Ethics in Aesop's Fables ("classics and Interpretations" Issue 46)
by Lou Lin
About This Novel
This book is the 46th issue of Classics and Interpretation, and its topic is "Ethics in Aesop's Fables." In ancient Greek tradition, Aesop is said to have been a Greek stranger (a Thracian or a Phrygian) who was extremely ugly and lived in the sixth century BC. He was first a slave on the island of Samos, but eventually won his freedom through his wisdom and explanatory skills. Regardless of whether this character actually existed, by the fifth century BC, we have begun to see that various legends about an extraordinary life and death experience have begun to crystallize around the character of Aesop. At the same time, the "lower" genre of "fables" began to be attributed to Aesop, and he began to be regarded as the maker and founder of fables. Within this tradition, Aesop's connection to pre-philosophical systems of wisdom is curiously dual: for he appears to both participate in the realm of higher intelligence and to criticize or parody higher intelligence from "below." Since the invention of philosophy itself is complexly related to these earlier "wisdom" traditions-philosophy simultaneously strives to "borrow" from these traditions and to distinguish itself from them; therefore, in terms of its dual connection with this wisdom tradition, the figure of Aesop is very useful to philosophy. Tracing the connection between "Socratic" philosophy and Aesop and Aesop's fables will enable us to directly confront many problems of form, style and content. That is, I argue that there is a hidden, Aesopian thread in the genealogy of Greek prose writing.
What Readers Think
Rating
Community(0)
Rating
Community(0)
