Metis is one of the most difficult to define Greek words. It's a person, the first wife of Zeus, who he ate -- naturally -- to keep her from bearing a son who would take over. If you're familiar with Detienne and Vernant's book on the subject, you might define it as "cunning intelligence," from the book's subtitle.
Metis is morally ambiguous: praiseworthy when employed by Odysseus to entrap Trojan spies and strategize a way into Troy, but a negative quality by the time of Euripides' Iphigenia at Aulis. Odysseus' metis in Iphigenia is so negatively portrayed that it allows the poet to pin the responsibility for Iphigenia's death on him, rather than on her father, who is to kill her, or her uncle, who started the war that made it necessary.
What's got me thinking about metis is some things I've read lately about the economy and the responsibilities of the younger generation. I see a tendency to expect metis of everyone in this modern world, and it makes our world more fragmented and angry. The Greeks, who invented cleverness and deception in the West, never envisioned a world where everyone would need to second-guess their neighbors and their public institutions on a daily basis. Maybe we should remember that cunning functions best when it's used only when necessary.
