Achilles and the Astronaut: What Heroism Humanities Can Teach Heroism Science

The “Heroism Humanities”

The call for papers for the 2016 conference “The Rise and Future of Heroism Science” in Perth, Australia describes heroism science as “opening up” “to other disciplines” that “which has traditionally been the monopoly of myth, fiction and popular culture” (Heroism Science Conference, 2016). Of course “myth, fiction and popular culture” are not disciplines but the traditional subject matter of the humanities, which remain otherwise unmentioned. Does this elision take place merely at the level of the sentence—or is it endemic to the field? Thankfully, to this humanist, there are signs that heroism science maintains a healthy interest in humanistic study. Frequent citations of mythologist Joseph Campbell and historian and essayist Thomas Carlyle suggest humanistic knowledge not only frames but in some cases informs heroism science (e.g., Allison, Goethals, & Kramer, 2017; Franco, Blau, & Zimbardo, 2011).

But the “heroism humanities” are more diverse—and their findings more contentious and complex—than has yet been recognized. In particular, the humanistic knowledge currently shaping heroism science is, I argue, both too outdated and too presentist. On the one hand, by leaning on Carlyle, heroism science allows 19-century thinking to frame 21-century inquiry. Scholars of classics, religious studies, history, and philosophy have since advanced—and in most cases departed from—his conclusions about the role of heroes in human civilization. On the other hand, heroism science (not unreasonably) mobilizes a contemporary vocabulary and value system in interpreting heroes and heroism. Despite evincing an interest in heroism’s “historical meanings” (Franco & Zimbardo, 2006), scholars rarely look to antiquity—except a nod to Achilles or Socrates—in interpreting the concept it bequeathed us. While Campbell’s (2004, p. 238) work examines a wide range of ancient folklore and myth, his is a universal “hero’s journey,” explicitly occluding the discontinuities between the “Occidental and Oriental, primitive and civilized, contemporary and archaic.” But it is exactly by acknowledging what is particular and unfamiliar—rather than universal and ubiquitous—about the ancient Greek hero that we can disclose the contradictions that inhere in our description and identification of heroes and heroism today.

The aim of this article is not to critique heroism science for what it does not know about the humanities. Rather, it is to make a wider sphere of humanistic knowledge useful to its aims—to lay bare the historical roots of our current conceptions, to open up new lines of inquiry, perhaps even to “solve” a quandary or two (Why call an athlete a hero?). In doing so, I join aspirations with the editors of the Handbook of Heroism and Heroism Science for a “multidisciplinary, and even transdisciplinary” approach to understanding the role of heroes and heroism in human culture (Allison et al., 2017).

Heroes and Heroism: Two Approaches

On May 31, 2016, a Google news search pulled up the stories of four “heroes”: Indonesia’s former dictator, although accused of violating human rights, had been nominated for the title of national hero (“National Hero Bid,” 2016); a Syrian cosmonaut and recipient of the “Hero of Syria” award was now a refugee in Turkey (Kenyon, 2016); a soccer player scored three goals in a game, leading his team to narrow victory (Stephenson, 2016); and after filing divorce papers that included allegations of domestic abuse, an actress’s lawyers released a statement stating, “Amber is the victim. Amber is a hero” (“Amber Heard’s Lawyer Says,” 2016).

A dictator, an explorer, an athlete, a victim of abuse. Not one risked his or her life to save another, or suffered social marginalization in service to an ideal. Do they have any true claim of membership to the heroic tradition? Or, are these news stories prime examples of the “subtle diminution of the word ‘hero’” (Franco & Zimbardo, 2006) perpetrated by contemporary culture?

Americans cull their “heroes” from a diverse swath of humanity, from family members to fictional creations, from the physically flourishing (athletes) to the physically ailing (cancer patients), from the undeniably virtuous to the morally suspect (Allison & Goethals, 2011). What are we to make of such a concept so heterogeneously applied? Heroism science, thus far, has modeled two approaches. One method, exemplified by Allison and Goethals (2011), accepts any given citation of a hero as valid (e.g., “Miley Cyrus” “My uncle” “God”) and infers general characteristics of the hero based on laypersons’ diverse descriptions: “Whether they are rulers, parents, deities, or teachers, heroes are described as courageous, selfless and skilled” (p. 28). By this approach, Valhalla is a big tent without barrier to entrance; heroes are heroes by virtue of ascription rather than by adherence to an essentialist definition.

Another method, exemplified by Franco et al. (2011) winnows away “false” attributions of heroism. Examining and eventually delimiting the semantic range of the term, their goal is to distinguish “heroism” from related, inappropriately conflated, concepts (e.g., altruism) as well as to unite phenomena traditionally treated as disparate (e.g., whistle-blowing and martial self-sacrifice). Thus, their Valhalla has set boundaries and definition bars entrance: Heroism is

a social activity (a) in service to others in need—be it a person, group or community, or in defense of socially sanctioned ideals, or new social standards; (b) engaged in voluntarily . . . (c) with recognition of possible risks/costs . . . (d) in which the actor is willing to accept anticipated sacrifice, and (e) without external gain anticipated at the time of the act. (Franco et al., 2011, p. 101)

The Handbook of Heroism and Heroism Science (Allison et al., 2017) differentiates these two methods as the “subjective” versus “objective” approach to defining heroism. We might also note that sympathy to “dispositional” versus “situational” factors distinguish them: For Allison and Goethals, heroes are heroes by virtue of their qualities; for Franco et al., heroes become heroes by virtue of heroic action. Despite certain convergences, the approaches yield markedly different results. Many of the figures Allison and Goethals accept as “heroes” would be disqualified by the definition of “heroism” arrived by Franco et al.: Cancer patients do not necessarily serve others in need; Anne Frank did not suffer voluntarily; professional athletes expect compensation.

Can we really make sense of a definition of the heroic that would exclude Anne Frank or Amelia Earhart? ¹ On the other hand, can we really take seriously a definition that would include Miley Cyrus or a brutal dictator? The problem is best mediated, I argue, not by distinguishing an “objective” from a “subjective” approach, but by acknowledging that what is under study are actually two, distinct phenomena: Allison and Goethals are examining heroes or heroic persons, Franco et al. heroic behavior. Supported by a brief foray into etymology, I will argue that heroism science should acknowledge two branches of study: On the one hand, the study of heroes and the ascription of heroic status to persons; on the other hand, the study of heroic behavior and the ascription of heroic status to actions and deeds. Separating these phenomena should disabuse us of the illusion that all heroes are made by acts of heroism while allowing researchers solely interested in heroic behavior to disambiguate their object of study.

Heroes and Heroism: Two Etymologies

“Hero” is a loanword from Latin (heros) in turn derived from Greek (η"ρως). Not only the word but the concept is deeply indebted to ancient Greek culture, especially the mythology and literature from which we derive many of our most enduring heroic exemplars (e.g., Hercules, Achilles, Odysseus). Lesser known is the important role heroes played in the religious life of the Greeks, who worshipped heroes (some immortalized in poetry, some obscure) in cults. Unlike the panhellenic appeal of Homeric poetry, cult worship was local and geographically fixed (Burkert, 1985). The influence of cult heroes, who like “powerful ghosts” (Fontenrose, 1966, quoted in Miller, 2000, p. 3) could be either friendly or hostile to their cities, was circumscribed by the location of their tombs.

Today, we tend to use “hero,” “heroic,” and “heroism” as if they were three of a set, like “politician,” “political,” and “politics.” A hero is a person who engages in heroism (a heroic act); a politician is a person who engages in politics (a political act). But unlike “politics,” which we also derive from Attic Greek ( π ολιτικά), there is no word for, nor concept of, “heroism” in ancient Greek, nor in Latin. A superficial survey of the Oxford English dictionary suggests that even in English “hero” precedes “heroism” by about a century. ² The transformation of “hero,” a kind of person, into “heroism,” a kind of conduct, is a relatively recent project. Yet when talking about premodern heroes, we almost always back construct the “hero” (e.g., Achilles) as having earned his heroic status by acting heroically. But the opposite is the case. “Heroic” (from the Greek adjective heroikos) refers not to the nature of an action but to the person of a hero (“of or for a hero”). Its adverbial form construes as “like a hero”—to act “heroically” (heroikws) meant, therefore, to act like Achilles. (To be political or act politically, on the other hand, does not mean to be or act like a politician.)

This might matter little if the ancient Greek hero operated by an obvious code of conduct. But only by reading with blinders on can we identify the mythic hero with moral rectitude. When we remember Achilles as a martial hero we tend to forget that, after allowing hundreds of his comrades to die, he rejoins the fight not from a noble purpose but from vengeful grief and rage at the death of his friend Patroclus . . . rage that leads him to desecrate his enemy’s body in an act that would have outraged any Greek. Greek heroes share magnitude—of suffering as well as of strength—rather than moral excellence. As the renowned classicist James Redfield has put it, “The hero, after all, is not a model for imitation but rather a force who cannot be ignored; his special excellence is . . . potency” (“Foreword” in Nagy, 1979). While ancient Greece proffered a robust vocabulary to conceptualize virtue, courage and nobility, these were conceptually independent of the figure of the hero.

But what does it matter if “hero” has accrued new meaning? Words and concepts shape shift constantly, and even ideas that stand the test of time are inevitably transformed when translated across radically different social conditions. My interest in elucidating the hero’s roots in classical antiquity is not to “correct” its modern usage; on the contrary, I believe a closer look at the Greek hero can help explain its modern usage, which, as demonstrated by today’s Google news search, is notoriously heterogeneous, even contradictory. But there is wisdom in everyday use: The designation “hero” remembers its ancient roots better than we do. While our scholarly definitions try to rationalize, classify, and prescribe the meaning of heroism, popular use exploits the web of associations linking the hero not only to “strength, courage, [and] resourcefulness” (Allison et al., 2017) but to transgression, suffering, and athletic victory.

In the following sections, I will illuminate certain aspects of the Greek heroic tradition, some of which radically deviate from our expectations about the nature of heroes and heroic life. But these aspects, often repressed in heroism science, might help make sense of how our modern examples—the brutal dictator, the explorer, the victim of abuse and the athlete—come to be associated with heroic status. While the designation of “hero” is, in these cases, conferred by peers, heroic status is also constrained by precedent and shaped by archetypes that extend back thousands of years.

Heroes as Villains, Heroes as Explorers

Heroism science takes for granted the desirability and exemplarity of heroes: “We tend to reserve ‘hero’ for the best of humanity;” “a heroic life is the pinnacle of human existence” (Allison et al., 2017, pp. 1-2). Yet the literature also acknowledges the moral complexity of heroic actors (Franco et al., 2011), even going so far as to acknowledge the role psychopathic qualities may play in heroism (Murphy, Lilienfeld, & Watts, 2017). These seemingly contradictory admissions should remind us that the heroic tradition does not, like many religious and philosophical traditions, seek to recommend an ideally virtuous person. If Greek heroes represent the “pinnacle” of human experience it is because they live life at the highest possible pitch, not because they attain anything like perfection.

In English, the difference between “goodness” and “greatness” is usefully one of quality as well as degree: Greek heroes are indisputably great and not obviously good. The prototypical Greek hero is not Socrates, who pursued a life of virtue, but Herakles who pursued a series of seemingly insurmountable labors. The hero, unlike the “moral saint,” does not pursue goodness for its own sake (Wolf, 1982). Labor is never its own reward, nor does it always obtain greater virtue or wisdom: Herakles succeeds in all his ordeals but accidentally kills his wife and children on returning home. Greek heroes struggle spectacularly and suffer spectacularly, and both their successes and failures leave a trail of victims.

Nothing better exemplifies the moral ambiguity of the Greek hero than this passage in the travelogue of Pausanias (trans. 1933; http://www.theoi.com/Text/Pausanias6A.html), a Greek of the 2nd century AD:

At the Festival previous to this it is said that Cleomedes of Astypalaea killed Iccus of Epidaurus during a boxing-match. On being convicted by the umpires of foul play and being deprived of the prize he became mad through grief and returned to Astypalaea. Attacking a school there of about sixty children he pulled down the pillar which held up the roof. (6.9.6)

This fell upon the children, and Cleomedes, pelted with stones by the citizens, took refuge in the sanctuary of Athena. He entered a chest standing in the sanctuary and drew down the lid. The Astypalaeans toiled in vain in their attempts to open the chest. At last, however, they broke open the boards of the chest, but found no Cleomedes, either alive or dead. So they sent envoys to Delphi to ask what had happened to Cleomedes. (6.9.7)

The response given by the Pythian priestess was, they say, as follows:

“Last of the heroes is Cleomedes of Astypalaea;

Honor him with sacrifices as being no longer a mortal.”

So from this time on the Astypalaeans have paid honors to Cleomedes as to a hero. (6.9.8)

What could be farther from our heroic ideal? Yet the last of the heroes is blessed and cursed by an excess of force, jealous of the honor he believes is due him, at odds with his community, and, grief-stricken, commits an act of outrage. This, too, is Achilles’ story. But Achilles’ greatest act of brutality (the desecration of Hector’s corpse) is redeemed by a stunning act of humanity (the return of Hector’s body to his father) and his resentful absence from battle balanced by his decision, more conscious than ever of his own mortality, to return to the field. Achilles is, indeed “the best of the Achaeans,” and a touchstone for his civilization for centuries, while Cleomedes, a hero whose “potency” brings his society no benefit, must be its last. But his story reminds us that, for the hero, crime and glory—antisocial and prosocial behavior—is separated only by a hairsbreadth.

Scholars of heroism struggle with the attribution of “hero” to the morally offensive, like Indonesia’s dictator Suharto, and chalk it up to the dangers of subjective ascriptions of heroism (Kohen, 2013 quoted in Allison et al., 2017). Instead, we should confront the fact that transgression, destruction and brutality are organic to the heroic tradition. “Heroes in antiquity were revered” (Allison et al., 2017, p. 2), but also feared. Indeed, a strongman who perpetrates violence on a massive scale (think Alexander the Great or Genghis Kahn) has more affinity with the classical hero than the average person who lives a quietly upstanding life.

Because the hero lives between the status of man and the status of God, the transgression of boundaries, not only moral ones, is a hallmark of the classical hero. Aeneas and others travel to the underworld; Herakles is swept up to the heights of Olympus to live as an immortal; Odysseus is told to travel inland to a place so remote that its inhabitants will confuse his oar for a winnowing fan. It should not surprise us, then, that explorers, especially those who trespass prior limits of human achievement (e.g., Neil Armstrong, Amelia Earhart) should be hailed as heroes.

Heroes as Victims, Heroes as Athletes

If there is a single feature that all readers of classical literature agree defines the ancient Greek hero it is his (or her) relationship with death, the hero’s “ultimate ordeal” (Nagy, 2002). The hero faces mortality (e.g., by katabasis, or descent to the Underworld), affirms mortality (as Odysseus and Achilles do, by self-consciously choosing a life that will lead to death), or suffers mortality (as Alcestis does, in place of her husband). Greek heroes act as avatars for human confrontation with death.

Suffering is also a common component of heroic life. Odysseus, who gets the happiest ending of any Greek hero, still earns himself the epithet “long-suffering.” The Illiad, as described by the classicist Gregory Nagy (2006), is “the story of a hero’s pain.” Like the Christ, Herakles, another savior hero, suffers utter agony before he dies. Heroes are victims as well as protectors.

I would speculate that the cancer patient (or survivor) is associated with heroism not just because of the admirable personal traits those ordeals might call forth (e.g., courage, resilience, grace). Rather, their very contact with the “ultimate ordeal,” death, places them in a realm beyond ordinary human experience. Similarly, while “victim” may sound to our ears as the very opposite of “hero,” pain and suffering—sometimes accepted voluntarily, most oftentimes not—is deeply embedded in the heroic tradition.

Perhaps more surprisingly, so is athletic contest. Nagy, who has perhaps influenced the study of the ancient Greek hero more than any other scholar of the 20th and 21st centuries, takes an anthropological interest in what he deems an essentially religious concept. He argues that the heroic tradition, far from a merely literary canon, is embedded in all the major engines of Ancient Greek culture—including athletics. Nagy’s (1990) study of Pindar’s epinician, or victory, odes (poems which celebrate the winners of Greece’s athletic contests, often by comparing them with the mythic heroes) argues that athletics has a religious origin. In sum:

[T]he ritual activity of athletic competition was predicated on the central mythological fact of a hero’s ultimate ordeal, death. This mythical ordeal of the hero is notionally re-enacted in the ritual ordeals of the latter-day athlete or warrior as he struggles to achieve victory. (Nagy, 2002)

In heroism science, the “popular sports figure” has been particularly singled out as unworthy of heroic designation (Franco & Zimbardo, 2006). But far from a modern day distortion, conflating athletes with heroes is at least as old as Pindar . . . and may have even older roots grounded in religious practice. Today, sport still provides the conditions for an athlete to take on herself a series of obstacles, to sacrifice and “suffer meaningfully,” and to win the respect of onlookers. ³ David Foster Wallace (2006) is far from the only contemporary writer who has praised an athlete with the enthusiasm of an epinician ode. His title? “Roger Federer as Religious Experience.”

Conclusion: The Socially Constructive Hero

On April 20, 2016, the United States Treasury Secretary announced that Harriet Tubman would replace Andrew Jackson on the back of the $20 bill (Calmes, 2016). The outpouring of interest before and after the announcement was enormous, and the symbolic impact of a Black woman and former slave replacing a slavery-supporting president who oversaw the forced relocation of Native Americans was amplified by heightened levels of activism around the country on issues of race. In the same month, Princeton University trustees voted to keep the name of Woodrow Wilson on campus buildings after students, protesting Wilson’s racist views and policies, demanded that it be removed (Markovitch, 2016). A Princeton professor remarked, “Our symbols represent who we take ourselves to be. So it means a lot when we embrace them or interrogate them or reject them” (Baer, 2016).

Heroism science tends to focus on the benefits of heroic exemplars for individual moral functioning—Franco and Zimbardo (2006) have advocated for the development of a “personal heroic ideal;” Allison and Goethals (2014, 2016) have proposed a model called the heroic leadership dynamic by which human development is aided by attachment to heroes. But heroes are not just “role models” (Franco & Zimbardo, 2006), they are vehicles for collective identity. Heroes—their stories circulated by textbooks, biographies, and Broadway shows, their names adorning street signs, elementary schools, and airports, their likenesses represented by murals, statues, and U.S. currency—are perhaps society’s most prized resource in “represent[ing] who we take ourselves to be” (emphasis on the “we”).

Homer’s contemporary, Hesiod, gave the name “heroes” to the race of superior men who preceded his own “Iron Age.” In the Greek literary tradition, “hero” was an essentially nostalgic designation, in keeping with a cultural ethos that valorized the past. If epic served as an “autobiography of a people,” Achilles acted for the Greeks as a kind of collective ancestor (Nagy, 2013, p. 18). Among the most important classes of heroes in cult worship were “founders,” especially within recently colonized cities (Burkert, 1985). Adolescents were especially encouraged to participate in hero worship; “In this way the rising generation is bound to the world of the dead and to the traditions and obligations which it represents” (Burkert, 1985, p. 208).

In our contemporary society, heroes of the valorized past compete with celebrities of the dazzling present. But they seem to share a capacity for articulating a shared social world. Joseph Boone and Nancy Vickers (2011), introducing the nascent field of “celebrity studies,” describe celebrities, “[c]reated by, and subject to, the vagaries of public opinion” as “the very substance of public discourse through which communities negotiate mores, values, and politics” (p. 908). Famous names are, as Leo Braudy (1986) puts it, “code words more forceful (and easier to express) than mutual political or religious beliefs for establishing intimacy” (p. 4). While the community creates celebrities and heroes, celebrities and heroes reconstitute how the community speaks to itself about itself. In other words, heroes are not only socially constructed they are socially constructive.

These observations, I hope, will encourage heroism researchers to shift their focus from essentializing and taxonomizing heroic individuals to identifying and describing heroic relationships between communities and the individuals they elevate and exploring how heroes function symbolically and discursively in the public sphere. To my mind, this will require three steps: