Deep, deep thoughts on the classics, from the Chairman:

Having a limit to the drama is one of the conditions for taking life seriously and trying to make the most of it. Homer, in The Iliad and The Odyssey, showed us the alternatives. He contrasts the mortals with the immortals…Zeus, Apollo and the like…who, if you look at them, they lived just shallow and frivolous lives. And their amusement depends upon looking and watching what the mortals do, because the mortals are the only ones who do anything that really matters. It’s mortality which makes life matter.

In the Iliad, Sarpedon exhorts his comrade to greater feats of valor in battle. Toward the end of his argument, this gem leaps out.

My good friend, if, when we were once out of this fight, we could escape old age and death thenceforward and for ever, I should neither press forward myself nor bid you do so, but death in ten thousand shapes hangs ever over our heads, and no man can elude him; therefore let us go forward and either win glory for ourselves, or yield it to another.

A sensible chap, it's too bad he gets killed. Now for a bit of re-cycling.

Homer in The Iliad and The Odyssey presents human beings whom he names as mortals. That is their definition in contrast to the immortals. And the immortals, for their agelessness and their beauty, live sort of shallow and frivolous lives. Indeed, they depend for their entertainment on watching the mortals who, precisely because they know that their time is limited, and that they go around only once, are inclined to make time matter and to aspire to something great for themselves.

Leon Kass speaking to Morton Kondracke on "Sage Crossroads". Comes with tasty professorial video!

During his travels, Odysseus visits the land of the dead, and amongst much palavering meets the shade of Achilles, who seems a trifle out of joint...Odysseus tries to cheer him up.

...as for you, Achilles, no one was ever yet so fortunate as you have been, nor ever will be, for you were adored by all us Argives as long as you were alive, and now that you are here you are a great prince among the dead. Do not, therefore, take it so much to heart even if you are dead.'

Achilles isn't buying any.

"'Say not a word,' he answered, 'in death's favour; I would rather be a paid servant in a poor man's house and be above ground than king of kings among the dead.

I like that line so much, I'm giving you a twofer. Here's an earlier translation.

In life thy eminence was ador'd of all,
Even with the Gods; and now, even dead, I see
Thy virtues propagate thy empery
To a renew'd life of command beneath;
So great Achilles triumphs over death.'
This comfort of him this encounter found:
'Urge not my death to me, nor rub that wound,
I rather wish to live in earth a swain,
Or serve a swain for hire, that scarce can gain
Bread to sustain him, than, that life once gone,
Of all the dead sway the imperial throne.

Be grateful it's not Alexander Pope.

Now, I had read the Iliad and the Odyssey a couple of times each before I was twelve. I read them again in college. Great books, both of them.

Our next quote may have a certain familiarity...

To number our days is the condition for making them count. Homer’s immortals—Zeus and Hera, Apollo and Athena—for all their eternal beauty and youthfulness, live shallow and rather frivolous lives, their passions only transiently engaged, in first this and then that. They live as spectators of the mortals, who by comparison have depth, aspiration, genuine feeling, and hence a real center in their lives. Mortality makes life matter.

Leon Kass, writing in "First Things."

Waste not want not, eh? Shame to let a good soundbite languish. And yet, I am filled with disquiet. Much as I loved both books, I'm not sure Bronze Age Epics are quite the thing, when it comes to looking for timeless wisdom about mortality.

Especially when they contradict you.

And for all you bright-eyed Chicago undergrads out there, save your emails.
I already know Kass knows the Achilles quote.

It's right there in "Toward a More Natural Science", on page 308.

UPDATE: If you don't check out the links, you'll miss some truly fine stuff. The following are excerpts from the Sage Crossroads interview. Take it away, Mr. Chairman!

We are still early enough in the game, I think, that at least a certain amount of public discussion might be in order. We might try to hope to separate those interventions that deal with the degenerations that are not necessarily life-prolonging.

I mean, if one could do something about Alzheimer's, if one could do something about chronic arthritis, if one could do something about general muscular weakness and not, somehow, increase the life expectancy to 150 years, I would be delighted.

Behold Bioethics in action. A private practice would definitely have been the wrong career move...

...this gives me an opportunity to say I am not a Luddite, I am not a hater of science. I esteem modern science and I regard it as really one of the great monuments to the human intellect, even as I worry about some of the uses of some of the technologies that science is bringing forth.

And if everybody else was worried about it, you would find me as one of its defenders. I am taking up the side that is weaker here, that needs articulation.

That last sentiment is worth an entire post.