The Homeric Psychology of Parmenidean Meditation

The Homeric Psychology of Parmenidean Meditation

John, Benjamin

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2024, Greek and Latin

This dissertation interprets the journey of the youth (kouros) in Parmenides' proem as an idealized mythological representation of a meditative practice by analyzing its deployment of Homeric psychological terminology. The first chapter puts forth an interpretation of Homeric psychology in light of what we now call the autonomic nervous system and suggests that thumos corresponds roughly to the “fight or flight” response of the sympathetic arm and psuche to the “rest and digest” response of the parasympathetic arm. At death, I argue, characters pass from the “hot” end of that spectrum to the “cold” end as the psuche exits the body. The second chapter uses this Homeric psychological scheme to argue that the journey of the kouros in Parmenides' proem depicts in mythological terms a process of heating and immortalizing the mind by increasing the thumos. This in turn allows him to meet and understand the unnamed goddess that greets him beyond the gates of Night and Day. I argue that this journey involves an ascent (anabasis) of the thumos towards the light of the sun rather than exclusively a descent to the underworld (katabasis), a common interpretation in recent years. The third chapter builds on the psychological and mythological interpretations developed in the first two chapters and examines one aspect of a meditative practice behind the proem. I argue that the kouros would heat and immortalize his mind by “inhaling” (αμπνυτο) more “wind” (πνοιη) to increase his thumos as an initial purification to prepare for the ascent. This proposal finds support in later Greek representations of meditative breathing practices that involve inhaling hot pneuma in the Chaldean Oracles and the “Mithras Liturgy” as well as comparison with similar ideas about “heat-generating ascetic practices” (tapas) in some Indian sources. I conclude that archaic Greek sages may have used inhalation-emphasized breathing practices to stimulate the sympathetic arm of the autonomic nervou (open full item for complete abstract)

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Committee: Thomas Hawkins (Advisor); Sarah Iles Johnston (Committee Co-Chair); Benjamin Folit-Weinberg (Committee Member); Hugh Urban (Committee Member)