Gabriel Herman
Encyclopedia
Gabriel Herman currently holds the Professorship in Ancient History
at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem
, Israel
. He specializes in ancient Greek
social history
, focusing on issues such as social structure
, interpersonal relationships, moral norms, rituals, conflict resolution
and decision making
.
), Romania
, and raised in Israel. Educated at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the University of Cambridge
, he has taught at the Hebrew University since completing his Ph.D.
at Cambridge in 1985. He is married with three children.
, and has held visiting fellowships at Churchill College, Cambridge
; Clare Hall, Cambridge
; Fondation Hardt, Genève; the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton; and the Institute for Research in the Humanities, University of Madison, Wisconsin. He has served as Directeur d’études at the École Pratique des Hautes Études
, Section des Sciences Religieuses, Sorbonne
. Herman has received numerous Hebrew University Scholarships: an Aylwin Cotton and a Leo Baeck Fellowship Award, an Alon Fellowship Award (Israel Ministry of Education). In 2005, he won the First Polonsky Prize for Creativity and Originality in the Humanistic Disciplines.
, laws, ideologies, sentiment
s, and drives
, whether recognised or subconscious
, affect human behaviour
in general, and how did they affect the behaviour of the ancient Greeks and Romans in particular? Second, how do these factors interact in the formation of societies and groups characterised by that unique combination of customs, actions and outlooks that goes under the name of culture? Third, what drives a historical narrative and/or motivates the historical process?
Herman advocates a closer interaction between ancient history
and the social, behavioral and life sciences
. Historians should, in his view, keep track of the insights achieved in these fields and apply them to the analysis of the past societies that are the objects of their studies. With a view to developing analytical tools capable of tackling problems that could not be satisfactorily resolved using the historian’s traditional analytical apparatus alone, Herman has been involved over the past year in initiating the production of a multi-authored synoptic guide to ancient Greece and Rome, guided by a novel conception of environment, economy, society, politics, and culture.
Herman’s published works may be divided into three categories:
, kinship
, social structure
, politics
and international relations
in ancient Greece: a three-dimensional view of a bond that, though ubiquitous in the Greek and Roman world, had previously been poorly understood by modern writers. This is the relationship known to the Greeks as xenia
and to the Romans as hospitium
.
Having identified this bond as a sort of quasi-kinship that has also been observed by social scientists in more recent cultures,
he followed up its implications for Greek histoire événementielle by examining how xenia/hospitium functioned in three largely dissimilar social settings: the hierarchical, individualistic world of petty rulers reflected in the Homeric poems, the egalitarian (at the elite level, at least), collectivistic world of the classical and Hellenistic city-state
, reflected in classical Greek literature
, and the huge upper-class power networks of the late (by then Christian) Roman empire
, reflected in the Greek and Latin literature
of the late Roman and early medieval periods. In ‘Rituals of evasion in ancient Greece’ Herman describes a kind of ritual
that has survived into the world of the Greek city states from that early stage of human existence during which societal norms had not as yet been internalized, and no sense of guilt
had yet been formed
. The idea of writing a social history
of Athens came with the realization that there were serious flaws in the then widely practised (and largely unchallenged) way of reading and interpreting the Attic Orators
; and that in consequence, the entire moral
image assigned to the Athenian democracy by modern writers must be regarded as questionable, if not distorted. Herman proceeded to test his ideas through a wide variety of sources, with regard to politics, land tenure
, the employment of slaves, interpersonal and class relations, conflict resolution
, state power
, the army, foreign relations
, religion
and the economy
.
In his book Morality and Behaviour in Democratic Athens (2006), Herman offers a description of ancient Athens, perhaps for the first time, as an integrated social system, and introduces a radical re-interpretation of the Athenian democracy. He characterizes as exceptional the strategy
of inter-personal interaction that the Athenian democrats developed to resolve conflict, increase co-operation and achieve collective objectives. . In a recent article Herman offers a solution to the long standing question of how a direct democracy
run by masses
could have functioned at all.
.
The argument of the book that he is currently working on – Causation, Genes and History – is that if we combine history with the insights of modern genetics
, introducing into our customary list of historical causes (economic, psychological, etc.) one that precedes most other causes – to wit, human nature - and then the cause of this cause itself - genes or DNA
- we obtain a new theory of historical causation. Human genes are a far more objective and easily ascertainable cause than most proximate causes adduced by historian
s. In a sense, they might be conceived of as the ultimate cause, or the first principle, of the historical process.
In ‘Greek epiphanies
and the sensed presence’ Herman argues that the circumstances similar to those described by John Geiger
with regard to modern visions dubbed in research as ‘the third man factor’ (a life-threatening trauma
and/or a state of severe existential distress
)
also prevailed in connection with the Greek epiphanies. The third man factor thus offers an important clue for unravelling the mental processes that gave rise to the epiphanies in ancient Greek culture.
Ancient history
Ancient history is the study of the written past from the beginning of recorded human history to the Early Middle Ages. The span of recorded history is roughly 5,000 years, with Cuneiform script, the oldest discovered form of coherent writing, from the protoliterate period around the 30th century BC...
at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Hebrew University of Jerusalem
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem ; ; abbreviated HUJI) is Israel's second-oldest university, after the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology. The Hebrew University has three campuses in Jerusalem and one in Rehovot. The world's largest Jewish studies library is located on its Edmond J...
, Israel
Israel
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...
. He specializes in ancient Greek
Ancient Greek
Ancient Greek is the stage of the Greek language in the periods spanning the times c. 9th–6th centuries BC, , c. 5th–4th centuries BC , and the c. 3rd century BC – 6th century AD of ancient Greece and the ancient world; being predated in the 2nd millennium BC by Mycenaean Greek...
social history
Social history
Social history, often called the new social history, is a branch of History that includes history of ordinary people and their strategies of coping with life. In its "golden age" it was a major growth field in the 1960s and 1970s among scholars, and still is well represented in history departments...
, focusing on issues such as social structure
Social structure
Social structure is a term used in the social sciences to refer to patterned social arrangements in society that are both emergent from and determinant of the actions of the individuals. The usage of the term "social structure" has changed over time and may reflect the various levels of analysis...
, interpersonal relationships, moral norms, rituals, conflict resolution
Conflict resolution
Conflict resolution is conceptualized as the methods and processes involved in facilitating the peaceful ending of some social conflict. Often, committed group members attempt to resolve group conflicts by actively communicating information about their conflicting motives or ideologies to the rest...
and decision making
Decision making
Decision making can be regarded as the mental processes resulting in the selection of a course of action among several alternative scenarios. Every decision making process produces a final choice. The output can be an action or an opinion of choice.- Overview :Human performance in decision terms...
.
Biography
Gabriel Herman was born in Targu Mures (TransylvaniaTransylvania
Transylvania is a historical region in the central part of Romania. Bounded on the east and south by the Carpathian mountain range, historical Transylvania extended in the west to the Apuseni Mountains; however, the term sometimes encompasses not only Transylvania proper, but also the historical...
), Romania
Romania
Romania is a country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeastern Europe, on the Lower Danube, within and outside the Carpathian arch, bordering on the Black Sea...
, and raised in Israel. Educated at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the University of Cambridge
University of Cambridge
The University of Cambridge is a public research university located in Cambridge, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest university in both the United Kingdom and the English-speaking world , and the seventh-oldest globally...
, he has taught at the Hebrew University since completing his Ph.D.
Ph.D.
A Ph.D. is a Doctor of Philosophy, an academic degree.Ph.D. may also refer to:* Ph.D. , a 1980s British group*Piled Higher and Deeper, a web comic strip*PhD: Phantasy Degree, a Korean comic series* PhD Docbook renderer, an XML renderer...
at Cambridge in 1985. He is married with three children.
Fellowships and awards
Herman is fellow-for-life at Darwin College, CambridgeDarwin College, Cambridge
Darwin College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge.Founded in 1964, Darwin was Cambridge University's first graduate-only college, and also the first to admit both men and women. The college is named after the family of one of the university's most famous graduates, Charles Darwin...
, and has held visiting fellowships at Churchill College, Cambridge
Churchill College, Cambridge
Churchill College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge, England.In 1958, a Trust was established with Sir Winston Churchill as its Chairman of Trustees, to build and endow a college for 60 fellows and 540 Students as a national and Commonwealth memorial to Winston Churchill; its...
; Clare Hall, Cambridge
Clare Hall, Cambridge
Clare Hall is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge, England. It is a college for advanced study, admitting only postgraduate students.Informality is a defining value at Clare Hall and this contributes to its unique character...
; Fondation Hardt, Genève; the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton; and the Institute for Research in the Humanities, University of Madison, Wisconsin. He has served as Directeur d’études at the École Pratique des Hautes Études
École pratique des hautes études
The École pratique des hautes études is a Grand Établissement in Paris, France. It is counted among France's most prestigious research and higher education institutions....
, Section des Sciences Religieuses, Sorbonne
Sorbonne
The Sorbonne is an edifice of the Latin Quarter, in Paris, France, which has been the historical house of the former University of Paris...
. Herman has received numerous Hebrew University Scholarships: an Aylwin Cotton and a Leo Baeck Fellowship Award, an Alon Fellowship Award (Israel Ministry of Education). In 2005, he won the First Polonsky Prize for Creativity and Originality in the Humanistic Disciplines.
Academic research
Herman’s research has been motivated by three interrelated questions from the start. First, how do social institutions, values, norms, customsCustoms
Customs is an authority or agency in a country responsible for collecting and safeguarding customs duties and for controlling the flow of goods including animals, transports, personal effects and hazardous items in and out of a country...
, laws, ideologies, sentiment
Sentiment
Sentiment can refer to activity of five material senses mistaking them as transcendental:*Feelings and emotions...
s, and drives
Motivation
Motivation is the driving force by which humans achieve their goals. Motivation is said to be intrinsic or extrinsic. The term is generally used for humans but it can also be used to describe the causes for animal behavior as well. This article refers to human motivation...
, whether recognised or subconscious
Subconscious
The term subconscious is used in many different contexts and has no single or precise definition. This greatly limits its significance as a definition-bearing concept, and in consequence the word tends to be avoided in academic and scientific settings....
, affect human behaviour
Human Behaviour
"Human Behaviour" is Icelandic singer Björk's first solo single, taken from the album Debut. It contains a sample of "Go Down Dying" by Antonio Carlos Jobim. The lyrics reflect on human nature and emotion from a non-human animal's point of view. The song is the first part of a series of songs that...
in general, and how did they affect the behaviour of the ancient Greeks and Romans in particular? Second, how do these factors interact in the formation of societies and groups characterised by that unique combination of customs, actions and outlooks that goes under the name of culture? Third, what drives a historical narrative and/or motivates the historical process?
Herman advocates a closer interaction between ancient history
Ancient history
Ancient history is the study of the written past from the beginning of recorded human history to the Early Middle Ages. The span of recorded history is roughly 5,000 years, with Cuneiform script, the oldest discovered form of coherent writing, from the protoliterate period around the 30th century BC...
and the social, behavioral and life sciences
Life sciences
The life sciences comprise the fields of science that involve the scientific study of living organisms, like plants, animals, and human beings. While biology remains the centerpiece of the life sciences, technological advances in molecular biology and biotechnology have led to a burgeoning of...
. Historians should, in his view, keep track of the insights achieved in these fields and apply them to the analysis of the past societies that are the objects of their studies. With a view to developing analytical tools capable of tackling problems that could not be satisfactorily resolved using the historian’s traditional analytical apparatus alone, Herman has been involved over the past year in initiating the production of a multi-authored synoptic guide to ancient Greece and Rome, guided by a novel conception of environment, economy, society, politics, and culture.
Herman’s published works may be divided into three categories:
Ritual and social structure
The first category includes contributions to the study of friendshipFriendship
Friendship is a form of interpersonal relationship generally considered to be closer than association, although there is a range of degrees of intimacy in both friendships and associations. Friendship and association are often thought of as spanning across the same continuum...
, kinship
Kinship
Kinship is a relationship between any entities that share a genealogical origin, through either biological, cultural, or historical descent. And descent groups, lineages, etc. are treated in their own subsections....
, social structure
Social structure
Social structure is a term used in the social sciences to refer to patterned social arrangements in society that are both emergent from and determinant of the actions of the individuals. The usage of the term "social structure" has changed over time and may reflect the various levels of analysis...
, politics
Politics
Politics is a process by which groups of people make collective decisions. The term is generally applied to the art or science of running governmental or state affairs, including behavior within civil governments, but also applies to institutions, fields, and special interest groups such as the...
and international relations
International relations
International relations is the study of relationships between countries, including the roles of states, inter-governmental organizations , international nongovernmental organizations , non-governmental organizations and multinational corporations...
in ancient Greece: a three-dimensional view of a bond that, though ubiquitous in the Greek and Roman world, had previously been poorly understood by modern writers. This is the relationship known to the Greeks as xenia
Xenia (Greek)
Xenia is the Greek concept of hospitality, or generosity and courtesy shown to those who are far from home. It is often translated as "guest-friendship" because the rituals of hospitality created and expressed a reciprocal relationship between guest and host.The Greek god Zeus sometimes referred...
and to the Romans as hospitium
Hospitium
Hospitium , hospitality, among the Greeks and Romans, was of a twofold character: private and public.-Private:In Homeric times all strangers without exception, were regarded as being under the protection of Zeus Xenios, the god of strangers and suppliants...
.
Having identified this bond as a sort of quasi-kinship that has also been observed by social scientists in more recent cultures,
he followed up its implications for Greek histoire événementielle by examining how xenia/hospitium functioned in three largely dissimilar social settings: the hierarchical, individualistic world of petty rulers reflected in the Homeric poems, the egalitarian (at the elite level, at least), collectivistic world of the classical and Hellenistic city-state
City-state
A city-state is an independent or autonomous entity whose territory consists of a city which is not administered as a part of another local government.-Historical city-states:...
, reflected in classical Greek literature
Ancient Greek literature
Ancient Greek literature refers to literature written in the Ancient Greek language until the 4th century.- Classical and Pre-Classical Antiquity :...
, and the huge upper-class power networks of the late (by then Christian) Roman empire
Roman Empire
The Roman Empire was the post-Republican period of the ancient Roman civilization, characterised by an autocratic form of government and large territorial holdings in Europe and around the Mediterranean....
, reflected in the Greek and Latin literature
Latin literature
Latin literature includes the essays, histories, poems, plays, and other writings of the ancient Romans. In many ways, it seems to be a continuation of Greek literature, using many of the same forms...
of the late Roman and early medieval periods. In ‘Rituals of evasion in ancient Greece’ Herman describes a kind of ritual
Ritual
A ritual is a set of actions, performed mainly for their symbolic value. It may be prescribed by a religion or by the traditions of a community. The term usually excludes actions which are arbitrarily chosen by the performers....
that has survived into the world of the Greek city states from that early stage of human existence during which societal norms had not as yet been internalized, and no sense of guilt
Guilt
Guilt is the state of being responsible for the commission of an offense. It is also a cognitive or an emotional experience that occurs when a person realizes or believes—accurately or not—that he or she has violated a moral standard, and bears significant responsibility for that...
had yet been formed
The Athenian democracy
The second category of studies is centred on the Athenian democracyAthenian democracy
Athenian democracy developed in the Greek city-state of Athens, comprising the central city-state of Athens and the surrounding territory of Attica, around 508 BC. Athens is one of the first known democracies. Other Greek cities set up democracies, and even though most followed an Athenian model,...
. The idea of writing a social history
Social history
Social history, often called the new social history, is a branch of History that includes history of ordinary people and their strategies of coping with life. In its "golden age" it was a major growth field in the 1960s and 1970s among scholars, and still is well represented in history departments...
of Athens came with the realization that there were serious flaws in the then widely practised (and largely unchallenged) way of reading and interpreting the Attic Orators
Attic orators
The ten Attic orators were considered the greatest orators and logographers of the classical era . They are included in the "Alexandrian Canon" compiled by Aristophanes of Byzantium and Aristarchus of Samothrace.-The Alexandrian "Canon of Ten":* Aeschines* Andocides* Antiphon* Demosthenes*...
; and that in consequence, the entire moral
Moral
A moral is a message conveyed or a lesson to be learned from a story or event. The moral may be left to the hearer, reader or viewer to determine for themselves, or may be explicitly encapsulated in a maxim...
image assigned to the Athenian democracy by modern writers must be regarded as questionable, if not distorted. Herman proceeded to test his ideas through a wide variety of sources, with regard to politics, land tenure
Land tenure
Land tenure is the name given, particularly in common law systems, to the legal regime in which land is owned by an individual, who is said to "hold" the land . The sovereign monarch, known as The Crown, held land in its own right. All private owners are either its tenants or sub-tenants...
, the employment of slaves, interpersonal and class relations, conflict resolution
Conflict resolution
Conflict resolution is conceptualized as the methods and processes involved in facilitating the peaceful ending of some social conflict. Often, committed group members attempt to resolve group conflicts by actively communicating information about their conflicting motives or ideologies to the rest...
, state power
State power
State power may refer to:*Police power, the capacity of a state to regulate behaviours and enforce order within its territory*Government force, state coercion to induce conforming social results* The extroverted concept of power in international relations...
, the army, foreign relations
Foreign relations
Foreign relations refers to the ongoing management of relationships between a public policy administrative organisation of a state and other entities external to its authority or influence...
, religion
Religion
Religion is a collection of cultural systems, belief systems, and worldviews that establishes symbols that relate humanity to spirituality and, sometimes, to moral values. Many religions have narratives, symbols, traditions and sacred histories that are intended to give meaning to life or to...
and the economy
Economy
An economy consists of the economic system of a country or other area; the labor, capital and land resources; and the manufacturing, trade, distribution, and consumption of goods and services of that area...
.
In his book Morality and Behaviour in Democratic Athens (2006), Herman offers a description of ancient Athens, perhaps for the first time, as an integrated social system, and introduces a radical re-interpretation of the Athenian democracy. He characterizes as exceptional the strategy
Strategy
Strategy, a word of military origin, refers to a plan of action designed to achieve a particular goal. In military usage strategy is distinct from tactics, which are concerned with the conduct of an engagement, while strategy is concerned with how different engagements are linked...
of inter-personal interaction that the Athenian democrats developed to resolve conflict, increase co-operation and achieve collective objectives. . In a recent article Herman offers a solution to the long standing question of how a direct democracy
Direct democracy
Direct democracy is a form of government in which people vote on policy initiatives directly, as opposed to a representative democracy in which people vote for representatives who then vote on policy initiatives. Direct democracy is classically termed "pure democracy"...
run by masses
Commoner
In British law, a commoner is someone who is neither the Sovereign nor a peer. Therefore, any member of the Royal Family who is not a peer, such as Prince Harry of Wales or Anne, Princess Royal, is a commoner, as is any member of a peer's family, including someone who holds only a courtesy title,...
could have functioned at all.
The mainsprings of the historical process
The third category of studies in which Herman has a particular interest concerns the mainsprings of human behaviourHuman Behaviour
"Human Behaviour" is Icelandic singer Björk's first solo single, taken from the album Debut. It contains a sample of "Go Down Dying" by Antonio Carlos Jobim. The lyrics reflect on human nature and emotion from a non-human animal's point of view. The song is the first part of a series of songs that...
.
The argument of the book that he is currently working on – Causation, Genes and History – is that if we combine history with the insights of modern genetics
Genetics
Genetics , a discipline of biology, is the science of genes, heredity, and variation in living organisms....
, introducing into our customary list of historical causes (economic, psychological, etc.) one that precedes most other causes – to wit, human nature - and then the cause of this cause itself - genes or DNA
DNA
Deoxyribonucleic acid is a nucleic acid that contains the genetic instructions used in the development and functioning of all known living organisms . The DNA segments that carry this genetic information are called genes, but other DNA sequences have structural purposes, or are involved in...
- we obtain a new theory of historical causation. Human genes are a far more objective and easily ascertainable cause than most proximate causes adduced by historian
Historian
A historian is a person who studies and writes about the past and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human race; as well as the study of all history in time. If the individual is...
s. In a sense, they might be conceived of as the ultimate cause, or the first principle, of the historical process.
In ‘Greek epiphanies
Theophany
Theophany, from the Ancient Greek , meaning "appearance of God"), refers to the appearance of a deity to a human or other being, or to a divine disclosure....
and the sensed presence’ Herman argues that the circumstances similar to those described by John Geiger
John G. Geiger
John G. Geiger is author of The Third Man Factor: Surviving the Impossible, which popularized the concept of the "Third Man", an incorporeal being that aids people under extreme duress. The book is the basis for National Geographic Channel's Explorer:The Angel Effect, in which Geiger appears...
with regard to modern visions dubbed in research as ‘the third man factor’ (a life-threatening trauma
Trauma
Trauma can refer to:-In psychology and medicine:* Trauma , an often serious and body-altering physical injury, such as the removal of a limb...
and/or a state of severe existential distress
Distress (medicine)
In medicine, distress is an aversive state in which an animal is unable to adapt completely to stressors and their resulting stress and shows maladaptive behaviors...
)
also prevailed in connection with the Greek epiphanies. The third man factor thus offers an important clue for unravelling the mental processes that gave rise to the epiphanies in ancient Greek culture.
Selected publications
- Ritualised Friendship and the Greek City (Cambridge, 1987).
- ‘The court society of the Hellenistic Age’, in Hellenistic Constructs: Culture, History and Historiography, (eds.) P. Cartledge, P. Garnsey and E. Gruen (Berkeley, 1997), pp. 199–224.
- ‘Le parrainage, “l’hospitalité” et l’expansion du Christianisme’, Annales Histoire Sciences Sociales, 52.6 (1997), pp. 1305–1338.
- ‘Reciprocity, altruism and the prisoner’s dilemma: the special case of ancient Athens’, in Reciprocity in Ancient Greece, (eds.) C. Gill, N. Postlethwaite and R. Seaford (Oxford, 1998), pp. 199–226.
- Morality and Behaviour in Democratic Athens, A Social History (Cambridge, 2006).
- Ed., with I. Shatzman, Greeks between East and West (Jerusalem, 2007).
- Review article of Lorel J. Samons II (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to the Age of Pericles (Cambridge, 2007), Scripta Classica Israelica 20 (2010), 81-90.
- ‘The best few and the bad many: decision making in the Athenian democracy’, in H. Lohmann and T. Mattern (eds.), Attika – Archäologie einer 'zentralen' Kulturlandschaft (Wiesbaden 2010), pp. 231–244.
- ‘Greek epiphanies and the sensed presence’, Historia 60 (2011), 127-157.
- Ed., Stability and Crisis in the Athenian Democracy (Stuttgart, 2011).