Abstract

RIBEIRO, Lucas Mello Carvalho; LUCERO, Ariana  and  GONTIJO, Eduardo Dias. The homeric ethos, the shame culture and the guilt culture. Psyche (Sao Paulo) [online]. 2008, vol.12, n.22, pp. 125-138. ISSN 1415-1138.

The present essay intends to bring out the ethos that lies beneath the two great Homeric narratives, in order to characterize the Greek people, as described in the Iliad and in the Odyssey, as a Shame Culture in opposition to the Guilt Culture, terminology coined by Ruth Benedict and adopted by E. R. Dodds in his analysis of the Hellenic world. It also aims to show that, though defined essentially as a shame culture, the collectivity referred to by Homer, mainly in the Odyssey, allows to foresee the conditions of possibility for the establishment of a guilt culture, that will come to existence in ulterior periods of Greek antiquity.

Keywords : Homer; Homeric Greece; Homeric ethos; Shame culture; Guilt culture.