1. Dr. Morse Fall 2015 Monday Week 2
**claims/evidence/warrant structure **Iliad – Agency and Force **In the words of Simone Weil
Dr. Morse Fall 2015 Monday Week 2

2. Previewing coming lectures:
What is the purpose of stylized depiction of the warriors, their gear and battle?
Who was Hephaestus and how is he different from the other gods?
What is the symbolic significance of Achilles’ shield (why is there so much detail in the description? What narrative (istoria) does the shield tell about the world of the Iliad?
What role do women play in the Iliad? What power and duties do/n’t they have (in private and public realms)?

3. Who was Simone Weil?
(About Simone Weil)
French philosopher and activist Simone Weil was born (Feb. 1909) into a wealthy, agnostic Jewish family of intellectuals in Paris. She studied and eventually taught philosophy, attracting attention for her radical Marxist opinions. Hoping to understand the working class, she also worked in fields and factories and even participated in the Spanish Civil War. Over time she lost faith in political ideologies and was drawn to Christianity. Her religious writings often emphasized sacrifice and martyrdom through an ascetic lifestyle, a lifestyle that Weil personally adopted and which led to her early death at age 34 from tuberculosis.
In this 1943 essay, written during the last year of her life, which she spent working with Gen. de Gaulle in the struggle for French liberation, Weil makes the case for the existence of a transcendent and universal moral law, and describes the social responsibilities that accompany it (from pbs.org).

4. Definition/characterization of central principle in Weil’s argument
Definition/characterization of central principle in Weil’s argument? What kinds of “force” are at work in the war generally, in the Iliad, in every day life?
“The true hero, the true subject, the center of the Iliad is force. Force employed by man, force that enslaves man, force before which man’s flesh shrinks away. In this work, at all times, the human spirit is shown as modified by its relations with force, as swept away, blinded by the very force it imagined it could handle … to define force – it is that x that turns anybody who is subjected to it into a thing. Exercised to the limit, it turns man into a thing of the most literal sense: it makes a corpse out of him. Somebody was here, and the next minute there is nobody here at all; this is the spectacle the Iliad never wearies of showing us” (HCC Reader 27).

5. “…there are others, more unfortunate creatures, who have become things for the rest of their lives. Their days hold no pastimes, no free spaces, no room in them for any impulse of their own. It is not that their life is harder than other men’s nor that they occupy a lower place in the social hierarchy; no, they are another human species, a compromise between a man and a corpse … This thing is constantly aspiring to be a man or a woman, and never achieving it” (HCC Reader 30).
“The Lovesick Man” George Grosz ca. 1916

6. “…How much more varied in its processes, how much more surprising in its effects is the other force, the force that does not kill, i.e., …just yet. It will surely kill, it will possibly kill, or perhaps it merely hangs poised and ready, over the head of the creature it can kill, at any moment, which is to say at every moment. In whatever aspect, its effect is the same: it turns a man into stone … [force that kills has] the ability to turn a human being into a thing while still alive. He is alive; he has a soul; and yet – he is a thing” (HCC Reader 28).

7. Essay 1 Timeline: Extended Office Hours Begin Week Three
Saturday Week 2: Pre-Writing Grid (50 pts WP)
Monday Week 3: Preliminary Thesis (25 pts WP)
Wed Week 3: Revised Thesis & 1 body paragraph (claim, textual evidence, warrant) (25 pts WP)
Monday Week 4: Complete Rough Draft Due (3 pps. Minimum) (50 pts WP)
Wednesday Week 4: Peer Editing Due (50 pts WP)
Saturday Week 4: Final Draft (3-5 pp.) and Writing Portfolio (100 pts WP) *shoot for 4 complete pp.

8. Moral or Philosophical Agency: Essay 1 Prompt
Humans possess agency (Definition? Process?)
…as the capacity to act in ways that matter—insofar as they act autonomously, and not driven by externals or “force” such as gods, cultural/political/natural determination, fate...
Acting introspectively and self-consciously, guided by reason, deliberation and reflection (rather than by impulse or instinct).
Agency = Actions that are Free and Undetermined
Passage Analysis Tip for Today: Study and compare language of determination/outside forces over language of deliberation, rationalization (Note: impulse/emotion/instinct don’t count as agency).

9. Ideas Drafts 1 and 2
Ideas Draft 1: Pre-writing Grid (Close-Reading Guide) Due Saturday 11:45 p.m. (see Assignments) 50 pts WP
Ideas Draft 2: Write a preliminary thesis that takes a clear, specific and arguable position (may need to be more than one sentence):
In a passage from The Iliad (chosen by your section leader – 2 choices below), analyze how the characters wrestle with the causes and consequences of their own action. Then defend an argument that demonstrates how the passage defines the scope and quality of agency.
1) Book 6 lines (Hector, Adromache, son)
2) Book 16 lines (Patroclus and Hector)

10. Thesis Building Tips (more than 1-2 sentences)
A complex and provocative thesis for this essay may take the form of a “Yes…but…so what” thesis. Here is a starter formula to get you going…
Although/While “X” reflects (a kind of deliberation prior to action, action determined by), “Y” illustrates how… This crisis/conflict of …reveals…
The final part of the above formula – the “So What” element asserts how the underlying crisis/conflict, etc. depicted in the passage reflects something important or noteworthy about the larger themes or concerns of the text as a whole.

11. Context: Ancient Greeks and gods
Part of popular belief
gods believed to be connected to weather and other natural cycles
Performed ritual sacrifices
Continued existence (afterlife) of the dead primarily through rituals of memory of the living

12. Claims/Evidence/Warrants (WH)
Claim: establishes the primary position to be justified through the assertion of an arguable and specific interpretation of text/passage you are analyzing.
Evidence: provides support or justification for the claim in the form of data, facts, and other evidence coming directly from the text being analyzed (quote/paraphrase)
Warrant: explains HOW the evidence shows the claim. It is a bridge between the claim and reasons offered in support. HOW and WHY are central to interpretation!

13. What do these thinkers argue? CEW? Your response?
“Characters in the Iliad do not sit down and think out what to do. They have no conscious minds such as we say we have, and certainly no introspections. The beginning of actions are not in conscious plans, reasons and motives, they are in actions and speeches of Gods. To another, a man seems not be a cause of his own behavior, but not to the man himself.”
—Julian Jaynes, The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown
of the Bicameral Mind (1976)
“The voice of reason is occasionally heard in the mouths of the characters in the Iliad. But words of reason drop into the void. If they come from an inferior, he is punished and shuts up; if from a chief, his actions betray them. And failing everything else, there is always a god handy to advise him to be unreasonable. In the end, the very idea of wanting to escape the role fate has allotted one – the business of killing and dying – disappears from the mind” — HCC Reader Simone Weil, p. 37.

14. Respond to and extend the following claims with evidence (lecture/text) and warrants
The Iliad is not simply subject to interpretation, but it also engages in interpretation.
The Iliad begins with an internal crisis or conflict between two Achaeans.
Without agency there can be no politics and no moral responsibility.
Force, in the hands of another, exercises over the soul the same tyranny that extreme hunger does; for it possesses, and in perpetuo, the power of life and death. (CR Weil, 31)

15. What is“close-reading” a text? Tips for literary analysis
Reminders from Professor I’s WH Chapter…
Identify or describe specific features of the text and then explain…
How does that feature contribute or inform meaning?
Why is it important to consider? Connection to course themes?
Eye on Prompt: Explore & Build Arguments: Look at Both Sides
To what extent is action a product of human agency (autonomous, deliberate, self-conscious action)?
To what extent is action driven by force, fate, duty, gods?
Then: Assert an arguable position (based on above - take a stand) What is the scope and quality of agency in the scene, and how does this speak to some aspect of the text as a whole?

16. Interpret – How far can you go?
“Rage – Goddess, sing the rage of Peleus’ son Achilles, murderous, doomed, that cost the Achaeans countless losses … Begin, Muse, when the two first broke and clashed, Agamemnon lord of men and brilliant Achilles” (Iliad 1.1-3, 7-8).
“King Agamemnon rose to his feet raising high in hand the scepter Hephaestus made with all his strength and skill …Now, leaning his weight upon that kingly scepter, Atrides declared his will to all Achaea’s armies” (Iliad , ).