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    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF or read online from Scribd
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    70 views12 pages

    The Greek Discovery of Reason in Nature

    Uploaded by

    mariaimara
    Political Theory

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF or read online from Scribd
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    of 12
    CHAPTER TWO THE GREEK DISCOVERY OF REASON IN NATURE ‘The essence of both Judaism and Christianity can be grasped, albeit imperfectly and incompletely, from the study of a few sources: The Old Testament and the Prophets, combined with the post-Biblical Talmudic literature (commentaries on the Bible), convey an adequate understanding of the essence of classical Judaism. The New Testa- ment, supplemented perhaps by Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Luther, and Calvin, en- ables one to intellectually understand the inner meaning of Christianity. This relative simplicity in fixing the roots and essence of Judaism and Christianity arises because both are religious in outlook, and therefore authoritarian to a degree. Authority makes for simplicity. By contrast, Greek thought is predominantly rational and secular in orientation; there is, therefore, no Bible, no book of authority, no one single source that sums up the essence of Greek thought. The source of Greek thought is Greek life over eight cen- turies, from the sixth century p.c. to the end of the second century of the Christian era. ‘There is no Moses, as in Judaism, and no Jesus, as in Christianity Looking for knowledge, understanding, wisdom, and illumination in the exploration of nature and man, Greek thought was marked in its progress by diversity, contradic- tions, and lack of definitiveness. Each generation seems to start all over again, incorpo- rating some ideas of its predecessors, rejecting others, and trying to interpret the world in the light of its own experience and its own style of thinking, The birth of western science and philosophy occurred in the sixth century 8.c, The place was not mainland Greece, but the Ionian settlements on the west coast of Asia Minor and on the islands off the coast. These settlements had been formed by emigrants from mainland Greece many centuries before. In the Greek communities on the main- land, the ties of tribal unity were strong. Conversely, the migrants to the Tonian settle- ‘ments came from various parts of Greece, and thus were relatively free of tribal beliefs and taboos, allowing them to look at the world from a less traditional perspective, both scientifically and politically. They were the first to organize city-states and learn self- government. Since the coastal strip of Asia Minor where they settled was narrow, and land therefore limited, they early took to navigation and commerce, exploring and doing business in the Mediterranean from its eastern shores in Egypt to the western shores of southern France. Undoubtedly these travels also facilitated their progress. Great Political Thinkers It is hard to overstate the originality and genius of ancient Greece, which continue to ‘shine brightly and inspire after more than two thousand years. Never before or since ‘have so many brilliant minds been clustered in sich a small part of time and space. ‘Their sudden rise in civilization—to heights never before imagined, much less as. cended—distinguishes the Greeks, Seemingly instantaneously, scientific theories and Political philosophies emerged fully grown, as did Athena (the goddess of wisdom for ‘whom Athens was named) from the head of Zeus in Greek mythology. ‘The men who discovered this knowledge were obviously not “modern” in the sense in which we now use this term (to designate the period roughly from 1500 to the pres- ‘ent), but they surely were the absolute moderns of their day, which is why we continue fo remember and discuss them in our time. Their concepts and contributions in math. ematies, science, philosophy, literature, politics, and the arts continue to be examples of excellence. Sixth-century p.c. Ionian thought marks the beginning of western science, aptly de- Seribed as “the Greek way of thinking about the world.” The most important Ionian city ‘was Miletus, a rich port and commercial center, the first bourgeois civilization in the ‘west, and the birthplace of the first three great Greek thinkers, Thales, Anaximander, and Anaximenes, the founders of the “Milesian School ‘The literary fate of these early giants of Greek science and philosophy illustrates, and explains, atleast one of the reasons why pre-Socratic thought is sometimes falsely seen as merely a prelude to Plato and Aristotle rather than as the greatest period of Greek originality, compared with which Plato and Aristotle mark the beginning of the end, rather than the peak, of Greek creative genius. Of Thales, we do not even know ‘whether he ever wrote a book. If he did, no single authentic fragment survives. The only Teason we know approximately when he lived is because he predicted an eclipse, which astronomy tells us took place in 585 8.c, About a dozen lines survive of Anaximander. ‘We know that Anaximenes wrote one book: A single sentence has come down to us. Compared 10 the majestic fullness of the works of Plato and Aristotle, the extant Pieces of pre-Socratic Greek thought are thin indeed. Yet, the nature and influence of bre-Soeratic Greek thinkers can be analyzed through the reactions of their contempo- taries and, more often, of later writers still close enough to give us an authentic reflec. tion of pre-Socratic thought. A second reason, in addition to mere paucity of sources, that pre-Socratic thought hhas not received the attention it deserves is the influence of Christianity. In many re- spects, Christianity is the synthesis of Greek and Jewish thought. Yet, the Greek ele. ‘ments in Christianity are primarily Platonic and Aristotelian. There is not a single clement of pre-Socratic Greek thought in Christianity. The main ideas of the pre- Socratics, from the sixth-century Tonian scientists and philosophers to the fifth-century fophists, are either opposed or at least indifferent to the main tenets of Christian phi- losophy. The lack of sympathy felt by the early Christian theologians with respect to bre-Socratic Greek thought was inherited from Plato, as were so many other of his pref. erences and animosities ‘The main interest of the onian scientists and philosophers was the rational explo- tation of nature. The very concept of “nature” (physis) is itself a Greek intellectual discovery and invention. There is no word for “nature” in the Old Testament. In the pre- Greek, nonscientific world there is no concept of nature as a system of universal laws and regularities graspable by reason. Primitive man is aware only of individual things and events in the outside world, primarily from the viewpoint of their utility or harm- fulness to himself. The primitive outlook of the world is animistic: it sees a demon, ‘The Greek Discovery of Reason in Nature 9 spirit, or divinity in every rock or tree. This leads to a world view that is irrational and dominated by the supernatural and mythical. ‘Thus, the Greek discovery of nature is one of the few great intellectual revolutions of sil time, as it freed reason. From Thales onward, Greek thinkers were firmly convinced ‘that nature could be understood. ‘The modern distinction between scientist and philoso- ‘pher was, incidentally, unknown to the Greeks. “Philosophy” means in Greek “love ‘of knowledge” or “love of wisdom.” It was not, as itis today, a branch of learning, but | the process of learning itself. Philosophy implied the searching for knowledge in all ‘sreas—scientific, metaphysical, and social. The emphasis, further, was on the activity ‘of searching for knowledge and understanding, regardless of what the results might be. From the idea that nature can be understood, early Greek thinkers stepped to the still _ bolder idea that all of nature can be understood; this step in turn led to the conclusion __ that everything was part of nature, and subject to its laws. This conclusion denied the existence of the supernatural, governed by arbitrary whims of gods or demons. There is _ only one kind of phenomenon: nature. Everything is subject to its laws, which human ‘feelings and desires cannot influence, and from which even the gods are not exempt. _ Whereas primitive man sought—by prayer or sacrifice—to influence external phenom- ‘ena or objects, the Greeks were the first to observe and understand them, realizing that ‘there was no other way to master the universe, Greek religious conceptions were intimately connected with the rational comprehen- ‘Son of nature, As early as Homer, no sharp separation between God and nature exists, znd the miracle—an event running counter to natural law because so willed by God— ‘plays a very small part. Whereas in the Judeo-Christian view God is above nature, _changing its regularities when He sces fit, the Greek religious view sees the divine in : the laws of nature express the divine reason. The Judeo-Christian miracles, on ‘the other hand, express the divine will. For the Jew and Christian, a miracle takes place en divine intervention changes the expected regularities of nature; for the Greek, the st miracle of all is the orderly regularity in which natural events occur. In later tic thought, the identification of God and nature become virtually complete, fing in the Stoic religious philosophy of pantheism, according to which the universe is a manifestation of divine rationality, a view Thales may have ex- centuries earlier in a statement attributed to him, “all things are full of gods.” ‘tis a tribute to the Greeks’ sense of realism—so clearly expressed in their literature art—that they first tackled the rational understanding of physical nature before ‘on the much more complex job of rational mastery: man. The Greeks were the People in history in which laymen, not a priestly class, carried on intellectual ac- ties of a higher order. The intellectual as a distinct social type, whether he be a s scientist, writer, lecturer, or teacher—the individual whose sole business it is ‘think, asking new questions and proposing new answers to old questions enon in the western world that goes back to the Grecks. ‘The spread of Ionian scientific observation and philosophical speculation chal- ‘traditional modes of thought. The first to attack traditional Greek reli ‘was Xenophanes, whose early ties with Ionian philosophy stimulated him to ibe the processes of nature as the result of natural laws which one can clearly by careful observation of natural phenomena. In the field of religion, Xenophanes forward a view from which all study of comparative religion has since drawn sus- that man creates God in his own image (rather than the other way around, as = Bible puts it). Xenophanes attacked Homer and Hesiod, the two greatest Greek for “attributing to the gods all things that are a shame and a disgrace among 10 Great Political Thinkers men: theft, adultery, and deception.” He also ridiculed the current images of the gods tas being created by birth like humans, wearing garments, and possessing bodies and voices like humans. He noted that the Ethiopians visualized their gods black, whereas the Thracians (in Greece) imagined their gods to have blue eyes and red hair. To drive home his point, Xenophanes then makes one of the most famous statements in the his- tory of the study of religion: “If oxen or horses could draw and make statues as men do, ‘oxen would draw the pictures of gods like oxen, and horses like horses.” The critical and empirical tendency in Xenophanes is also reflected in his attitude toward truth and knowledge. Certain truth is impossible, he says, particularly when it © comes to the ultimate questions about man or the gods. Conjecture or probability is all that man can attain in his search for truth: “The gods have not revealed all things to ‘men from the beginning; but by long seeking men discover what is better.” Xenophanes ‘thus suggests that the road to truth is ong and endless, and that there is no shortcut ‘through revelation. Protagoras (480-411 p.c.), the first of the sophists, expresses a similar view about the nature and limitations of human knowledge: “Concerning the gods, Iam unable to Know whether they exist or not, nor what form they have; many things prevent this Knowledge: the obscurity of the problem and the brevity of man’s life.” Protagoras’ famous saying that “man is the measure of all things” expresses a similar ‘viewpoint. It does not mean that each individual can set up, in a completely anarchical and irresponsible way, his standards of knowledge and ignorance, truth and error, virtue ‘and vice. What Protagoras tried to say is that, unless we claim to have divinely revealed truth (which he denied), we can only mobilize our human resources in trying to dis- cover knowledge about mankind and nature. This belief in man is the source of all subsequent tendencies in western civilization that go under the name of humanism, Greek humanism did not, as has often been al- leged, worship man as the “Lord of Creation,” nor did it worship any other idol. The {gteatness of pre-Platonic humanism consisted precisely in accepting, for the first time in history, the limitations as well as the potentialities of human intelligence and creativity. In this humanistic view, man was neither a worm of no value and significance (as in the Oriental despotisms of Eeypt and Babylonia), nor was he a demigod. The story of Prometheus, as dramatized by Aeschylus, clearly illustrates Greek humanism. Prome- theus arouses the anger of Zeus for having taught men the art of fire: Zeus punishes him by chaining him to a mountain rock and orders a vulture to gnaw away at his liver. Prometheus defies Zeus and even dares to curse him. Peace is finally made between Zeus and Prometheus, neither coming out as victor. Prometheus does not meekly submit in the end (as does Job, for example, in a similar Biblical story of a just man receiving undeserved misfortune from God), nor, though, does he triumph over God—as he would have done had the Greeks been human-worshippers. Protagoras and Democritus, who was an originator of the atomic theory, adhered to the philosophy of empiricism, holding that knowledge derives solely from experience (and not from revelation), and that knowledge is therefore subject to constant change and improvement. Both Protagoras and Democritus also favored liberal democracy in politics: The parallelism between philosophical empiricism and political liberalism has often been repeated in western thought, as can be seen from the later examples of Locke, Mill, Jefferson, John Dewey, and Bertrand Russel Plato in the Laws reversed Protagoras’ saying of man being the measure of all things into the statement that “God ought to be the measure of all things, and not man.” This anti-empirical and anti-humanist view of Plato is reflected in his political philosophy. Knowledge of truth and error—of right and wrong—is certain because it ultimately ‘The Greek Discovery of Reason in Nature i derives from a mystic vision of God. But only a few are capable of attaining, after a long preparatory education, such absolute certainty; these are to rule as philosopher- ___ Kings. Absolute political authority of the few is based in Plato on the assumption that only a few have the capacity to reach certain knowledge. ___ Since the ancient Greeks, those who have held that truth is certain have also gener- ally held the parallel view that only a few are capable of reaching that truth, On the | other hand, those who have held that truth is never final, that it can never be more in. ‘fallible than fallible man himself, have more often taken the View that everyone has the ‘capacity to reach the imperfect truth that exists in the world as it is constituted. The philosophy of the early Greek thinkers was both practical and speculative. The Babylonians were skilled in observing the stars, but their primary interest was astrol- ‘ogy, not astronomy. The Egyptians were skilled in some measurements, but they did not "Pash mathematics further. Christian writers of the early Christian era rejected the rare ‘armony between theory and practice of the Greeks; for them, philosophy assumes a ‘different meaning—a life of meditation, contemplation, withdrawal, and self-denial. Plato passed this conception of philosophy on to Christianity, another illustration of _ Bow Plato differed from typical and representative Greek thinking. The philosophical origins of democracy in ancient Greece are not based, as is often dstakenly asserted, on the shallow rationalistic ground of the perfectibility of man- On the contrary, the pre-Socratic thinkers saw the imperfection and fallibility of judgment and knowledge. They therefore concluded that all men are in the same ‘of doubt and uncertainty. There is no aristocracy of those who know (as Plato ght). Therefore (and here philosophy merges with politics), if there is no absolute d of right and wrong, the opinions of the majority are to decide, After all, the alternative to this position is for the minority to decide what is best for the major- ich is even less satisfying tha the democratic solution. The philosophy of em- ism maintains a middle position between skepticism (according to which 0 dge is possible) and metaphysical idealism (according to which truth is absolutely Political democracy similarly holds the middle ground between anarchy (no nt) and authoritarianism or totalitarianism (all-pervasive government), sophists’ great period was the century of 450-350 p.c. Because of the Platonic of the sophists, the term has acquired a derogatory meaning in modem west- Janguages: Sophistry is now considered a method of reasoning which perverts trath ious and cunning logic, bordering on dishonesty. “Sophist” originally meant in « skilled craftsman and, more generally, a wise or prudent man, sophists travelled from city to city lecturing and teaching. Unlike pre-sophistic in special disciplines or vocations, the sophists were the first to undertake the tion of the whole man, particularly the political man: man as a citizen and, above - 35 2 political leader. In the Platonic dialogue named for him, Protagoras is repre 88 saying he does not wish to instruct pupils in special fields like arithmetic, ‘music, or astronomy. Instead he wants to teach “the art of politics”—manag- S own affairs prudently and effectively, and speaking and acting for the best irs of the state. revolutionary new educational concept of the sophists was largely a response to of Greek civilization from an aristocratic society to a bourgeois (imiddle- ‘one. In the old aristocratic society, character and political ability were not for~ -sequired, but were inherited through ties of blood, social “atmosphere,” and

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