The Bow and the Lyre Author:Seth Benardete In this exciting new interpretation of the "Odyssey", renowed scholar Seth Benardete suggests that Homer may have been the first to philosophize in a Platonic sense. He argues that the "Odyssey" concerns precisely the relation between philosophy and poetry and, more broadly, the rational and the irrational in human beings. In light of this possi... more »bility, Bernardete works back and forth from Homer to Plato to examine the relation between wisdom and justice and tries to recover an original understanding of philosophy that Plato, too, recovered by reflecting on the wisdom of the poet. At stake in his argument is no less than the history of philosophy and the anient understanding of poetry. "The Bow and the Lyre" is a book that every classicist and historian of philosophy should have.« less