Exploration Of Hesiod’s Labor Thought

This thesis mainly studies the labor thought of the ancient Greek poet Hesiod based on his Works and Days and Theogony.The preface introduces the reasons for the topic and summarizes the domestic and foreign research status of Hesiod’s labor problems.The first chapter is a study of poets and labor,based on the close reading of the two poems,supplemented by other people’s relevant research,mainly discusses Hesiod’s personal life and related labor conditions in the poetry world.For the peasant Hesiod,work was so important,both as part of his daily life and as the main source of income for his oikos,that Hesiod urged his neglected brother to work hard.In this chapter,we try to reconstruct the world of labor described by Hesiod,and we believe that the reconstructed world of labor and the poet’s thought of labor constitute a self-consistent system.The second chapter studies labor and justice.First,it discusses two important myths in Hesiod’s poetry--Prometheus myth and human race myth.Through Prometheus myth,it traces back the origin of labor,that is,why human beings want to work,and through human race myth,it thinks about the necessity of human beings to practice justice.Then we discussed the justice in the world.For the farmer,hard work is the practice of justice,while for the prince,fair trial is the way to practice justice.Finally,we summarize the religiosity and ambiguity of labor in Hesiod’s works and reflect on the poet’s ambivalent attitude toward labor.The third chapter studies labor and women.First,it discusses the dual features of the original woman--Pandora,namely her beautiful appearance,cunning and inner nature of not working.Then,it discusses in detail the exclusion and demeaning of Hesiod’s labor thought on women and women’s productive labor and reproduction labor.Finally,the author analyzes the reasons why Hesiod’s labor thought excludes and devalues women.Hesiod’s thinking about women and their labor is undoubtedly limited by the circumstances in which they live.