Ido Hevroni

Chair of the Lobel Core Curriculum and senior lecturer at Shalem College, where he teaches rabbinic literature, Talmud and Midrash, classical literature, and liberal arts pedagogy.

Achilles’ Rage Exposes the Fragile Economy of Honor and Trust

In an EconTalk Book Club conversation, Shalem College’s Ido Hevroni and Russ Roberts read Homer’s Iliad as a poem about Achilles’ rage rather than a general account of the Trojan War. Hevroni argues that the quarrel between Achilles and Agamemnon exposes a moral economy of honor, hierarchy, trust, and duty, while the poem’s gods and violence make visible powers that still shape human life. Teaching the Iliad to students returning from war, he says, has made its account of betrayal, loyalty, and moral judgment less remote without reducing it to a book only for soldiers.

Hoover InstitutionJul 6, 202618 min read