(N.B. This entry follows from the conclusion to the previous one, titled “Τhe Last God.”)
hybris (“excess”) must be extinguished more than a fire
(ὕβριν χρὴ σβεννύναι μᾶλλον ἢ πυρκαῖήν)
– Heraclitus, DK B43(⊛)
“Prometheus,” προμηθεύς (pro-metheus) means “forethought” (from προ- [pro-, “fore-”] + μανθάνω [manthano, to “think”]). It is paramount to make clear the etymology of this name to begin with, so that “Prometheus” is not identified with anyone: “he” is nobody, he is just the figural manifestation of an aptitude, a distinctively if not exclusively human aptitude.
Fancying, as it is habitual, that Prometheus is someone because he is a mythical character (e.g. in Hesiod and Aeschylus) is absurd. In turn, pretending, as it is also habitual, that he is a sort of “Christ” avant la lettre, someone who sacrificed himself on behalf of humanity, is a nonsense. But he is a Titan!, it might be objected. Well, that only means “he” is – in addition to being a specifically human aptitude – a telluric force, that is, a blind force that raises from the bowels of the earth, hence a force not adumbrated from above, from Zeus’s domain of light… since it can be used for any purpose, including dark purposes. Technology, on which we have repeatedly written (e.g. here) and which constitutes Prometheus’s gift “to” humankind, is the proof of this.
Prometheus’s forethought thus differs from Athena’s pure thought, which is pure in two different ways: first, because it springs directly from Zeus’s forehead; secondly, because it is – as recalled in the scholia to Aeschylus’s Prometheus – nurtured by αἰδώς, which means “purity,” “modesty,” “respect,” “reverence,” “awe.”
For this reason, too, Athena is the goddess of wisdom; as Schelling has it, she is Zeus’s consciousness, i.e. the thought of all which is. For whatever is, is brought into being and knowledge by Zeus’s light. In this, Athena opposes Prometheus’s blindness.
“I have caused in their chests [= those of the mortals] blind hope” (τυφλὰς ἐν αὐτοῖς ἐλπίδας κατῴκισα), confesses Aeschylus’s Prometheus (Prometheus Bound, v. 252);(⦿) and further in the play (v. 982) Hermes tells him: “you have not learned to be wise” (καὶ μὴν σύ γ᾽ οὔπω σωφρονεῖν ἐπίστασαι). The “blind hope” caused by Prometheus in the “chests of the mortals” amounts, as he himself remarks, to have persuaded them that they could become immortals: “Yes, I caused mortals to cease foreseeing their doom” (θνητούς γ᾽ ἔπαυσα μὴ προδέρκεσθαι μόρον, v. 250). How? By teaching them numberless τέχναι (technai, sing. τέχνη, techne), i.e. “technologies” (vv. 436-506), of which fire’s secret is but the epitome – such, indeed, is the unwise φάρμακον (pharmakon, “remedy,” v. 251) given by Prometheus to them: a calculative “forethought” that makes them no longer “foresee” their mortal condition, and that thereby renders them blind to what they are.
If, as we have stressed, Athena is nurtured with αἰδώς, Prometheus is the champion of ὕβρις (hybris, “excess”).
He acknowledges his mistake: “knowingly, knowingly I have erred, why deny it?” (ἑκὼν ἑκὼν ἥμαρτον, οὐκ ἀρνήσομαι, v. 267). And if the Oceanids (vv. 127-285) pity him, there is surely no need to recall they – daughters of Oceanus, a Titan, and Tethys – speak on behalf of a cosmic order to which Zeus had put an end. Even to give birth to Athena with his own mind, as said above, Zeus had to impregnate and swallow Metis, an Oceanid who, in contrast to Athena, thus symbolised a form of proto-intelligence. Besides, the Oceanids were protectors of the youth. What, then, could one expect from them, but compassion towards Prometheus?
Furthermore, there is, says Prometheus, something stronger than any τέχνη, namely, “necessity” (ἀνάγκη, ananke, v. 515). Necessity, however, does not allude here, as it is often assumed, to Prometheus “destiny” (μοῖρα, moira, v. 511), mentioned a few verses before: it refers, more likely, to Zeus’s “inflexibility,” about which Prometheus also complains. “For Zeus’s mind [alternatively: Zeus’s chest],” he says, “is inflexible” (Διὸς γὰρ δυσπαραίτητοι φρένες, v. 34). And reasonably so, one is tempted to add, as no matter how hard they try “mortals” (θνητοί, thnetoi) cannot become “immortals” (ἀθάνατοι, anthánatoi),(⊜) and the vain pretension to do so with recourse to technology – which is not only Prometheus’s mythical gift to humanity, but is also the pilar of our modern un-world and the substance of our modern malaise – is a dangerous sham.
Careful, though, with misrepresenting what Aeschylus means by Zeus. Once more: Zeus is the shining forth of what is, but this means he is the determination under which each thing is. Accordingly, Aeschylus says elsewhere about him: “Zeus is the ether, Zeus is the earth, Zeus is the sky, Zeus is all things, and that which is above them”(⊗). In other words, Zeus is the measure of all things insofar as he is the measure of each thing, for he is its very being, its positiveness, its reality, which, as Parmenides will later say, is, as such, “imperishable” (ἀνώλεθρον).(⊙) It is this that Aeschylus evokes as well in the so-called “Hymn to Zeus” contained in vv. 160-183 of his Agamemnon, where he emphasises that bearing it in mind – this, and, one may deduce, not the possession of any τέχνη – is the only true remedy for the pain which drives mortals mad, i.e. for their anguish before the perishable nature of all things, and of themselves. For it reminds them – it reminds us – of the dimensional difference that exists between being’s incandescent gleaming and the ephemeral nature of all things, which are (both) equally incontestable.
The modern misrepresentation of Prometheus’s myth is thus evident. Byron vindicates Prometheus’s sensibility towards humankind’s “sufferings.”(Δ) Similarly, Percy B. Shelley views him as “the type of the highest perfection of moral and intellectual nature, impelled by the purest and the truest motives to the best and noblest ends.”(⧀) They both rework the tragedy into a misotheistic drama: that of an ill-treated philanthropist who, in one way or another, triumphs over Zeus’s tyranny. In turn, Mary Shelley recasts the myth in gothic terms: her modern Prometheus is a brilliant scientist who attempts to play God by creating a humanoid who, “promoted from darkness,” finds himself lost in life.(⧁) Regardless of Frankenstein’s relevance for current discussions on AI and cybernetics, Mary Shelley misses the whole point of Aeschylus’s tragedy – and she ought not to have missed it, given her novel’s subtitle: the Modern Prometheus. For in Frankenstein concerns about origin and creation – which is a major preoccupation in modern Christianity, as evinced e.g. by the abortion debate – replace Aeschylus’s original problem, which has to do with mortality instead. As for Percy B. Shelley, not only does he misconstrue Prometheus’s figure, but, again too, Aeschylus’s original problem, which is less about freedom – another typically Christian concern – than about ὕβρις over that which is.
(⊛) Heraclitus’s fragments are accessible in Greek and Burnet’s English translation here.
(⦿) See Aeschylus, Works (ed. Alan H. Sommerstein; Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press, 2008). Hereinafter all translations are ours, though.
(⊜) Heraclitus DK B62: “immortal mortals, mortal immortals: [these (= the ‘immortals’)] living their death [i.e. that of the ‘mortals’], [those (= i.e. the ‘mortals’)] dying their life [i.e. that of the ‘immortals’]” (ἀθάνατοι θνητοί, θνητοὶ ἀθάντατοι, ζῶντες τὸν ἐκείνων θάνατον, τὸν δὲ ἐκείνων βίον τεθνεῶτες). We have written on this fragment here.
(⊗) Aeschylus, frag. 70N2, cited in Emanuele Severino, Il giogo. Alle origine della ragione: Eschilo (Milan: Adelphi, 1989), p. 26. Cf. Aeschylus, Agamemnon, vv. 1486-1487: nothing is without Zeus “willing” it.
(⊙) Parmenides, DK B8, 2.
(Δ) In his poem “Prometheus,” included in the volume The Prisoner of Chillon and Other Poems (London: John Murray, 1816).
(⧀) Percy Byshee Shelley, Prometheus Unbound: A Lyrical Drama in Four Acts, with Other Poems (London: C. and J. Ollier Vere, 1820), viii-ix.
(⧁) As much as John Milton’s Adam, which supplies the incipit in the cover of the anonymously published first edition of the work: “Did I request thee, Maker, from my clay / To mould me Man? Did I solicit thee / From darkness to promote me? — Paradise Lost” (Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus [London: Lackinton, Hughes, Hardin, Mavor, & Jones, 1818]).
Jean Delville, Prometheus (1907). Bibliothèque Royal de Belgique
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