| | James, Lance, Jeanine, thanks for checking it out. I am sure there are many tangents to explore, it probably is smart to take one at a time...any suggestions?
Jeanine: "Joe, interesting article... but I would disagree there are no prior examples of such heroes of that the concept of "hero" is as such altruistic. What about Gilgamesh, Achilles, Oddyseus, Theseus, or Herakles? The Norse gods?"
Not exactly sure, Jeanine, what the question is...Are you saying that these are altruistic or non-altruistic heroes? I think you meant non-altruistic, so I will respond in that assumption...
Sure, there are exceptions to be found, but they are exceptions. Look at the etymology of the word:
DEFINITION: To protect. 1. Extended form *serw-. conserve, observe, preserve, reserve, reservoir, from Latin servre, to keep, preserve. 2. Perhaps suffixed lengthened-grade form *sr-s-. hero, from Greek hrs, "protector," hero. (Pokorny 2. ser- 910.)" This CAN mean that a hero protects his own values, making exceptions possible, but in societies that celebrate altuism, this is not very likely.
The one I am most familiar with is Oddyseus, and my take is that he was more of a Trickster figure, a type of thief who breaks rules and boundaries, but he is also punished by the Gods for his "arrogance," set off course by Poseidon for disrespect, and his Odyssey is the result of that. I don't think of him as a traditional hero, and he may be a prototype of the antihero...Interestingly, the hero of older tales before comics was the one who initiated the action, and the villain was there to interfere; in comics, it is the villain who initiates the action, whether it be robbing a bank or taking over the world, and the hero gets in his way. But the traditional hero still usually sets out to preserve his home, country, etc. But he is still a creation of those who need protecting. In the case of heroes based on historical figures, often the truth is manipulated to serve the ends of others.
But we also see what happens to older heroes like Hercules in modern treatments, say in a Disney movie, where they are sanitized and Christianized. But every culture seems to have their trickster, who is neither good or evil but amoral, upsetting the boundaries of good and evil, which does cause one to question who is hero and villain. It is the more monotheistic traditions that divide into good and evil, and tricksters become devils.
I think Rand's contribution is that in her use of the thief as hero motif, she did not turn her protagonists into antiheroes but inverted the traditional morality and redefined the heroes according to Objectivist morality. So the examples you cite may be prototypes for Randian heroes; certainly she drew on the Prometheus archetype, a classic trickster in himself, and certainly a hero by Objectivist standards, but remember, Prometheus was also a model for Lucifer, who is not a hero by Christian standards. I think that Rand's usage was a quantum leap in the field of heroism. Rand has never explicitly defined hero in a simple defintion, but radical that she was, kept the basic meaning as defined above, and shifted the focus of the protection of others to the protection of one's values. (Which is ironic, given that she wrote of Howard Roark that he did not have the idea of service, not even of serving himself.)
|
|
