1

Journal of Ancient Philosophy Vol. II 2008 Issue 2

Thumos and the Daring Soul: Craving Honor and Justice

Susan M. Purviance (University of Toledo, Ohio)

The Greek conception of the spirited aspect of soul reaches back to the Pre-Socratics and to the
Homeric tradition, and is crucial to tragedy. In public assembly for political protest, perceptions,
passions, and embodied ways of knowing are put into action.This work is a philosophical
examination of indignation. I examine the Greek notion of the spirited part of the soul which resents
injury and resists injustice. To take actions for the sake of ones moral and political dignity and for
the moral dignity of others may involve the risking arrest and detention. Challenging the wishes of
the political authority to which one owes allegiance has psychosomatic effects. To examine these
effects from the point of view of Greek psychic descriptions is the purpose of this study. Both
Homeric and tragedic Greek literary contexts, and a contemporary incident of civil disobedience,
will inform this discussion.

The human soul may be thought of as the distinctively human way of being aware of and
acting in ones environment. That being so, it is perhaps best understood as the multiply layered and
deeply interactive set of psychic capacities that we become acquainted with in the works of
Aristotle. Such a conception of psyche, a psyche understood as the reflexively mediated set of
capacities for human living, derives from culturally deep sources. It has a long taproot reaching back
to the Pre-Socratics and to the Homeric tradition. In public assembly for political protest,
perceptions, passions, and embodied ways of knowing are put into action. This work is a
philosophical examination of indignation, honor, and justice. I examine the Greek notion of the
spirited part of the soul which seek honor, resents injury and resists injustice. To take actions for the
sake of ones moral and political dignity and for the moral dignity of others may involve the risking
arrest and detention. Challenging the wishes of the political authority to which one owes allegiance
has psychosomatic effects. To examine these effects from the point of view of Greek psychic
descriptions is the purpose of this study. Homeric and tragedic Greek literary texts will inform this
 2
Journal of Ancient Philosophy Vol. II 2008 Issue 2

discussion.
One could argue that the key elements of Aristotles conception of soul are the height of the
Greek account of practical reason. These include such elements as nous, in its grasp of theoretical
and practical truth and its application to scientific and practical judgment, and hexis, as the
formations of habitual patterns of response, both moral and intellectual. Such a view is plausible.
Yet this study is about matters of political and moral judgment as seen in particular epic, tragedic,
and philosophical contexts, and for that investigation one needs to concentrate on the psychic
element known as thumos. Thus, this project reviews thumos and presents its typical disruptive
emergence in social situations, its voice or tenor, and the problematic surrounding its message to the
agent and the validity of its suggestions. It analyzes its initial multivalent position in Homeric
thought and resists Platos and Aristotles tendency to marginalize and to re-conceive it politically
and philosophically. A full examination of Platos and Aristotles projects with respect to the
spirited component of soul and its character tendencies is not intended, however some review is in
order.
Plato reduces and localizes thumos to the flaw of thumoietic, irascible, character. Such short-
temperedness and irascibility interrupts the operation of nous, making the person more fit for battle
than for peace (Republic VII 547e) and takes away the patience and good will needed for the
philosophical pursuit of truth (Republic II). But as Jean Frre asks, to what extent is the desire for
truth (epithumia) yet linked to the thumos that craves truth and justice? 1 Frre notes that three
psychic terms, thumos, epithumia (desire), and prothumia (ardent desire) share the same root and can
be said to join in a common implication of dynamism and warm feeling in service of it. This then
suggests that a feeling for the political truth and hatred of political lies must be active in political
engagement in public life, an engagement that is not cut off from strong feeling which prompts to
active dissent.
Aristotle treats thumos as marginal to political life in a well-ordered state. Yet one could

1
Jean Frre, les Grecs et le dsir de letre : des prplatoniciens Aristotle, Socit dEdition Les Belles
Lettres ( Paris, 1981), p. 7.
 3
Journal of Ancient Philosophy Vol. II 2008 Issue 2

argue that commonwealths are not always well-ordered, wise, or true to their values, and that in such
cases political action requires that agents have a number of psychic abilities related to strong
indignation. One needs spirited perception and engaged imagination, along with the ability to
sustain uncomfortable motivational states, in order to be able to stand ones ground and suffer
hardship. It is true that Aristotle abandons the root term thumos when discussing virtue, preferring
to speak of the role of anger (orge) in the rightly motivated person and courage in the brave
(enthumos) person. Nonetheless, it is the very structure of Aristotles account of moral perception
and reason which leads me to re-position thumos in a postmodern and post-liberal theory of political
disobedience. For the Aristotelian mean with respect to anger may allow for a rehabilitation of
virtues which derives, at least in part, from the complex of narratives of the irascible hero. Aristotle
writes

For in everything it is no easy task to find the middle, e.g. to find the middle of a circle is not
for every one but for him who knows; so, too, any one can get angrythat is easyor give
or spend money; but to do this to the right person, to the right extent, at the right time, with
the right motive, and in the right way, that is not for every one, nor is it easy; wherefore
goodness is rare and laudable and noble. (EN II.9 1109a23-29)

Hence, roused and released anger, a marker of indignation and perceived injustice, may be
implicated in the difficult act, or even the just act. To undertake this analysis of the body as a source
of perceptions of treachery and injustice is to uncover the full reach of the psyche into the body core,
its thoracic homeland
This is not to say that spiritedness is permanently at odds with the social world; rather it acts
out when its normal course of legitimate self-seeking is blocked. The analysis undertaken here leads
to the conclusion that there are three principal expressions of thumos in political life. These three
expressions of spirited engagement continue to be seen in contemporary resistance to injustice and
may help to inform our understanding of the need to resist political authority. In civic life, this
psychic element invigorates, detonates, or disrupts.
A. Thumos invigorates: Thumos energizes civic life as a spirited pursuit of honor in any
 4
Journal of Ancient Philosophy Vol. II 2008 Issue 2

competition that is regulated to produce a social good.

B . Thumos detonates: Thumos causes civic life to explode, as in riot, revolution, factionalism, or
stasis, a stalemate of factions in government, making its victims incapable of self-governance.
C. Thumos disrupts: Thumos disrupt civic life positively in civil disobedience and direct protest
designed to reveal conditions of injustice.
By invigorating citizens thumos bolsters civil life, leading to economic, cultural, and political
vitality. By detonating or igniting passions for self-respect and good reputation, thumos can lead to
actions that destroy civic life, since the agent loses all fear of the sanctions which authorities would
impose. Thirdly, thumos disrupts oridinary civic order, but does not destroy it, becoming another
form of the publics way of doing political business with its rulers. For example, public
demonstrations communication, commerce and transportation but enhance civic engagement by
those who are politically alienated.
One can find examples of these three effects in the Greek account of spiritedness. First of all,
spiritedness produced an invigorated populace when competition between male citizens was
normalizedfor a time and in Athens, it is kept on a loose rein and praised. Deeds done from
proper ambition for accomplishment and honor strengthen civic life; they are a bulwark against
external and internal enemies. Secondly there are many Greek examples of its toxic or explosive
malfunction. Here one sees a spiritedness of excess and transgression, a wholly destructive form in
which it appears as a ravenous beast, or as a wildfire of rage. Beasts do not live in or maintain
societies. Like a beast, it consumes its victim and overturns civic life. The third function is of
greatest interest to democratic societies. Here the spirited soul acts ambivalently: its leonine daring
disrupts civic life, yet in sometimes necessary ways. 2 It is this third ambivalent form which is able

2
In addition to civil disobedience in time of injustice one can cite Solon in support of this function of
thumos. Solon says that thumos has a legitimate place in political activity in time of stasis (political
upheaval), because when others are destroying the city and its values out of thumoeitic excess, the thumos of
good men rouses them to intervene and take countermeasures. During stasis, the natural fear of death in mob
violence that grips the just man but the spirited aspect of soul overcomes this fear and gives him courage to
act. To remain neutral or to hide out of fear is not a permissible option, not because stasis or factionalism is
good, but because it is so bad. See Kostas Kalimtzis, Aristotle on Political Emnity and Disease (SUNY Press,
2000) pp.145-6.
 5
Journal of Ancient Philosophy Vol. II 2008 Issue 2

at times to occupy the Aristotelian mean or middle position relative to us and context. The spirited
soul which dares civil disobedience challenges the prejudices against it that we have gained from its
ridicule in Platos Republic. A full treatment of the invigorating, detonating, and
disruptive/corrective functions cannot be given here, but the hope is that this sketch of a some
dispositions of thumos as the mean relative to us will help to reveal the psychic structure of certain
forms of political resistance.

Thumos as vitality and invigoration : the path to decisive action under threat of harm or death
In the epic Homeric context, thumos is associated with the conscious control of the body. It
leaves the body in a swoon or concussion, and returns to the body upon revival, while by contrast
when psyche exits the body death results. According to Caswell 3 the connection between thumos
and the breath in living things is strong, since thumos returns when the person breathes again.
Caswell argues that early Greeks modeled their understanding of psychic and divine states on the
natural elements, thus thumos is a sort of inner wind that stirs up and rouses the person to action, a
sort of turbulent inner sea rolling in the person. This suggests that deliberation was imagined as a
sloshing motion of to-and-fro movement. The aptness of the metaphor to the phenomenal feel of
deliberation and rousing to action is striking. In the Homeric passages that feature deliberation
thumos is often parallel with phren/phrenes, which is or are the physical correlate or meat of the
smarts in us. By contrast, when the context is motivational rather than deliberative, thumos
appears in parallel constructions with menos. Diction then marked a difference between activating
assessment of alternatives and their consequences, and activating a motivational state that is
interested in realizing an outcome. 4 How is it then that thumos registers both the feel of the pull of
differing outcomes, and also the motivation gearing up in response to powerful passions? Homer
makes this clear. Thumos is what supports acts of daring and enables a Homeric hero to suffer, to

3
Caroline P. Caswell, A Study of Thumos in Early Greek Epic (E.J. Brill, 1990), pp.12-114.
4
The agitated image of acting from anger or indignation is also apparent in the verb otruno, to stir up, rouse,
encourage, which is often employed in discussions of a course of action under deliberation.
 6
Journal of Ancient Philosophy Vol. II 2008 Issue 2

endure, and to dare awful things. In virtue of his thumos, or spirited soul, the hero becomes tlemon,
bold and stout-hearted. He is resolved and acts. Intellect depends on motive force, and deliberation
is inner motion. It would appear that motion is first concentrated and then finally released, with
decision in its awful feel retaining the emotional thrust generated by turbulent motions of the spirited
soul. Although decision is a firm, settled state, it is not quiescent, at least under the extreme
pressures of heroic action. Just as the sailors cannot set sail and follow a course until Zeus or
Poseidon permits it, the intellect (phren) sets the course in concert with the spirited part of the soul. 5

Thumos has a place in body as well as in thought, making it relevant to contemporary

philosophical notions of mind and corporeality. It functions as a source of insight and motivation
and is localized in the thoracic cavity, where the motions of the diaphragm and the lungs occur and
are felt. How one breathes is of course an indication of the psychic condition of the individual, since
emotions affect the pattern and depth of breathing and register adrenalin surges. In Homeric anatomy
spirited soul interpenetrates the organ of thought (the phrenes) which itself surrounds the heart (the
kardia) in the chest. This soul function is one of pressing on the heart-area and contracting and
expanding it in ways often viscerally felt. Psychophysically, the swelling/heaving/lurching soul-
function that is thumos should not be thought of as an organ or as a merely anatomical assignment of
psychic states. Rather it should be taken to be an effect on organs and on psyche generally in a
particular embodiment. In its intense motion it puffs up the chest and stiffens the body and so too the
persons thinking. This is pride and arrogance. At other times the intense motion of thumos moves
the phrenes to contract and tighten painfully within the chest; this appears as the familiar feeling of
unbearable grief and sorrow.
In its most violent movements thumos heaves, lurches inside us, and swells, as when our
heart swells with pride or our gut lurches with alarm or our soul heaves with grief. But how
can we understand such experiences? Do they comport with the Greek poetic, tragedic, and
philosophical psychology under examination? Aristotelian practical reason depends upon right

5
Caswell, pp.2-4.
 7
Journal of Ancient Philosophy Vol. II 2008 Issue 2

perceptions and upon being pleased or pained at the right things. Thumos can help or hinder right
perception since it gives those perceptions their emotional tone. Greek epic poetry also models how
to perceive correctly and act rightly in a dangerous situation. In the Iliad Diomedes praises
Odyesseus : ...whose eager heart and manly excel in all sorts of trials, and Pallas Athene
loves him. If he were to go with me, we should both return even out of blazing fire, since he excels
6
in the use of his . Here thumos is praised for its role in rational thinking along with
noos/nous.
In epic poetry and in drama the thumos is addressed dialogically. Characters deliberate by
considering their alternatives and the consequences for their virtue or honor. Sometimes their thumos
is said to address them or they to address it, and this dialogue is represented in indirect discourse in
the narrative. To the extent that we identify with the characters and with their situation, thumos
speaks both to and for the fearful part of us, as in this instance at Iliad 11/ 401-411 Odysseus is
surrounded in battle and fears for his life:

...grieving, he spoke to his great-hearted thumos [ ]: O woe is me, what

am I to endure? It is a great act of cowardice if I should take flight, terrified by the numbers
of men; but it will be worse if I am taken alone; the son of Kronos put the other Danaans to
flight. But why has my dear discussed these things in me? I know that cowards leave
the battle, but he who excels in battle must stand his ground strongly, whether he is hit or
hits another. 7

Odyesseus thumos is his great seat of passion, of life, of reason. It reasons in and with him,
pointing out what it would mean, that is, how it would feel to run or to stand his ground. It
invigorates him to use his life in a manner that risks life in an honorable way.

Thumos as detonation, thumos as disruption: primal rage, riot, and revenge

6
Iliad X 244-247/ p.25 Caswell.
7
Translated in Caswell, 45.
 8
Journal of Ancient Philosophy Vol. II 2008 Issue 2

The motions of the motive and deliberative aspects of the spirited soul differ by temperament
and are more violent in some people. The earliest poetic references to thumos treat it as a beast that
inhabits the gut, a kind of inner corporeal being that lays low at most times but rears up in its bodily
cavern and must be placated. , the daring servant of the stomach, is a version
of the inner-man/beast that also imposes the satisfaction of its needs on the civilized man. As Pietro
Pucci argues, The gaster is portrayed as a lower thumos, a vital principle that forces upon men its
irresistible needs; it lives as an entity, let us say as a beast, inside man and needs to be taken care of,
fed, and listened to. 8 Platos discussion of thumos in Republic recalls this knowledge: it is better to
let this beast neither be starved nor overfed, but kept sleeping deep in its body cavity. 9 This is
thumos as the ravenous beas. When thumos creates factionalism, the civic body is torn apart. If this
happens violently as in revolt or revolution, there is violence and destruction in the community. The
person of good character that observes the violence is repulsed. When the untamed soul or
uninhibited ferocious aspect rages at perceived, and often real, injustices, the disapproval of the
injustice can be overwhelmed by the revulsion felt against the violent means used to point it out.
It is clear that the spirited soul can lead to social breakdown. Returning to Homer one finds
examples of thumoeitic behavior that threaten to destroy Greek social order. At the battle of Troy
Achilles refuses to fight after Agamemnon wrongs him. The selfish rage of Achilles is not fully
ripened into a violent outburst, but the angry sulking almost removes the Greeks chance of success.
Eventually Achilles is persuaded to relent from his refusal to fight. Yet at the moment when
Achilles refuses to come to battle (Iliad Twenty-four 39-43), total destruction of the Greek forces
threatens.

But, gods, you wish to help baneful Akhilleus, whose are not just and whose in
his chest cannot be bent, since he knows wild things like a lion, who, having yielded to his great

8
Pucci, Odysseus Polutropos: Intertextual Readings in the Odyssey and the Iliad, Cornell University Press
(Ithaca 1987) as cited in Joshua T. Katz, Homeric Hymn to Hermes 296", Classical Quarterly New Series
Volume 49 number 1 (1999), p.317-318.
9
Republic IX 571e.
 9
Journal of Ancient Philosophy Vol. II 2008 Issue 2

force and his mighty , will attack mens flocks in order to seize a feast,... 10

This beast will destroy human society if it can, like a lion slowly picking off its prey with impunity.
Achilles knows wild things like a lion in that he is yielding to his arrogance and its irrational point of
view. Achilles thinks does it really matter whether we act nobly or not, since we die either way?
(Iliad Nine 318-322). His thumos is kakos, wrong in him. In a fine image, Homer tells us that his
soul is sideereos, or hard as iron. And even when Achilles returns to battle, the thumoietic
mechanism is at work: returns because his thumos grieves so much at Patrokloss death.
In thumos released from the strictures of justice, the ego expands and swells and preens itself
in a reverie of self-righteousness and self-importance. No one shows us this better than Euripides in
his Medea. Medea helps Jason win the golden fleece and in gratitude he marries her, then returns to
Thebes. Having arranged for a regicide there, they flee on to Corinth, where Jason finds a chance to
improve his position by rejecting Medea and taking on a new, less fierce princess. He looks to
Creons daughter to bear him more sons to enhance his legacy. When Medea is abandoned she calls
for justice from Themis, goddess of oaths and daughter of Zeus. Medea revenges herself, but also the
gods, since they too are offended by Jasons breaking of his promise to her. She does this not by
killing Jason, but by killing those he loves.
Various versions of the Medea story exist in Greek thought. Although in some of them
Medea does not kill her children, I shall take Euripides play as paradigmatic of a certain function of
spiritedness. What do Medeas character and act demonstrate about thumos as detonation?
Euripides sees into the thumoeitic personality very deeply. Its irrationalism, is ability to destroy its
own means of survival, becomes piteous and thus humanly possible. Unexcused, yet human. Why
would humans destroy their own families? Insofar as destroying families who rule destroys civic
order, why would they tear apart their own communities? Why would we destroy what we most
value? What is the emotional logic at work? As seen in divinely ordained yet savagely enacted
vengeance of Medea on Jason the results of thumos may be unnatural as well as irrational. Here self-

10
Caswell p.23.
 10
Journal of Ancient Philosophy Vol. II 2008 Issue 2

righteousness, the evil underside of righteous indignation, reigns. Yet like thumos as disruption in
contrast with thumos as detonation, Medea stands sometimes in righteousness, sometimes in excess
and unnaturalness. To see this, first consider the aspects of unnatural excess, as seen in Medeas
exultation in the death of her rival. Later, consider her spirited deliberation and vacillation over
whether to kill Jasons sons, recalling them in light of Odyesseus deliberations.

Thumos as detonation: the conflagration

Medea represents spirited soul as destroyer of civic life. After Jason degrades her as a wife
and she loses any rightful place in Theban life, she exacts her own penalty. Here is the pleasure of
vengeance pure and simple. Here the excuse of taking justice into her own hands appears to be a
justification for indulging in cruelty. The thumoeitic flaw is no longer a dialogue with honor, as in
the case of Odysseus, but rather a soliloquy of self-justification. To demi-gods like Medea, mere
mortals sometimes look like insects. After her rival is burned and the messenger brings the news,
Medea enjoys this recounting of her triumph:

But the gold crown held its fastenings firmly, and when she shook her hair, the fire merely
blazed up twice as high...Her eyes no longer kept their wonted form nor did her shapely face.
From the top of her head blood dripped, mingled with fire, and her flesh dropped from her
bones like resin from a pine torch, torn by the unseen jaws of the poison, a dreadful sight to
behold. 11

The classical scholar Michelini argues that in both Neorions and Euripides Medea tragedies
paradox is natural to her role as rebel and figure of exception 12 She is exceptional in the polis in
many waysMedea is a stranger in a strange land, she is a daughter of a king, she performs daring

11
Medea 1192-94, 1197-1222/ p.405 Kovacs.
12
Ann N. Michelini, Neophron and Euripides Medeia 1056-80" (Transactions of the American Philological
Association 119 (1989), p..130.
 11
Journal of Ancient Philosophy Vol. II 2008 Issue 2

deeds with and for Jason. Indeed divinely connected as the granddaughter of Helios the sun. She
challenges the submission of women to degradation and betrayal and she pleads their case against
the faithlessness of men. At times she speaks justly. But can she speak for any sort of justice if she
seems led to a thumoeitic plan of unspeakable cruelty against her rival and even her sons?
I argue that two forms of thumos are in tension here. Medeas pleasure in killing her rival is
perhaps the ultimate thumoeitic excess of revenge. But when she is heroically overcoming maternal
affection in order to enact the penalty of the gods, something else is present. This is thumos as heroic
vigor, the terrible daring that makes heroic acts possible. There is arrogance, and there is arrogation.
To call down this duty upon herself is to arrogate power to herself. But once this is done, to fulfill
the duty is heroic, since it is one that Necessity imposes upon a mortal. Jason deserves the classic
punishment of having his offspring die after breaking his oath to keep Medea as his wife.
Creons position is also interesting insofar as he represents power and the practical wisdom
to protect the city. As he anticipates the danger that Medea poses and banishes her. Medea
counters by invoking the privilege of the suppliant.

MEDEA
Do not, I beg you by your knees and by your newly wedded daughter!
CREON
Wasted words! You will never persuade me.
MEDEA
But will you banish me without the regard due a suppliant?
CREON
Yes, not loving you more than my own house.
M 324-327
There is an ordering of duty here: family over strangers, but also protection of the city over mercy
for a supplicant. Medea invokes a double grounds for mercyboth with her gesture toward the
 12
Journal of Ancient Philosophy Vol. II 2008 Issue 2

body of Creon and her attempt to touch his kindness by invoking his newly married daughter. 13 Yet
Creon knows that she has betrayed one city already, perhaps now she arrives to undo another. She
appeals to him again as a fellow parent, as one who knows parental love and therefore appreciates
the hardship of being forced to leave her sons forever. She asks to remain one day and provide for
her children before she leaves for exile. Creon gives in to the reasonableness of this request and
makes way for the tragedy to follow.
At other junctures in the play, Euripides Medea appears in the guise of hero. She is not the
same with respect to thumos in its implications for civic life throughout the play. 14 When she is a
mother agonizing over completing a vengeance that is righteous in Zeuss eyes, she deliberates with
a spirited soul reminiscent of Homer. Like Odysseus, she encourages herself. Interestingly, being in
her right mind is associated with the feeling of spiritedness, and not with complacence.

But what is coming over me? Do I wish to suffer mockery, letting my enemies go
unpunished?..I shall not weaken my handThey must die in any case. And since they must,
the one who gave them birth shall kill them. 15

They must die at all events, and since they must, I who gave them birth shall kill them.
Come, put on your armor, my heart! Why do I put off doing the terrible deed that must be
done? Come, luckless hand, take the sword, take it and go to your lifes miserable goal! Do
not weaken... 16

The boys must die because Zeus decrees that Jason must lose his issue if he betrays his wife.: This

13
Donald Mastronarde finds a postural excuse for Creons resisting Medeas supplication at this point:
perhaps she only gestures towards Creons knees and has not yet grasped them tightly. Medea would then be
crafty in words but insincere in her gestures. Later she grasps his knees and wins a concession. See Euripides,
Medea, edited by Donald Mastronarde (Cambridge University Press, 2003), pp. 225-226.
14
For more on this interpretation see David Kovacs, Medea Introduction and notes passim. Kovacs states
that But while there is no reason to feel pity for Jason, who is portrayed throughout as callous and vain, it is
not easy to know what attitude Euripides wants us to take toward Medea. (p.287)
15
Medea 1049-1050; 1055; 1060-1061/Kovacs p.393.
 13
Journal of Ancient Philosophy Vol. II 2008 Issue 2

man--a god being my helper--will pay the price of his deeds to me. He shall never from this day see
his children by me alive, nor will he beget children.17 Jason must know why his sons are taken from
him, and Medea will make that plain. This is in contrast with the vicious attack on her rival which
also ends with the death of Creon as he clings to his daughter. As a tragic hero Medea must
overcome a temptation to be ordinary rather than exceptional, to be a mere woman rather than a
divine granddaughter of Helios, a member of the female sex excused from heroic deeds and the
suffering that they entail. Self-justification is the temptation that comes from this weak side, which
would give in to maternal love. It is not a fabrication to act according to divine necessity. The text
says And I know well what pain I am about to undergo [tolmeso], but my wrath [thumos] overbears
my calculation, wrath that brings mortal men their gravest hurt 18 She must be willing to submit to
this fate and endure it, to stand her ground as much as Odysseus must, having brought it upon herself
by invoking the gods concern with faithful oaths and justice. In translating thumos as wrath and
contrasting it with calculation, one should consider that such wrath is no longer a private emotion
but rather a divine madness that carries forward a penalty that is both divine, and in accord with
Medeas desire to cause Jason his gravest hurt.
As with Odysseus and Achilles, Medeas thumos comes to the aid of the agent who must
carry out a dreadful plan. Even a woman must rouse up courage and avoid dishonor, since she has no
other male relatives that might act for her. Medea is an ambivalent figure for feminist political
agents, yet her spirited soul cannot be gainsaid: What will her proud soul, so hard to check
[megalosplagchnos dyskatapautos psyche], do when stung by this injury? (M 109-110). Sometimes
the sanctioned marriage is wrong, the force of state is misapplied, and injustice cannot be tolerated.
Achilles is not so completely lost as to rage and kill like Medea, but his situation is different. He
battles for the Greeks, she battles for the Gods; still, both justifications provide a cover for self-
righteous excess. Achilles remains intelligible because he has a military duty to kill or be killed.

16
Medea 1240-6 /Kovacs p. 409.
17
Medea 804-5/ Kovacs p. 369.
18
Medea 1078-80/ Kovacs p. 394.
 14
Journal of Ancient Philosophy Vol. II 2008 Issue 2

Actuated by friendship and capable of finding a social outlet for his thumoeitic qualities, he returns
to battle and does well. Medea has no such social place and for that reason she already the socially
explosive and toxic figure. She is dislocated, a stranger, unwanted, and she can play no part in the
well-being of civic life.

Thumos disrupts, interrogating authority: the case for disobedience as spirited intellect in
action

Can someone claim to benefit civic life by disrupting it? Can a prompting of the spirited part
of the psyche be a registration of political intelligence and civic virtue? Can the heady mix of
empathy, vengeful feelings, daring, and plain stubbornness do anything but stumble upon the right
action? We have seen that it is the fine line between self-justification and reflectively endorsed
actions which separates the self-indulgent spirited wrong-doing from its culturally acceptable and
value-specific alternative. This argument does not establish a natural law or other justification for
civil disobedience and violence. No universal principle is invoked to ratify the agents actions. Yet
the psychic function of thumos in relation to anger is one of signaling a misalignment of the person
in his or her social world with the eternal truths of justice. A distinction should be made between the
functioning of thumos in those whose actions are seen as a necessity of social duty, and in those
whose actions which principally serve as emotional release. Social duty with respect to obedience to
legitimate authority may change, and conflict of roles and allegiances (natural, maternal, divine,
human) complicate the picture so that one persons hero/ine is another persons villain.
Yet emotions alone cannot sanction action. For us, thumos cannot function as an independent
faculty of truth. There must be a rational element which validates, or consolidates the feeling of
injustice with the standard by which one knows what is just or injust. Aristotles moral philosophy
offers one such account. Aristotle concedes that there are various applications and forms of anger
that must be judged according to the mean. He marks a right angry response in the absence of which
a man is thought not to feel things nor to be pained by them, and, since he does not get angry, he is
 15
Journal of Ancient Philosophy Vol. II 2008 Issue 2

thought unlikely to defend himself. (EN 5/1126a ). To endure being insulted and to put up with
insult to ones friends is slavish, so anger has a part in courage. This claim that a balance of courage
and intellect in citizens is itself a political advantage to the state as a whole seems well founded.

But we observe the same differences [in the proportion of these two qualities] among the
Greek nations themselves when we compare one with another: some are by nature one-sided,
in others both these natural faculties, of intellect and courage, are well combined. Clearly
both are needed... ...fierceness is not a mark of natural greatness of mind except towards
wrongdoers. As we have said, it is aroused the more strongly with respect to intimates, when
we believe ourselves to be wrongly used by them. 19

Politics 7 1327b asserts the special merit of being both enthumon and dianoetikon, being both
strong of spirit and piercingly intelligent. Here we can find a place for spiritedness and intelligence
in a general theory of political and civic action. The spiritedness of thumos is a force in society as
well as the individual, in women as well as in men.
A disciplined thumoeitic personality is a possible standpoint for a civic virtue. This would
then be a disciplined irascibility where thoughtfulness and spiritedness work together to
consolidate a social virtue in the individual. This virtue also has a political counterpart: homonoia.
Homonoia is the friendship that binds a community together against a common enemy. The desire
of a group to be of one mind can also excite resentments among friends. Such ruptures and
disruptions are usually bad, but not always, because the one who differs and stands apart can offer a
corrective standpoint that is to the benefit of the community. To act out the rupture through a
disruption of supposed unanimity can be beneficial, like draining a festering wound. Indeed, to fail
to take the side of justice is to court stasis, the Greek term for political terminal illness. When the
civic order is out of order, there is virtue in refusing to be orderly. This is where there is a unique
benefit to the examination of what might be thought to be archaic, and therefore, outdated, concepts
in Greek philosophy. The discussion of thumos and the value of the daring personality in political

19
Politics 7: 1327b, translated by T. A. Sinclair and revised by Trevor J. Saunders (Penguin, 1981).
 16
Journal of Ancient Philosophy Vol. II 2008 Issue 2

discourse should continue. I hope that further research will make plain the complexity of motivations
that actuate political participation as well as violence. My hope is that that this study has furthered
that understanding.

Bibliography

Aristotle. Ethica nicomachea. The Nicomachean Ethics, Translated by Sir David Ross. Oxford
Worlds Classics. London and Oxford, 1961.
Aristotle. Politica. The Politics. Translated by T.A. Sinclair and revised by Trevor J. Saunders.
Penguin Books, 1981.
Caswell, Caroline P. A Study of Thumos in Early Greek Epic. E.J. Brill, 1990.
Euripides. Medea. Euripides: Cyclops/Alcestis/Medea. Translated by David Kovacs. Loeb
Classical Library v.12. Harvard, 1994.
Euripides. Medea. Edited and Commentary by Donald Mastronarde. Cambridge University
Press, 2003.
Frre, Jean. les Grecs et le dsir de letre : des prplatoniciens Aristotle , Socit dEdition
Les Belles Lettres . Paris, 1981.
Kalimtzis, Kostas. Aristotle on Political Emnity and Disease. State University of New York
Press, 2000.
Katz, Joshua T. Homeric Hymn to Hermes 296", Classical Quarterly New Series Volume 49
number 1 (1999).
Michelini, Ann N. Neophron and Euripides Medeia 1056-80" . Transactions of the American
Philological Association 119 (1989).
Plato. Republic. Translated by Robin Waterfield. Oxford Worlds Classics, 1998.