ellauri026.html on line 227: This is a famous line, but here it would hardly seem to merit its fame—who cares about people “arguing about how tough they are”? The word here translated as “tough” just happens to be one of the central words of Hellenic thought: arete, “virtue” or “excellence,” that subject of so many subsequent philosophy lectures—whose learnability or unlearnability Plato made the subject of inquiry, and which Aristotle defined as a mean between two vices. The word can be used to mean something like “bravery,” but it is wildly broader and richer than “how tough one is” (there is a queen named Arete in the poem, but Wilson refrains from translating her as “Queen Tough”). The line was quoted over and over again in later days because it was considered the height of happiness for a man to have a son and grandson competing with each other to possess virtue or true excellence. This Wilson suppresses, as a thing irrelevant to contemporary idiom—“toughness” will have to serve in its place.
ellauri030.html on line 902: In Freud's view, jokes (the verbal and interpersonal form of humor) happen when the conscious allows the expression of thoughts that society usually suppresses or forbids. The superego grudgingly allows the ego to generate humor for the benefit of the id. A benevolent superego allows a light and comforting type of humor, while a harsh superego creats a biting and sarcastic type of humor. A very harsh superego suppresses humor altogether.
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