Beyond Myth: The Philosophical Wisdom of the Ancient Greeks

Author: Cao Xing
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2005-01-01
Features: Excerpt: The freedom of classical Greece was full of contradictions: , the democratic freedom of Greece was primarily the opposition between Greeks and foreigners. Greeks had to resist foreign slavery and invasion, but once victorious, they immediately transformed into unjust plunder, capturing foreigners as slaves, even plundering their women and wealth. Second, the democratic freedom of Greeks included the sharp conflict between slaveowners and slaves. Greek citizens did not include Greek slaves; in the eyes of citizens, slaves were merely speaking tools (objects), not yet human. Third, the democratic freedom of Greeks contained the contradictions and conflicts between the Athenian city-state and other states. In Athens, not only did slaves lack democratic rights, but foreigners also had no democratic freedom there. Therefore, only when Greeks faced common foreign enemies could the city-states temporarily unite. Once the danger was eliminated, the conflicts of interest between the Greek states would quickly develop and become, leading to Greek civil wars—the wars between Greek states. Fourth, there were severe conflicts of interest between citizens of different social classes. Their birth ranks and wealth differed, which determined their political thoughts and tendencies were also extremely different. When exercising their freedom and democratic rights, they were bound to conflict. Thus, due to the opposition of different interests and tendencies, Greeks engaged in fierce debates and arguments in their exchanges and dialogues. When such debates reached an unprecedented level, they greatly enhanced people's thinking abilities and gave rise to a pure intellectual wisdom—rhetoric and logical thinking. Because in debates, merely stating personal opinions was not enough; one had to freely seek sufficient reasons and use effective methods to refute the opponent and argue the rationality of one's own views. Against this backdrop, the ability to discern truth from falsehood through logical thinking emerged and rapidly developed. As a result, a famous intellectual movement for the development of debate wisdom was. Relying on the power of logical thinking, the Greeks transformed the naive "principle" wisdom from Thales to Heraclitus into the "substance theory" wisdom of the classical era.