Beyond Myth (The Philosophical Wisdom of 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, and 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 visiting there also had no democratic freedom. 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 rapidly developed and became, leading to the internal wars of Greece—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 thought tendencies were also extremely different. When they exercised their freedom and democratic rights, conflicts were inevitable. Thus, due to the opposition of different interests and tendencies, Greeks engaged in intense 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 logical thinking required to discern truth from falsehood emerged and rapidly developed. As a result, a renowned intellectual movement for the development of debate wisdom was out. 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.