The civil strife that followed the classical period (from ~500 B.C.) placed the old gods on trial. 

Ancient criticism of mythology:

Xenophanes (6thC B.C.) dismissed the stories of gods as immoral and illogical  

Anaxagoras (5C B.C.)  a single divine Mind unifies the universe
Athenians tried him for impiety and publicly burnt his works.

Socrates (469-399 B.C.) condemned to death for questioning gods 

Plato (427-347 B.C.) gods are good and just, it's the poets who distorted the truth 

Euhemerus (4C B.C.)  gods were ancient kings and heroes, worshipped after their deaths. 

 

Mystery Religions Eleusinian, Orphic and Dionysian Mysteries

Eleusinian

The festival at Eleusis, known as the Greater Mysteries, was celebrated in the early fall, at sowing time. Another festival, the Lesser Mysteries, was held in the early spring at Agrae, a nearby town.

Orphic  

Performed all over. Especially in Thrace.

Dionysian   

Many festivals were held in honor of Dionysus; most famous were the Lesser or Rural Dionysia (in late December), the Greater or City Dionysia (in late spring), the Anthesteria (in early spring), and the Lenaea (in winter). 

Tension between Apollonian and Dionysian in the work of the tragic poets and dramatists such as Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides

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• Mythos shifts to Logos  The Intellectual Revolution

• With the rise of philosophy, we see a shift in Greek religious thought to a new type of speculation. The Greek philosophers sought a more rational and scientific approach to humanity’s relation to nature, proposing a logical connection between humanity and nature, not a mysterious and secret one between humans and god. Plato talked about an abstraction -  Absolute Good - to which even the gods must be true. Philosophical inquiry led to the rationalization of myths and ultimately the destruction of the Homeric pantheon. The vacuum was eventually filled by Christianity.

• Central Features of the Homeric Tradition

• Greek philosophy develops against the background of the Homeric tradition as represented in the Iliad and Odyssey.

• Anthropomorphic Conception of Divinity (or the gods)

• In Homer, the gods are anthropomorphic - they are like us (they are rational agents, so their goals and actions are somewhat predictable). The gods have a limited power over the forces of nature, but some things happen by chance.

• The World is Rational or Intelligible

• In Homer, the world is ordered - it too is based on rationality. This order is personified in Zeus - the highest of the gods.  Events in the world are are caused by the direct intervention of the gods/goddesses in people's lives. You could call this the personal and mythical explanatory framework of the Homeric period.

  Partial Rationality and Order

  However, both the gods and humans are subject to fate.  The character of the Fates or moirai suggests an amoral and impersonal order in the world which is independent of humans and gods. 

  Where ever the Greeks saw order in the world, they thought it implied a rational intelligence was thinking that orderliness. So they thought the world was pervaded by mind. And where they saw motion, then something living must be making it move. (R. Collingwood The Idea of Nature. passim)

• Over time the Greeks developed a number of schools of philosophical thought. Several of these had a huge impact on the rise of Christianity and many are still studied today. Here is a brief rundown of

The Schools

1. Ionian (580 ~400 BC) nature philosophers looking for material basis of the universe and its causes.

Between the 7th and 5th century B.C., a new movement begins in Greek thought - philosophy. The first philosophers were known as the Pre-socratic philosophers because they wrote in the period before Socrates. Although the texts have been translated as prose, much of what survives is actually verse.

The pre-Socratic philosophers came out of the colonies, east (Ionia) and west (Sicily). It raises an interesting question: Was the "colonial" mentality more intellectually adventurous than that found in the mother country?

In contrast to the personal, mythical explanatory framework of the Homeric period, the pre-socratics looked for rational explanations  in terms of the nature of things and their causes.

They looked for a rational and systemic account of the natural and moral order of the world.  They asked two basic questions: 

What is the underlying and primary 'substance' (Greek: arché - source) of the universe? 

And, how can we explain change and transformation, given that what we perceive derives from one substance? 

These are very modern questions. Physicists still seek the primary particle; science still attempts to explain how substances 'change'.

Their primary substances and forces were different from the ones we use as explanations. They theorized Material Principles in two pairs of opposite primary qualities: hot/cold and moist/dry, and four elements out of which all matter is composed

1. fire = hot + dry

2. air = hot + moist

3. earth = cold + dry

4. water = cold + moist

Changes in the world are produced by two active forces, an attractive force (such as love or condensation) and a repulsive force (such as Strife or Rarefaction).

But their assumptions and methods are remarkably modern.

2. Eleatic & Pythagorean  Schools (570~450 BC) From the western colonies in Italy came schools of Logicians and mathematicians. Pythagoras created a mystery religion based on mathematics.

1. Reality is number: There exists a higher-order reality beyond the physical and visible realm which determines the harmony manifested in the world of becoming. This reality is number. Just as the musical harmony is dependent on number (musical intervals on a stringed instrument can be expressed numerically), so the harmony of the universe depends on number. The Pythagoreans may have seen this as a way to deal with the conflict of opposites pointed out by the Ionians. In addition, number itself is the real. Physical bodies are made up of numbers. It is not merely that things are numerically characterized, but things are actually made up of numbers. 1 is point, 2 is line, 3 is surface, 4 solid; and therefore numbers are spatial. Every material object in the universe is composed of points which together constitute a number. 

2. Transmigration of souls (metempsychosis)

The Pythagoreans believed that person is soul (or at least that this is the most important part of a person). The body is to be regarded as a prison house of the soul. At death we leave the body and are reincarnated in another body and live out another embodied existence. The premise here is that of the kinship of all beings. Pythagoras may have been  inspired by Hinduism (by way of Persia). Plato was very influenced by this doctrine. See fragments #6, #7, #8.

Pythagoras is also the first to refer to the universe as kosmos (conveying beauty and harmony) to refer to the universe, as well as the first to use philosophus for a person who has a love of wisdom.

 

3. Sophists (450-400 BC) Skeptical tradition, no systematic philosophy, Charged fee for teaching persuasive (sophistic) arguments: "Is it true that you have stopped beating your father?..' -  (Before formal logic). 

4. Academics - Peripatetics-  (450-320 BC) - includes the most famous ancient philosophers - Socrates, Plato and Aristotle

Socrates - was a wise man because he knew he was ignorant. He referred to himself as the Obstetrician of wisdom. Never wrote but taught by asking questions - trying to get clarity. He questioned the gods and sided with the 30 tyrants after the Peloponnesian war. He was tried by the Athenian Assembly and put to death. Most everything we know about him was written by his student Plato

Plato - believed knowledge must be certain and infallible. We must ignore mere appearance (because our senses sometime deceive us) and look for what's genuinely real. Plato thought the real must be be fixed, permanent, and unchanging.

His theory of knowledge is found in the Republic, in a story called the myth of the cave. It is about people chained deep inside a cave all their lives. They can't see each other. They can see shadows on the wall of the cave cast by models or statues of animals and objects that are passed in front of a fire. They can't see the fire. Breaking free, one person escapes to the light of day. In the sunlight, that person sees, for the first time, the real world and returns to the cave and tells the others that the only things they have seen in their lives are shadows and that the real world is outside if they are willing to break their chains. The shadowy environment of the cave symbolizes for Plato the physical world of appearances. Escape into the daylight outside the cave symbolizes the transition to the real world, the world of full and perfect being, the world of Forms, which is the proper object of knowledge.

What are Forms? e.g. A circle is a set of points, all of which are equidistant from a center point. No one has ever seen a real circle - just approximations

What we see are pictures of circles. In math the points of a circle are not spatial points—they are logical points. They do not occupy space. Nevertheless, although the Form of a circle has never been seen—indeed, could never be seen—everybody knows what a circle is.  For Plato, therefore, the form “circularity” exists, but not in the physical world of space and time. It exists as a changeless object in the world of Forms or Ideas, which can be known only by reason. An object existing in the physical world may be called a circle or a square to the extent that it resembles the form “circularity” or “squareness”.

Plato's student Aristotle was the son of a physician. He was known for his scientific research of all disciplines: Medicine, physics, politics, ethics, biology etc. He was a Tutor of Alexander the Great.

Aristotle emphasized direct observation of nature. Theory must follow fact. He too looked for changeless first principles that form the basis of all knowledge.

He posited four principles of explanation: the material cause (what something is made out of); the formal cause (its design); the efficient cause (its maker); and the final cause (its function). 

He differed sharply from Plato on the relationship of form and matter. Plato said concrete reality resembles the ideal but doesn't embody it. Aristotle thought  that form was in matter. He thought Plato with his ideal forms, rather than explaining things, doubled the things which need to be explained.

Aristotle's ethics agreed with Plato's: goodness lies in things realizing their nature. The highest good for humans is rationality. Aristotle emphasized the traditional Greek notion of moral virtue as the mean between extremes. Well-being (eudaemonia) is the pursuit, not of pleasure (hedonism), but rather of the Good, which combined contemplation (the intellectual life) and politics (the moral life). 

 

6. Skeptics (310 - 150 BC) sense perception as no certain guide to objective reality. Everything is relative, nothing can be known or our ability to know is limited.

5. Cynicism (400~280 BC) The doggie philosophy. The doggie philosophy. Give up the decadence of civilized urban life. Simplify,  go back to basics - live like a dog.

Diogenes the Cynic lived in a tub. He gave up his water cup when he saw a beggar drinking water with his hands. He would wander around in the daytime with a lantern saying he was looking for an honest man. He was very famous throughout Greece. It is said that Alexander the Great visited him and asked if there were anything he needed. Diogenes replied, could you step out of the way - you are blocking the sunlight.

6. Epicurean (300 BC~150 AD) Pure happiness = harmony of senses, contemplation and moderation.

 Epicurus defined philosophy as the art of making life happy naming pleasure as the highest and only good. However, for Epicurus pleasure was not heedless indulgence but the opposite, ataraxia [serenity], manifesting itself in the avoidance of pain, pursuit of the intellect over bodily pleasures. Their code of conduct advocated honesty, prudence, and justice to others, not because these were good in themselves, but because acting this way saved you from social condemnation. You should have friends but your friendships should not be too deep or you might be hurt when they ended. He de-emphasized the traditional power of religious and physical forces on human life and emphasized our freedom of action. The work of the Roman poet Lucretius, De rerum natura (On the Nature of Things), contains the best exposition of Epicurean ideas.

7. Stoicism (260 BC~160AD) There is a universal plan - divine providence, or necessity. We did not make the world - we will not change it. Our task as humans is to cooperate with divine providence. This philosophy was extremely popular with the Romans; precursory to Christianity.

Very stern, ascetic system, teaching perfect indifference (apathea) to everything external, for nothing external could be either good or evil. Hence to the Stoics both pain and pleasure, poverty and riches, sickness and health, were supposed to be equally unimportant.

They believed all things are composed of fire. With this materialism the Stoics combined pantheism. The primal fire is God. God is related to the world exactly as the soul to the body. The human soul is likewise fire, and comes from the divine fire. It permeates and penetrates the entire body. Just as the soul-fire permeates the whole body, so God, the primal fire, pervades the entire world.

But in spite of this materialism, the Stoics declared that God is absolute reason. This is not a return to idealism, or imply that God is incorporeal. Reason, like all else, is material. The divine fire is a rational element. Since God is reason, it follows that the world is governed by reason, and this means two things. - there is purpose in the world, and therefore, order, harmony, beauty, and design. Secondly, since reason is law as opposed to the lawless, it means that universe is subject to the absolute laws of cause and effect. Therefore the individual is not free. There can be no true freedom of the will in a world governed by necessity. We may think we choose to do this or that, and that our acts are voluntary. When we choose we merely assent to what we do. What we do is  governed by causes, and therefore by necessity.

The world-process is circular. God changes the fiery substance of himself first into air, then water, then earth. So the world arises. But it will be ended by a conflagration in which all things will return into the primal fire. Thereafter, at a pre-ordained time, God will again transmute himself into a world. It follows from the law of necessity that the course taken by this second, and every subsequent, world, will be identical in every way with the course taken by the first world. The process goes on for ever, and nothing new ever happens. The history of each successive world is the same as that of all the others down to the minutest details.

The human soul is part of the divine fire, and proceeds into humans from God. Hence it is a rational soul, But the soul of each individual does not come direct from God. The divine fire was breathed into the first man, and thereafter passed from parent to child in the act of procreation. After death, all souls, according to some, but only the souls of the good, according to others, continue in individual existence until the general conflagration in which they, and all else, return to God. 

This was the philosophy of Seneca, Cicero, Epictetus, and the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus.

 

8. Neo-Pythagorean & Gnostic (30 AD~530 AD)  Transitional period between the pagan and Christian world 1st-5th century. Mysticism based on religious syncretism: combined Egyptian + Greek+ Hebrew + etc.

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Summary of Greek Schools of philosophical thought: 

1. Ionian (580 ~400 BC) nature philosophers looking for material basis of the universe and its causes.

2. Eleatic - Pythagorean (570~450 BC) Logicians and mathematicians. Pythagoras created a mystery religion based on mathematics.

3. Sophists (450-400 BC) Charged fee for teaching persuasive (sophistic) arguments: "Is it true that you have stopped beating your father?..' -  (Before formal logic)

4. Academic - Peripatetic-  (450-320 BC) - includes Socrates, Plato and Aristotle

6. Skeptics (310 - 150 BC) sense perception as no certain guide to objective reality. Everything is relative, nothing can be known or our ability to know is limited.

5. Cynicism (400~280 BC) The doggie philosophy. Simplify your life, live like a dog, go back to basics

6. Epicurean (300 BC~150 AD) Pure happiness = harmony of senses, contemplation and moderation.

7. Stoicism (260 BC~160AD) There is a universal plan - divine providence, or necessity Our task as humans is to cooperate with divine providence. Extremely popular with the Romans; precursory to Christianity.

8. Neo-Pythagorean & Gnostic (30 AD~530 AD)  Transitional period between the pagan and Christian world 1st-5th century. Mysticism based on religious syncretism: combined Egyptian + Greek+ Hebrew + etc.

The Democratic Experiment

 Democracy at the Crossroads
 Athens Chronology
 Democracy Debate Documents

 

The Zappeion building, Athens

Among the enduring contributions of the Ancient Greeks to Western society is democracy. But what did the development of Athenian democracy actually involve? The Greek word demokratia 'people-power' or mob rule  'masses' ? or duly qualified citizens?

Greek political systems Those cities that were not democracies were either oligarchies - where power was in the hands of the few richest citizens - or monarchies, called 'tyrannies' in cases where the sole ruler had usurped power by force rather than inheritance.  Where democracy flourished, the economic system was based on war and exacting tribute from conquered city-states.

Temple of Sounion

 

Cleisthenes

 Solon's ( 600 BCE) reformed constitution was the basis for democracy created almost a hundred years later in 508 by a progressive aristocrat Cleisthenes.

Victory over the Persians at Marathon and Salamis encouraged the poorest Athenians to demand a greater say in running their city. In the late 460s Ephialtes and Pericles helped shift power to the poorest sections of society.  

 

Invention of political theory

The Greeks invented political theory, during the first half of the fifth century BCE.

Histories of Herodotus,' the Persian Debate' in book 3.

The Persian empire is in crisis - a usurper has occupied the throne. Seven noble Persians conspire to overthrow the usurper and restore legitimate government. But what form of government should they institute?    democracy, oligarchy, or hereditary autocracy?

Views of the masses

Political power of the masses exercised over and at the expense of the elite. 

Socrates and Plato believed popular knowledge is ill-informed and wrong opinion, claiming that the masses are easily swayed by rhetoric -  prey to demagogues. 

The thetes deserved mass-biased democracy as a reward for their crucial naval role.

Democracy is really just another form of tyranny - dictatorship of the proletariat

 

Oligarchy Returns

 oligarchy of the Four Hundred took power 411

democracy restored 410

 the Thirty Tyrants took power in 404 (Athens loses Peloponnesian War)

 

Restoration of democracy

Democracy was restored in 

Athenian democracy flourished for another 80 years. 

Prosecution of Socrates 399 

 

Greek democracy and modern democracy

Scale

Level of participation

Eligibility


Ostracism 

voting out of office

Participatory Democracy

Should we … go back to the Greeks?