This is made in philosophy bites with me David Edmonds and me Nigel Warburton.

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When philosophers look back for inspiration to ancient Greece, it's normally to canonical figures such as Aristotle, Plato and Socrates.

They haven't in the past regarded the epic poems of Homer,

as worthy of philosophical examination.

That, says Harvard's Sean Kelly, is a mistake.

Sean Kelly, is a mistake.

Sean Kelly, welcome to Philosophy Bites.

Thanks for having me, Nigel.

We're going to talk about an unusual topic, Homer and Philosophy.

First of all, could you just explain who Homer was in very broad terms?

Well, of course, the first question is whether there was a Homer. The author whose name is

usually attached to these famous ancient Greek epics,

The Iliad and the Odyssey, is given the name Homer.

By tradition, he was a blind poet who lived around the 8th century

BC but of course nobody really knows whether there was a single person

named Homer who put together these poems.

And why would he be of interest to philosophers?

Well he's not typically of interest to philosophers. A standard story to

tell about Homer is that he stands at the foundation of the history of the West.

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