Art of Transcendence

From P. J. Kavanagh's review of The Great Books by the philosopher Anthony O'Hear:

"...O’Hear points out for example that the Greek heroes in Homer (whom Simone Weil called ‘ killing-machines’) were attacking a culture that was domestic and civilised. Andromache was preparing a hot bath for her husband Hector, not knowing that he was being dragged, dead, behind the chariot of Achilles. Homer tells us this, but amid the blood and clamour we might overlook the contrast. In the Aeneid Vergil can be sensed flinching at the violence of the pax romana — even ‘pious Aeneas’ could be guilty. This ‘piety’ is O’Hear’s theme.

"All the books he describes and examines, from Homer to Goethe’s Faust, exist in an order that contains some form of transcendence, above and outside man. This order, essential to understanding the books themselves, O’Hear contends that we now too often push aside, treating ‘the mythology and mysticism of Plato’s thought as if these things were too naive and embarrassing even to notice’. Against this impoverishment O’Hear, unfashionably, goes doughtily to war."