Anthropological Marks in Hesiod's work: Why is it necessary to start with him?

• Grant number: 25/03112-1
• Support Opportunities: Research Grants - Visiting Researcher Grant - International
• Start date: September 01, 2025
• End date: September 10, 2025
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - History - Ancient and Medieval History
• Principal Investigator: Glaydson José da Silva
• Grantee: Glaydson José da Silva
• Visiting researcher: Maria Cecilia Colombani
• Visiting researcher institution: Universidad De Morón/Unimoron, Argentina
• Host Institution: Escola de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (EFLCH). Universidade Federal de São Paulo (UNIFESP). Campus Guarulhos. Guarulhos , SP, Brazil

Abstract

The project of the present seminar consists of thinking about the question of the present in Hesiod. This means to face the author, recognising a concern for his present and also highlighting a problematic attitude that distinguishes him from Homer and places him on a plane that borders on philosophical concern. To the already known theses where Hesiod appears as a first philosopher or, at least, as a clear exponent of a pre-conceptual thought, we want to contribute this perspective by which his insertion in the topos of the first speculation or, better still, philosophical attitude has to do with his level of problematisation of the reality in which he is inserted, giving account of a certain historical restlessness.Hesiod is a man of his historical time and a product of his own time. Hesiod is confronted with a present reality in Works and Days and is capable of reconstructing the reason for this historical situation and of foreseeing the possibilities of a future, on the basis of a certain reconstruction of the present time. It happens then that we can intuit a temporal perception which, in turn, becomes a pro-blem. In Trabajos y Días the three temporalities converge: past, present and future. Its own historical reality is its pro-blem, a difficulty to be considered from the interpretative tools that mythical discourse offers, bearing in mind that this is the final stage of the empire of mythical discourse as the dominant logos. To this consideration we must add Hesiod's own historical location between the end of the eighth and the beginning of the seventh century, where J. P. Vernant locates the birth of the polis as a true intellectual revolution, a vital fact for our incorporation of Hesiod in the framework of a pre-conceptual thought.Hesiod thinks his historical time and this places him in a privileged position as a witness of a historical-anthropological conjuncture that impacts him and makes him a sustained restlessness, as it seems to be shown in Works and Days. In this way, Hesiod becomes a lucid and committed witness of his time, taking charge, in a way, of his own present and investigating its conditions of possibility. This is a genealogical dimension that we will approach from a different interpretative background to the usual configuration of the term genealogy, so close to Theogony, as the emblematic work of the theogonic model. Finally, we wish to express that it is this consideration of the present question and this contact with the pro-blem that we believe we see in Hesiod as a shortcut to novelty. Our perspective, among others, aims to think this question of concern or uneasiness for the time in which he lives, as a Hesiodic heritage of strong impact of his work, above all in Trabajos y Días, and its absolute topicality make it a classic that invites us to think about our own historical times. (AU)