>So I just poked briefly through Wikipedia on the dates; your link suggests a time of ~200-300 BC for those writings, the Iliad ~760-710 BC. Given the slow rate of diffusion of ideas at the time, it strikes me as just as likely that even if this idea is true and the Iliad was written by humans with a profoundly different psychology than ours, it was some peculiarity of Greek culture rather than a universal human condition. The spread of consciousness at this time in history can hardly occurred that quickly.
It didn't. The very idea that Ancient Greeks didn't have an inner self-consciouness (as proposed in the book) is invalid (even the article says so).
That said, what ancient civilizations didn't have, and was developed culturally and through time, is the kind of complex self-introspection we have now.
In a way the Ancient Greeks (and other people) were more like James Stewart (straightforward and simple) than Woody Allen or Orson Wells (full of clashing thoughts, ideas about guilt, sin, self-introspection etc). Their inner thoughts they externalized to some degree (which is also the basis behind the book). E.g. guilt was seen as external entities "haunting you" (e.g. "furies" in ancient greek tradegy). Of course in a degree they understood it was coming from them, but they didn't have a fully developed framework to talk and introspect those feelings.
A lof of those ideas only developed fully in the 2.5 centuries since then, and Christianism played some role in that, as did religions like Zen Budhism etc in the East, that re-examined and explored lots of things about the "inner self".
It didn't. The very idea that Ancient Greeks didn't have an inner self-consciouness (as proposed in the book) is invalid (even the article says so).
That said, what ancient civilizations didn't have, and was developed culturally and through time, is the kind of complex self-introspection we have now.
In a way the Ancient Greeks (and other people) were more like James Stewart (straightforward and simple) than Woody Allen or Orson Wells (full of clashing thoughts, ideas about guilt, sin, self-introspection etc). Their inner thoughts they externalized to some degree (which is also the basis behind the book). E.g. guilt was seen as external entities "haunting you" (e.g. "furies" in ancient greek tradegy). Of course in a degree they understood it was coming from them, but they didn't have a fully developed framework to talk and introspect those feelings.
A lof of those ideas only developed fully in the 2.5 centuries since then, and Christianism played some role in that, as did religions like Zen Budhism etc in the East, that re-examined and explored lots of things about the "inner self".