This volume expands on a study published in 1992, based on T.-B.’s doctoral dissertation. T.-B. examines the origins and the development of the Greek term καιρός from the Homeric poems to the fourth century bce. She emphasises that its evolution cannot be separated from the evolution of the social practices and forms of knowledge that referred to it (p. 15). Part 1 (consisting of two chapters) considers the history and archaic origins of the word kairos. Part 2 provides a history of its contextual evolution.
Chapter 1 starts with the Iliad’s four instances of the adjective kaírios (p. 23). In one, Menelaus has been wounded and reassures Agamemnon: ‘The sharp arrow is not stuck in a critical [mortal] place (en kairiōi), but the shining war belt turned it aside from its course’ (4.184–5). Two others (8.84, 8.326) refer to spots that are mortal if struck. In the fourth, Athena diverts an arrow aimed at Odysseus to a non-fatal location (11.439). Here, kairos is a spatial term; it describes a location in the body where a strike might prove fatal. Other passages from the Hippocratic corpus, Herodotus, Aeschylus and Euripides use kairos to refer to a part of the body (pp. 29–33).
T.-B. infers that kairos began as a spatial term for a critical point in the body, within the contexts of archery, hunting and warfare. The ‘critical point’ shifted from a point in space to a decisive moment in time. In this sense, kairos is a term of decision, whose semantic field is linked to notions of deciding, judging, cutting and discriminating.
From Pindar to Galen, many texts link the terms kairos and krisis. Perhaps best known is Aphorism 1 from the Hippocratic corpus (p. 45): ‘Life is short, art long, opportunity [kairos] is fleeting, experiment is treacherous, judgment is difficult’. Another usage links kairos with appropriateness. In this sense it is semantically connected with to deon and to prepon (p. 57) and to notions of correct measure (metron, dike, summetria). When denoting a critical point that cuts and divides, kairos can refer to what has been cut or divided, including the results of well-calculated or appropriate action. This ethical sense of ‘appropriate’ (in contrast to excess) can refer to principles of justice and balance (dike) or to the aesthetics of balance and harmony (summetria). The chapter concludes with three appendices on the Indo-European root *ker (‘to cut, separate’), including its links to the terms kríno and keíro, and its relation to mêtis.
Chapter 2 turns to Archaic Greece and argues that, from Homer to the fourth century, kairos evolved from the spatial sense of a ‘critical point’ to the temporal sense of a ‘critical moment’. It focuses on Hesiod's Works and Days – ‘a morality of kairos’ (p. 92) – and Pindar's epinician odes – ‘a poetics of kairos’ (p. 105). Here, kairos was closely bound to the morality of action and, like metron, evoked the measure and appropriateness crucial to success in any undertaking. This ‘ethical kairos’ was central to Works and Days and the poetry of Theognis.
For Pindar, human action was closely connected to the will of the gods, so the kairos of successful action was linked to appropriateness and submission to order and the rhythms of nature. He also creates a new aesthetic kairos – an aesthetic transformation of an ethical principle: kairos as symmetry, harmony and variety (poikilia). Pindar's poet is not a passive interpreter of the Muses, but bears witness by his art to his sophia (p. 148).
A new situation emerges in the late fifth century with the rise of the technical arts (technai). Part 2 considers kairos in the context of medicine, politics and rhetoric where, according to T.-B., the understanding of kairos reaches its ‘full development’ (p. 149). Fifth-century theories of kairos sought to circumscribe chance and the risks attendant on human action (p. 305). Physicians, sophists and strategists examined the shifting nature of kairos in order to develop systematic methods of prediction. In medicine (Chapter 3), kairos took on the meaning of ‘critical time’ in the aetiology of disease. (In a medical context Pindar's poikilia became the ‘complexity’ of the medical art [p. 156].) In the context of dietetics, kairos was the art of precise measurement (akribeia) in On Ancient Medicine and On Regimen it came to mean ‘crisis’. In prognosis, especially of fevers, it meant the ‘critical days’ that marked predictable turning points in the course of a disease, and became ‘an art of time’ (p. 184). In a therapeutic context, the treatise On Regimen in Acute Diseases stressed the need to apply remedies at the right time and that errors in timing can have grave consequences.
Chapter 4 considers kairos in the arts of strategy and politics, starting with Herodotus, ‘a history without kairos’ (p. 197). Kairos appears only eleven times in his work, with a limited role. It refers to situations on the edge between war and peace (p. 200) and to decisive choices, for example, Gyges’ choice to spy on his master, strategic decisions at the Battle of Marathon and by Themistocles at the critical moments at the Battle of Salamis.
From Herodotus to Thucydides, there was a profound shift. For Thucydides, the focus of the historian's gaze was human action: with the gods all but absent and the entire focus on human decision. Thucydides critically linked such decision to the mastery of kairos, understood as the ‘critical moment’ in the sense of the perception of decisive time as a result of rational analysis of situations in all their strategic, political and psychological complexity (pp. 210–11). But kairos was also linked to luck, for example, in the stories of Demosthenes and Nicias. Finally, kairos affected the fortunes of cities, in their understanding of critical times in decisions about alliances and warfare.
Chapter 5 turns to kairos as a rhetorical art, focusing on the figures of Protagoras and Gorgias. Gorgias claimed to be able to improvise on any topic, but his disciples Isocrates and Alcidamas of Elea disagreed on the place of writing and the role of kairos in oratory. For Alcidamas, a rhetor who was able to improvise could easily write, but only improvisation could hold the attention of the public. Isocrates prepared written speeches for public reading and argued that writing offered greater scope for style and expression. He understood the demands of kairos as when to speak and when to be silent, what to speak about, and the rhythm of discourse. For Isocrates, kairos was a product of practice and experience, ‘the soul of discourse’ (p. 277).
Plato profoundly reinterpreted these debates in two dialogues on rhetoric – Gorgias and Phaedrus – and defined the conditions for a ‘philosophical rhetoric’. For Plato, a good orator understands his audience, his subject, and how to create in them ‘persuasion and virtue’ (p. 293). To do this, he must master kairos, which determines the choice and form of discourse. In the epilogue and conclusion, T.-B. turns to the very different approach of Aristotle in the Nicomachean Ethics.
The volume also includes a detailed bibliography and an index of passages cited. The book adroitly moves across genres – poetry, history, ethics, medicine, warfare, politics, rhetoric – providing nuanced readings in each case. This study is a rich resource for anyone interested in Greek perceptions of the role of chance, timing and opportunity across many contexts. It follows in the footsteps of landmark studies such as M. Detienne and J.-P. Vernant's Cunning Intelligence in Greek Culture and Society (1978). Like that work, it makes an important contribution to both classical philology and an interdisciplinary history of ideas.
