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Our Greek Heritage. Why the Greeks Matter. The Greek Achievement. Religion —anthropomorphic gods. Culture —fierce individualism and belief in humanity. Science —believed that humans could find out how the world worked on their own, rather than the supernatural explanations of religion.
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Our Greek Heritage Why the Greeks Matter
The Greek Achievement • Religion—anthropomorphic gods. • Culture—fierce individualism and belief in humanity. • Science—believed that humans could find out how the world worked on their own, rather than the supernatural explanations of religion. • Politics—believed that people should govern themselves, not be beholden to one man.
The Greek Achievement • Literature—epic and lyric poetry, creation of history and prose, scientific and philosophical writing. • Drama—tragedy and comedy. • Art—perfection of the human body. • Sport—the Olympic and other games. • Architecture—just look around you.
Anthropomorphic Religion “If Cows and horses or lions had hands, or could draw with their hands and make things as men can, horses would have drawn horse-like gods, cows cow-like gods, and each species would have made the god’s bodies just like their own.” “Homer and Hesiod have attributed to the gods everything that men find shameful and reprehensible—stealing, adultery, and deceiving one another.” ”—Xenophanes of Colophon 6th century BCE.
Humanism Greek culture emphasized the human experience in all its complexity. Their heroes and gods were flawed like humans and they focused on the physical beauty of the individual. “Man is the measure of all things.”—Protagoras 5th century
Influence of Humanism • Heroism in our stories and myths. • The beauty of the human body, especially our focus on sports and athletes. • Respect for the individual, regardless of their flaws or shortcomings. “Nobody is perfect” or the “flawed hero.” • The underlying component in our belief in science and democracy.
Greek Philosophy/Science • Philosophy—philos=love, sophia=wisdom • Greek philosophers were scientists, as well as what we consider to be philosophers. • The attempt to use reason to discover why things are as they are. • The Greeks were no longer satisfied with supernatural and mythical explanations of the world or of human behavior. • They believed that there was an order to the universe that did not have to rely on the gods and it could be discovered. • Rational inquiry and dispute.
Pre-Socratic Philosophers • What exists? They tried to narrow it down to a single primal element. • Thales—everything was made of water. • Aniximander—a whirling motion of hot and cold and wet and dry elements where humans emerged from the sea—a primitive theory of evolution.
Pythagoras—the key was numbers. The geometric theorem. He argued all objects are similar to numbers, which is very close to our concept of the genetic code. • Leucippus and Democritus—world is made up of invisibly small particles, or atoma, which came together to cohere at random. The atomic theory—with no labs to prove it. • Some were outright quacks, such as Empedicles who wanted to prove humanity was divine so he jumped into Mount Aetna. • Diogenes of Sinope who lived in a wine barrel, carried a lantern around in broad daylight, urinated upon those he disliked, and masturbated in public.
The Sophists • Around 450, Greek philosophy moved from a focus on the physical world to a study of humanity. • The sophists were the first to do this. • They taught that the use of reasoned rhetoric would allow one to succeed in every aspect of life.
The Philosophy of Socrates • He wished to subject all inherited assumptions to reexamination. • Those who knew everything, really knew nothing. • Socratic method—questioning until an outcome is arrived at. • “The unexamined life is not worth living.” One should think of the meaning of one’s life and actions at all times. • Put to death for “corrupting Athenian youth” in 399, though the conviction was more political, than a free-speech issue.
Plato • Student of Socrates. • Constructed a philosophical system based upon Socratic precepts that he taught at his school in Athens called the Academy. • All of his treatise are written through “dialogues,” with Socrates being the main speaker throughout. • Heavily influenced by the carnage of the Peloponnesian War and the state of affairs in Athens, he questioned everything around him.
Philosophy of Plato • He argued that two worlds existed—physical reality and a higher, spiritual realm of ideas that only the mind could grasp. • The example of the chair. The things we perceive with our mind are merely imperfect copies of supreme realities. • In the Republic he uses the allegory of the cave to illustrate his thesis.
Aristotle • Student of Plato, and later, teacher of Alexander the Great. • He agreed with Plato that there were some things only the mind could grasp, but his own philosophical system was based on the confidence that the human mind could understand the universe through the rational ordering of sense experience.
Philosophy of Aristotle • The first modern scientist? • He taught that the systematic investigation of tangible things, combined with rational inquiry into how they function, could yield full comprehension of the natural order and of human being’s place within it. • He studied everything from metaphysics, ethics, poetics, politics, and even the animal world, and logic, itself. • He established rules for the syllogism, a form of reasoning in which certain premises inevitably lead to a valid conclusion, and he established precise categories underpinning all philosophical and scientific analysis, such as substance, quantity, relation, and place.
Democracy The Greeks not only invented democracy, but gave it its ideals. Pericles believed that the true value of a society was found in the common good of the people and believed government should ensure the common interests of the people.
Greek Literature • Homer—oral tales, the first literature out of the Dark Age. Epic poems, the Iliad and the Odyssey. • Hesiod—epic poet. The Theogony and Works and Days. • Early Lyric poetry—Alcaeus, Sappho, Pindar. • Pre-Socratic philosophers in the last years of the 500’s. • Personal, individual feelings, even at odds with popular culture. • Invention of prose. • Histories of Herodotus and Thucydides.
The Nature of Greek Tragedy • Efforts to define and explain the nature of tragedy began with nobody less than Aristotle, who declared that the purpose of tragedy was to inspire pity and fear in the audience in order to purge these emotions through a catharsis. • The themes of tragedy—justice, law, piety, social obligation, etc. that drive a heroic man or woman to destruction—were derived from, who else, but Homer. • Social criticism in both tragedy and comedy.
Greek Comedy • Greek comedy was crude, outspoken, full of slapstick, absurdity, and vulgarity, just like our movies. Its themes ranged from all instances of Greek life—sex, hillbilly life on the farm, the good old days, political incompetence, the craziness of religion, etc. • Aristophanes (c. 448-382) was the greatest of the Athenian comedic playwrights, and he ridiculed everything, including: the philosophy of Socrates, the tragedies of Euripides, and especially the imperialistic foreign policy of contemporary politicians. His most famous play, Lysistrata, was staged during the destructive Peloponnesian Wars against Sparta, and Lysistrata rallies all of the Athenian and Spartan women to withhold sex from the Spartan and Athenian men, until they end the war.
Hellenic Festivals • The Games • Rotating four year period • Olympic—Olympia, the greatest of the games and were dedicated to Zeus. • Pythian—Delphi, in honor of Apollo. • Isthmithian—Corinth. • Nemean—Nemea, in honor of Zeus and said to have been founded by Hercules (Greek, Herakles or Heracles)
The Olympic Games • So important to the Greeks that they dated their years by Olympiads, hence in the third year of the first Olympiad=774. • The Greeks, therefore, began their recorded history at 776, the date of the first recorded Olympiad. • Only Greeks could participate in the games. • A truce was called before, during, and after the games in all of the Greek lands so that the people could travel to the gaming sites. • Rock star athletes. • Officially, women were not allowed and the law allowed for them to be thrown of a cliff if they attended, but this was never enforced and wives and daughters did, in fact, attend. The Heraean Games, also held at Olympia for a time, was created for women to participate in one event—a footrace. Spartan women dominated the event from the start.
