Human Dependency on the Gods

Abstract In this chapter, I dig deeper into the dependencies of the human being on the gods to understand better how individuality and freedom could emerge when playing on the field of justice. Traditionally, the human being was deeply embedded in dependent relations. As a result, the idea of autonomous individual agency, including full individual responsibility, did not occur as often to the mind of the ancients as to contemporary readers. In several oral and textual genres, the gods, the demons, or the deep embeddedness in other dependencies decided upon the human being’s fate and steered its decisions and actions. To deny responsibility by blaming the gods was tradition, especially in myth, narrative, and history writing.