On My Whoosh List

Some books look irresistible. Those of us enamored of the ancient Greeks will have difficulty passing up this one: ALL THINGS SHINING, Reading the Western Classics to Find Meaning in a Secular Age. According to Eric Ormsby in his WSJ review, the authors--philosophers Hubert Dreyfus at Berkeley and Sean Dorrance Kelly at Harvard--"view the ancient Homeric gods as hidden presences still susceptible of invocation. Indeed, they hold out 'Homeric polytheism' as a solution to the 'lostness' of the contemporary world."

The authors' general theme, and lament, is that we are no longer "open to the world." We fall prey either to "manufactured confidence" that sweeps aside all obstacles or to a kind of addictive passivity, typified by "blogs and social networking sites." Both are equally unperceptive. By contrast, the Homeric hero is keenly aware of the outside world; indeed, he has no interior life at all. His emotions are public, and they are shared; he lives in a community of attentiveness. He aspires to what in Greek is termed "areté," not "virtue," as it is usually translated, but that peculiar "excellence" that comes from acting in accord with the divine presence, however it may manifest itself.

The two philosophers describe a fascinating notion they call "whooshing up:"

Whooshing up is the sensation we enjoy at a sporting event when the crowd rises to its feet as one to register a communal sense of awe and admiration before some astonishing athletic feat.

Whooshing up is communal, it is public and it is shared; and so, according to the authors, it is close to the kinds of sensations the ancient Greeks admired and cultivated. Throughout the book, such great athletes as Bill Bradley, Lou Gehrig and Roger Federer are invoked as supreme examples of such shining, almost instinctive, grace. Their greatness lies not solely in their skill, the authors argue, but in their ability to let some outside force course through them, just as the heroes of old were exquisitely attuned to the power of a god working through their bodies.

I could use some of that in my tennis game--I got whipped this morning. Look out, Stephan-I'm ordering this book!