Abstract EN:

Hesiod’s poem is linked to the formation of the greek city-state, a new political form organized by the nobility so as to dominate efficiently a society in rapid expansion : the poet-thinker sets up new integrating ideals, with their inherent ambiguities and contradictions. This ideology aims at the production of goods (within the framework of a family oikos which must be economically self-sufficient and which can theoretically attain wealth) and a "just" distribution of the products of this work under the control of the judge-kings. The epic warrior ideals are systematically dismissed (thus Hesiod would appear to be later than homer). Through a reinterpretation of traditional myths, the new pre-political ideals are presented in a multi-determined form. In the race myth, the rising city-state tries to work out its "historical" development. The myth starts from a referential golden age and is directed towards an iron age where men are reluctant to accept the supposedly natural and patriarchal "justice of Zeus". The Homeric heroes are reinterpreted as religious "archegets". The promethean myth explains the fall of humanity into the world of work, with the generations going from birth to death. It mingles the social evil of hard work with a host of metaphysical evils and explains the cultural inferiority of women through nature. The myth of the two strifes opposes an evil social struggle, which aims at stealing the goods produced by work, to a competitive work attitude, which is corporative and socially horizontal. A flexible and subtle dialectical division of moral concepts and allegories reshapes and reorganizes the world of social morality. Hesiod could not be classed as a peasant poet with good common sense and approximate logic. His thoughts, expressed in a compact and elliptical style are completely coherent and deeply symbolic. He prepares the way for the ambiguous idealism which characterizes classical humanism and the ancient and modern concepts of the state.