The classics capture the human condition when they deal with the dynamic reality of love and strife. We are creatures of affectivity made in love for love. What is often played down is the most defining aspect of our humanity: love. We are also the language animals language is something deeply human, something intensely intimate, and undeniably the glue that binds a society together in understanding. We are said to be the rational animal-something shared among pagan philosophers and the Biblicists. Augustine said it best in the Confessions, “ Noverim te, noverim me.” When addressing the human condition there seems to me, at least, three essential aspects of human nature: rationality, language, and love. Before you can change the world, you need to understand yourself. That is why it is essential to study the humanities. In attempting to understand what makes a classic we must begin with the human condition since the classics of the humanities invariably deal with the human condition. While it is true that many classics have extensive age to them, having stood up against that ultimate test-time-there are many newer and more recent works that have entered the lexicon of “classic” and earned their spot alongside Homer, Virgil, or Shakespeare. It is equally easy and superficial to point to antiquarianism as another answer. What makes a classic, well, a classic? It is easy and superficial to point to old dead white men having chosen certain works to stand atop the list. When reading Homer, we are witnesses to a grand, and enduring, psychological shift in consciousness as to who heroes are and what makes one heroic. But Homer’s heroes, at least the heroes who are the primary subjects of the epics, scandalously break the established archetype of the hero provided by Hesiod and the heroic archetypes of other Greek heroic works and medieval heroic poems. The primary subjects of the Iliad and Odyssey are Achilles and Odysseus, though much time is spent discussing and detailing the deeds of other heroes: Hector, Priam, and Diomedes most especially in the Iliad, and Penelope and Telemachus in the Odyssey. The Iliad and the Odyssey are heroic poems that have endured through the millennia. It is the recognition of this fact that makes Homer so eternal: his heroes are heroes of love. In a cosmos governed by lust, strife, and war, the loving deeds of our Homeric heroes stand out. One of the most defining aspects of our humanity is love.
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