(I'm just leaving this in for context.)

Do you really mean this? I'm really surprised.

I'm not trying to affect moral superiority here; I am in no position to; if anything, I am likely to be your moral inferior, because for instance you do socially useful voluntary work (see above), whereas I do nothing but cower away from the world.

But I do think that the attitude you seem to be expressing here is an immoral one, so I question what you mean, and whether I am reading it correctly.

You're not leaving much room for doubt as to your meaning, I must say!

(Also, I do seem to detect traces of Nietzsche in your words.)

It's a strange thing. When I was embroiled in a thread where I got into hot water for making fun of something Alan posted and then withdrew (I'm sure you remember those shenanigans), you were the one person who confirmed what had actually happened. That may have been because you had access to more information that anyone else - this seems to fit with what you say about the voluntary work you do! - but whatever the reason for it, I appreciated it deeply. That was a case of morality in action: a morality that is related to a concern for the truth, not succumbing to relativism and the confusion of truth with power. I may have read too much into it.

Twirl:
It is one thing to have a personal moral stance about an issue, quite another to have an abstract stance about an issue. I am harassed constantly in the forum when I say something in the abstract that is connected to an emotionally charged issue. Theatetus did not say that he didn't oblige himself to help those in need, only that there was no real force outside himself that could do it. Given all the influential forces that attempt to make it a mandate to help those in need, if it were truly obligatory to help, one of them would have probably succeeded in doing so. The fact that Theatetus does help in spite of the various pulls of his environment and psyche that make it hard to is a testament to his abstract stand. I know you aren't judging him negatively in any real way, I just thought this needed to be said.

Cheers,
Russ

Nietzsche began his writing as a philologist. And Nietzsche alludes to the Iliad in a few of his books.

But to say that I am morally obliged to help people in distant countries for something I have no control over is ridiculous. I care more about family and community. I don't really care about country and world.

Nietzsche's inaugural lecture at Basel was entitled "Homer and Classical Philology" (1869):
Friedrich Nietzsche - Homer and Classical Philology


In a handwritten book of essays presented to Cosima Wagner (1872), one of the titles was "Homer's Contest."

The Nietzsche Channel has yet to bring up on its new site the English Translation, but the German is available:

Nietzsche Source - Digitale Kritische Gesamtausgabe (eKGWB)

We sometimes forget that Nietzsche was, as an academic, a part of the German development of classical philology and was well acquainted with the Greek authors. His first published book, The Birth of Tragedy (1872) grew from this academic interest.

Charity begins at home, but must it end there?

(I know this is all off-topic.)

One cannot accurately express the phenomenology of thought... What Nietzsche says is reflected well in the beginning of the Illiad, where the poet invokes the Goddess, to sing through him of the wrath of Achilles...
But as a philologists, it is possible that Nietzsche may have heard of the book...