhythm
and harmony” (Protagoras 326b). Thus, Protagoras appreciated the value of poems, such as Homeric
epics and the music associated with them, as methods of teaching children ethics and gracious
attitudes, while Heraclitus cast doubt on the value of poems as a method for teaching people the
good and the bad. At the same time, Protagoras expressed his doubt about the existence of the gods,
saying “Concerning the gods, I am not in a position to know either that they exist or that they do not,
nor can I know what they look like, for many things prevent our knowing – the subject is obscure
(adelon) and human life is short” (Protagoras, DK 4).

Greek Tragedy, the Polis and Crisis of the Ethics

The ethical value system of Homeric epics is deemed to have been of use for ancient Greeks as the
resource to secure peace and order in their community until the state in the form of the polis
appeared (YAMAMOTO 2008: 260-289, 290-334). According to Plato, the ancient Greek world had
reached the stage of every state, being engaged perpetually in an informal war with every other state
in the fifth and fourth centuries B.C. In states such as Crete, the lawgiver ordained all legal usages,
both public and private, with an eye for war, charging people with the task of guarding their laws
safely, as if nothing, whether a possession or an institution, was of the least value without victory in
war (Laws 626a-626b). Plato deplored the existing situation in the Greek world, saying that although
the law should be unconcerned with the special happiness of any class in the state and try to produce
happiness in the city as a whole, harmonizing and adapting the citizens to one another through
persuasion and compulsion, and requiring them to impart to one another any benefit they receive
(Republic 519E-520A), most cities were inhabited and ruled darkly by men who fought one another

5
for shadows and wrangled for office as if that were a great good (Republic 520D).
Greek tragedy written by Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides was a form of art which
epitomized the golden age of the ancient Greek world in the fifth century B.C. It is surmised through
Greek tragedy that the ethical value system of Homeric epics, which once was the pillar to engender
a sense of justice and order, was losing relevance in the polis and began to work against the creation
and preservation of its peace and order. This issue is explicitly shown in Eumenides, in which the
Erinyes, who are allowed to transform themselves into the Spirits of Blessing in the end, pray that
faction never raises its loud voice within the city, and the dust does not drink the black blood of its
people and through passion work ruinous slaughtering for vengeance to the destruction of the state
(Eumenides 976-987). The peace and order in the polis was threatened by the actions of contending
factions that exaggerated their antagonism. The Erinyes in Eumenides put forward an idea on how to
stop the bloodshed and secure peace and order in the polis. They sing of times when fear was good
and should be praised as a guardian of the heart. Anyone who trains his heart in fear, be it state or be
it man, learns wisdom through suffering (Eumenides 517-525). In contrast to the idea that the
retribution by Erinyes should be let loose against a sinner such as Orestes who killed his mother
(Eumenides 261-268), Athena proposes another solution to this issue from the viewpoint of public
peace. She counsels the burghers to maintain and hold in reverence neither anarchy nor tyranny and
not to banish fear from the city, saying that she will establish a tribunal, which is inviolable by lust
or gain, august and quick to avenge as a guardian of the land, and vigilant in defense of the people
who sleep (Eumenides 696-706). Both Erinyes and Athena adopt fear as a resource of peace and
order. However, there exists a crucial difference between the fears which Erinyes and Athena
advocate, as the former is the fear of revenge which the wronged takes on wrongdoer and the latter is
the fear of revenge which the tribunal takes on wrongdoer. In Electra, Orestes says that there would
be fewer crimes if a death penalty is issued immediately to anyone acting illegally (Electra
1503-1507). His words suggest that if a wrongdoer is punished, the fear of punishment would deter a
reckless man from acting lawlessly. However, this depends on who imposes the punishment upon
wrongdoers.
In Ajax, Menelaus says that a subordinate refusing to obey those in authority is a villain,
adding that the law of a city can never function well where no one is afraid, nor can an army be
sensibly controlled when it does not have the protection of fear and respect. It should be remembered
that a minor misdeed can bring the downfall even of a powerful man. Menelaus warns that a city
where men are very lax and do as they please will sink to the bottom in time even though at first it
has sailed along easily (Ajax 1071-1083). Menelaus’ words indicate that the polis may fall into chaos
unless men respectfully obey its authority. According to him, respect for authority is engendered
through fear. Another way of bringing this about is for the ruler of the polis to arbitrarily make laws
and implement them with force. When the ruler of the polis punishes the offenders under duress,
they will, in turn, fear and respect him. This can explicitly be found in the scene in Antigone.
In Antigone, when both Polynices and Eteocles die in a duel, Creon mounts the throne of
Thebes. Creon proclaims that Polynices, who came back from exile with the aim of burning his
native city to the ground, shall not be buried or lamented, and his own body shall be left unburied for
the birds and dogs to devour and savage. In marked contrast to Polynices, Creon proclaims that
Eteocles who died fighting for the city shall be buried in a tomb and rendered all the rites that come
to the noblest of the dead (Antigone 194-210). As Creon admits himself, the law he proclaimed is
not the law of the gods but the law proclaimed by man. Antigone chooses to die by discharging her
duty of burying her brother which divine law ordains, confronting Creon who tries to impose the law

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of man. Antigone says to Creon that it is not Zeus who made this proclamation, nor is it Justice who
lives with the gods below that established such laws among men, nor is his proclamation strong
enough to have power to overrule the gods. The unwritten and unfailing ordinances of the gods have
life, not simply for today or yesterday but forever, and no one knows how long they have been
implemented (Antigone 450-460).
Aeschylus and Sophocles, seeing the crisis of the polis deepening, had serious concern
over its religious and ethical confusions. Though they were not against the logic of the polis,
Aeschylus and Sophocles, keenly trying to rectify the confusion concerning religion and ethics,
showed sympathy more for the law of the gods than for the law of man. Sophocles was concerned
especially that people’s faith in the gods was dwindling. In Philoctetes, Philoctetes, who hears that
Ajax and Patroclus died in the Trojan War while Odysseus is alive, laments that nothing evil ever
perishes, and that the gods carefully protect evil. He expresses his resentment toward the gods,
saying how can the gods account for this and how can he approve what the gods do when he finds
that the gods are evil (Philoctetes 446-452). His grief indicates that when evil men prosper while
righteous men perish, the faith in the gods who approve such injustice, dwindles among the people in
the polis. The more religious, ethical and social confusions the polis witnessed, the less faith in the
gods the people in the polis would have, resulting in a situation where the divine law lost its power
to enforce itself.

Plato, Emotion and the Ethics

In the fourth century B.C., Plato explicitly criticized the ethical value system of Homeric society in
The Republic, saying that it was alienated from the Idea of Good (YAMAMOTO 2008: 260-289,
383-394). According to him, while the good was in the intelligible region to reason and the objects
of reason (Republic 508C), the good in Homeric epics had so shifted to emotion and feelings that it
looked like the phantom or the imitation, which knew nothing of the reality but only the appearance
(Republic 601B-601C, YAMAMOTO 2008: 260-289, 383-394). Furthermore, he dismissed
superfluous pleasures and appetites as the irrational part of the soul, saying “Of our unnecessary
pleasures and appetites there are some lawless ones, I think, which probably are to be found in us all,
but which, when controlled by the laws and the better desires in alliance with reason, can in some
men be altogether got rid of,…” (Republic 571B-571C).
Plato elaborated on his spurning Homeric epics, as follows (Republic 603E-606C). When a
good and reasonable man experiences such a stroke of misfortune as the loss of his son, he will bear
it more easily than the other sort, as it is the reason and law that exhorts him to resist the bare feeling,
which urges him to give way to his grief. The law declares that it is best to keep quiet as much as
possible in calamity and not to chafe and repine. Instead of stumbling like a child, clapping his hands
on the stricken spot and wasting time in lamentation, he should accustom his soul to devotion to the
healing process. Though the best part of man’s soul is willingness to conform to these precepts of
reason, the irrational and idle part of it dwells on the memory of its suffering and impels it to
lamentation. As the nature of a mimetic poet is devoted to the fretful and complicated character, it is
justified for rational men not to admit the mimetic poet into a well-ordered state: he should be
expelled from the ideal state because he set up in each individual soul a vicious constitution by
fashioning phantoms far removed from reality, and by currying favor with the senseless element that
cannot distinguish the greater from the less. Thus, Plato criticized Homeric epics which incorporated
emotion and feelings into its ethical value system, insisting that it must be eradicated because it
antagonized and undermined the polis, thereby trying to divorce the ethics from the emotional and

7
sensuous aspects of humanity, while trying to attach it only to the rational aspects of humanity
(YAMAMOTO 2008: 260-289).

Aristotle’s Political Science and the State

In the fourth century B.C., Aristotle, the pupil of Plato, who analyzed the logic of the state in detail,
explicitly advocated its logic in Politics. First he discussed how the state appeared in human society
and its nature, saying “the first thing to arise is the family,…when several families are united, and
the association aims at something more than the supply of daily needs, the first society to be formed
is the village…Every family is ruled by the eldest, and therefore in the colonies of the family the
kingly form of government prevailed because they were of the same blood…When several villages
are united in a single complete community, large enough to be nearly or quite self-sufficing, the state
comes into existence, originating in the bare needs of life, and continuing in existence for the sake of
a good life…Hence it is evident that the state is a creation of nature, and that man is by nature a
political animal” (Politics 1252b-1253a). He insisted that justice was the bond of men in the state
and the administration of justice was the principle of order in political society (Politics 1253a). Since
the state is the union of families and the villages in a perfect and self-sufficing life, i.e. a happy and
honorable life, governments which have a regard for the common interest are to be constituted in
accordance with strict principles of justice (Politics 1279a, Politics 1280b-1281a). Aristotle, defining
justice as the common interest, said “In all sciences and arts the end is a good, and the greatest good
and in the highest degree a good in the most authoritative of all – this is the political science of
which the good is justice,…” (Politics 1282b). In order to achieve justice, i.e. the common interest
and a good, through the functioning of the state, he claimed that the quality of the ruler in the state
was crucial, saying “that some should rule and others be ruled is a thing not only necessary, but
expedient; (Politics 1254a)…the ruler ought to have excellence of character in perfection, for his
function, taken absolutely, demands a master artificer, and reason is such an artificer; the subjects, on
the other hand, require only that measure of excellence which is proper to each of them” (Politics
1260a). As Aristotle thought that the state was a plurality, which should be united and made into a
community by education (Politics 1263b), he discussed extensively how to imbue the excellence of
character into the young by education. According to Aristotle, education consists of four subjects:
reading, writing, gymnastic exercises, and music to which drawing may be added (Politics 1337b).
In Aristotle’s sense, music meant the songs of Olympus, i.e. the poems including Homeric
epics, which “inspire enthusiasm, and enthusiasm is an emotion of the character of the soul” (Politics
1340a). He expressed his concern about the music’s effects on human souls, saying “when men hear
imitations, even apart from the rhythms and tunes themselves, their feelings move in sympathy”
(Politics 1340a), and cast doubt on the value of music as a method of education, saying “Since then
music is pleasure, and excellence consists in rejoicing and loving and hating rightly, there is clearly
nothing which we are so much concerned to acquire and to cultivate as the power of forming right
judgments, and of taking delight in good dispositions and noble actions” (Politics 1340a). He
proposed to prescribe the music to the young, which they were allowed to practice and enjoy, saying
“Let the young practice even such music as we have prescribed, only until they are able to feel
delight in noble melodies and rhythms,…” (Politics 1341a). In the end, in line with the Plato’s
expulsion of Homeric epics from the polis, Aristotle insisted on rejecting the professional
instruments and the professional mode of education in music (Politics 1341b), while adopting the
melodies which purge the passions as a music of education, thereby giving an innocent pleasure to
mankind (Politics 1342a). At the same time, he acknowledged the value of the poems which aroused

8
emotion among people, saying “feelings such as pity and fear, or again, enthusiasm, exist very
strongly in some souls, and have more or less influence over all. Some persons fall into a religious
frenzy, and we see them restored as a result of the sacred melodies - when they have used the
melodies that excite the soul to mystic frenzy - as though they had found healing and purgation”
(Politics 1342a). Thus, Aristotle emphasized the importance of justice, a common interest, a good,
the ruler’s excellence of character, and the education of the young by music with noble melodies and
rhythms in the political science of the state, which was supposed to be capable of bringing happiness
to the people in the polis. However, he was equivocal on the issue of who was the guardian of justice
with a coercive force in one’s hands, which was to be wielded in order to punish wrongdoers in the
polis.

Discussion
The philosophical discourse of ancient Greeks on justice, order, ethics and the state has been
reviewed while bearing the ethical structure of the Kanun in mind, which may provide a new insight
for understanding the alternative meaning of ancient Greek philosophy, which seems to have been
ignored or forgotten over time in the history of humanity. It has been found that the ethical value
system of Homeric epics is structurally identical to that of a society without state power, as
represented by the ethical structure of the Kanun, which consists of six concepts: “oath,” “honor,”
“guest,” “blood,” “food,” and “”revenge” (YAMAMOTO 2008: 260-289). The ethical value system
of Homeric epics was to be upheld by the people’s faith in the pagan gods such as Zeus and the gods
of Olympus, who were deemed the guardians of justice. In the eighth and early seventh centuries
B.C., shortly after the age of Homer, Hesiod praised the society depicted in Homeric epics as one of
a god-like race of heroes, calling them demi-gods. While Hesiod did not explicitly mention about the
ethical value system of Homeric epics, he expected that the gods, especially Zeus, took revenge on
wrongdoers who practiced violence, and cruel deeds. Hesiod seems to have believed that the gods
would punish wrongdoers in the end in return for his prayer, sacrifice and propitiation with libations
and incense to them, though his society was experiencing a crisis in which the gods’ justice and
social order began to crumble, as his lamentation indicated (Works and Days 174-181).
In the process of the economic and political developments of the ancient Greek world, the
state, a new political entity apart from the former system, began to appear, as indicated in Plato’s
discourse in Laws. In this discourse, Plato stated that though the space of time that had passed since
cities came into existence and men lived under civic rule was vast and immeasurable, the fourth state
or “nation” which was at one time in the course of establishment and was now established began to
appear when the Dorian host was organized and distributed amongst three states under brother
princes, the sons of Heracles. At that time, the Dorians feared that the Assyrian power might attack
Hellas, since the barbarians accused the Greeks of having captured Troy (Laws 676A-676B,
683A-683D, 685C-685D). The state in Plato’s meaning was the polis, which was endowed the power
to resolve conflicts through law and court, as he said “A State, indeed, would be no State if it had no
law-courts properly established;…” (Laws 766D). A new issue concerning justice and order arose in
conjunction with the people losing their faith in the god’s power to punish wrongdoers and the
advent of the state with the power to impose its will on the people. In the seventh and sixth centuries
B.C, Solon tried to reform the Athenian constitution with the aim of strengthening the governmental
power of the polis, which could have made everything fine and orderly, and put those who were
unjust in fetters, however, it resulted in failure. In the sixth and early fifth centuries B.C.,
Xenophanes, who accused Homer and Hesiod of attributing everything bad to the gods, ridiculed the

9
gods by saying that the gods had statutes like human bodies as humans made them, giving no
thought to the negative effect of his remarks on religion, thus precipitating the people’s loss of faith
in the gods. Experiencing the deterioration of order with the spreading of injustice, Theognis asked
the gods for the power to punish wrongdoers himself in the sixth century B.C. Democritus
acknowledged the necessity of coercive force to punish wrongdoers in the fifth century B.C., while
Heraclitus hesitated to use coercive force to punish them at around the same age. In the fifth century
B.C., Protagoras introduced a new way of thinking concerning the punishment of wrongdoers,
insisting that though human beings needed to seek vengeance and punish wrongdoers, they would do
it for the sake of the future, which was expected to prevent them from doing wrong again. However,
Democritus and Protagoras were equivocal on who should have the coercive force to punish
wrongdoers in the polis.
As a result of these social, political and philosophical backgrounds, Greek tragedy was
composed at a time when Athens enjoyed cultural and economic prosperity after the final victory of
war with the Persians at Plataiai in 479 B.C. The most important, critical issue that Athenians had to
deal with in those days was how to establish the political system of the polis, i.e. the state, which had
the power to create and preserve order based on justice. Huge obstacles awaited the Athenians, who
were making every effort to achieve it. One of the issues the Athenians had to cope with was
Homeric epics, which had been recited and read for almost three hundred years until the fifth century
B.C. The young people of the polis in ancient Greece had learned everything, including writing and
reading, ethics, morals and the norms of daily life through Homeric epics, as indicated in the
discourses by Xenophanes, Heraclitus, Protagoras and Aristotle. However, Homeric epics had the
ethical value system structurally identical to that of a society without state power (YAMAMOTO
2008: 260-289). The polis in the fifth century B.C. was not a society without state power, but a new
political entity, groping for a system entitled to have a coercive force in order to create justice and
preserve order in it. While the philosophers such as Xenophanes and Heraclitus uttered negative
remarks on Homeric epics, they seemed equivocal on how to achieve justice and order in the polis.
Geek tragedy represented the polis’ dilemma trapped in antinomy between the logic of a society
without state power and the logic of the state (YAMAMOTO 2008: 290-334). If the ethical value
system of a society without state power prevailed in the polis, its peace and order may have been
compromised, bringing it to the verge of collapse. The ethical value system of a society without state
power should be kept in check to prevent the polis from falling into chaos and confusion. In order to
secure peace and order in the polis, the prosecution of revenge by the wronged should be suppressed,
while punishment was inflicted on wrongdoers by the city’s authority. The resource to attain peace
and order in the polis was the establishment of the tribunal in the Aeschylean tragedy and the
enforcement of the law proclaimed by the king with his might in the Sophoclean tragedy. In both
cases, the act of revenge carried out by the wronged should be suppressed in the polis. However, the
suppression of revenge by the wronged caused serious problems in the polis as a result. When the
infliction of punishment on wrongdoers was not effectively carried out, they received no punishment
even if they violated the law, leading them to commit hubris, which eventually resulted in the
destruction of man and the polis (Solon, W13, Lines 11-15, Theognis, Lines 43-48, Lines 279-282,
Lines 319-322).
While Aeschylus and Sophocles discussed how to create order in the polis without
resorting to the act of revenge by the wronged, they showed sympathy to the logic of a society
without state power (YAMAMOTO 2008: 290-334). Aristotle seemed to have some doubt about the
ethical value system of Greek tragedy, saying “if the criticism is that something is false, well perhaps

10
it is as it ought to be, just as Sophocles said he created characters as they ought to be, Euripides as
they really are. If neither solution fits, there remains the principle that people say such things, for
example in religion: perhaps it is neither ideal nor true to say such things, but maybe it is as
Xenophanes thought: no matter, people do say them” (Poetics 1460b-1461a). This discourse
concerning Greek tragedy suggests that the ethical value system of Homeric epics was cherished by
most of the people in the polis. While people in the polis called Homer a teacher of the Greek world,
the philosophers such as Theognis, Xenpohanes and Heraclitus cast doubt on the power and the
feasibility of the gods who were deemed the guardians of justice and order in Homeric epics. In this
age of ethical and political crisis, Plato, who staunchly sided with the law of the polis, launched an
attack on Homeric epics by creating the concept of the “Idea of Good.” According to him, the ethical
value system of Homeric epics was alienated from the Idea of Good, as it put much emphasis on the
emotions such as grief, anger and pleasure as the foundation of its ethical value system, instead of
reason and the rational elements in the soul (YAMAMOTO 2008: 260-289). Seeing how people
learned everything through Homeric epics, Plato proposed to expel the honeyed music and Homeric
epics from the polis, which were deemed the most powerful tool to imbue the ethical value system of
a society without state power into the souls of the young. However, Plato’s position on Homeric
epics was lurching, as is indicated in his discourse: “if the mimetic and dulcet poetry can show any
reason for her existence in a well-governed state, we would gladly admit her, since we ourselves are
very conscious of her spell. But all the same it would be impious to betray what we believe to be the
truth” (Republic 607C). At the same time, Plato seemed to have concern on how staunchly his
philosophical discourse, such as the Idea of Good, could persevere as the foundation of the ethics in
a society with state power. Accordingly, in the last chapter of The Republic, Plato reverted to the
religious discourse, apparently aiming to make it a prop for bolstering the Idea of Good. He first
claimed that the soul would be immortal, saying “when the natural vice and the evil proper to it
cannot kill and destroy the soul, still less will the evil appointed for the destruction of another thing
destroy the soul or anything else, except that for which it is appointed…since it is not destroyed by
any evil whatever, either its own or alien, it is evident that it must necessarily exist always, and that
if it always exists it is immortal” (Republic 610E-611A). Upon the discourse on the immortality of
the soul, he told the tale of a warrior bold, Er, the son of Armenius, who was said to have come back
to life on the twelfth day of his being slain in battle (Republic 614B). Er was supposed to have
revealed what he had seen in the world beyond. The story was as follows: “when his soul went forth
from his body he journeyed with a great company and that they came to a mysterious region where
there were two openings side by side in the earth, and above and over against them in the heaven two
others, and that judges were sitting between these, and that after every judgment they bade the
righteous journey to the right and upwards through the heaven with tokens attacked to them in front
of the judgment passed upon them, and the unjust to take the road to the left and downward,…”
(Republic 614B-614C). The fact that Plato discussed an event in the world beyond indicates that
Plato had a premonition that he needed something unfathomable that reason and the rational
elements of the soul could not prove in order to firmly uphold his philosophical discourse on the
ethics in a society with state power, such as the polis.
Following Plato’s discussion on its political form, Aristotle discussed about the political
institution of the polis. Aristotle thought that governments which had a regard for the common
interest were to be constituted in accordance with strict principles of justice. In order to achieve
justice, i.e. the common interest and a good, through the functioning of the state, he claimed that the
quality of the ruler in the state was crucial. The ruler ought to have excellence of character in

11
perfection, i.e. reason, and his subjects also would require a measure of excellence which would be
proper to them. One of the most important issues was how to imbue the excellence of character into
the young through education. In regard to this discourse, Aristotle expressed his concern about the
emotion-inspiring effects the poems, such as Homeric epics, exerted on the character of the youth.
Accordingly, he proposed to reject the professional mode of education in music like his mentor,
Plato, while he did not propose the expulsion of the honeyed music from the polis altogether,
acknowledging the healing and purgatorial effects of them on the soul. It was unfortunate for people
in the polis that though both Plato and Aristotle discussed justice, law, state, a good, reason and
education, they were equivocal on who or which political entity should wield a coercive force to
punish wrongdoers in order to achieve justice in the society.
In this context, it is possible to find an answer to the second Homeric Question, i.e. why
the Greek philosophers, including Plato and Aristotle, criticized Homeric epics (YAMAMOTO
2008: 395-407). The people in ancient Greek society read the Iliad and the Odyssey or heard them
recited in order to learn the norms and values of the society. The Homeric epics were the most
important resource for teaching young people how to behave and how to live. Apparently, it seems
contradictory and confusing that Plato and Aristotle expressed negative feelings toward Homeric
epics while they spoke about their admiration for Homer. The polis had been experiencing profound
social and political changes in the sixth and fifth centuries B.C., as it was in the process of transition
from a society without state power or with incipient state power to a society with firmly established
state power. This process created confusion and chaos in the fields of religion and ethics, which were
explicitly shown in the Aeschylean and Sophoclean tragedy. Greek tragedy suggests that the ethical
value system of Homeric epics had been transformed into a destabilizing factor in the polis and
worked against its creation and preservation of peace and order. This fact is the reason of why
ancient Greek philosophers began to express negative utterances toward Homeric epics, realizing
that they were the obstacle that prevented the polis from being established as a viable political
system. The crisis associated with the transition of a community from a society without state power
or with incipient state power to a society with firmly established state power was the prime mover
which goaded the philosophers to adopt antagonistic attitudes toward Homeric epics.
The issue that exploded in the ancient Greek world is not an ancient one, but is construed,
in a sense, as an ongoing process even in modern times. It can be safely assumed that there was no
state power with a viable coercive force, which was able to antagonize the ethical value system of a
society without state power, before around 3000 B.C. when civilizations began to appear. Though
some sort of state power might have been established afterward in areas where civilizations appeared,
human society was considered not to have had political power with a coercive force to punish
wrongdoers in many areas for a long time where the ethical value system of a society without state
power prevailed. In addition, the ethical value system survived in various parts of the world from
antiquity until modern times. Though humans have been making every effort for almost two
thousand years to establish a political institution which is capable of permeating justice in the society
with a viable coercive force, the final result of their effort remains to be seen.

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