The origins of philosophy

< Back to Ancient Greek Philosophy

"In all history, nothing is so surprising or difficult to account for as the sudden rise of civilization in Greece. (Bertrand Russell History of Western Philosophy and its Connection with Political and Social Circumstances from Earliest Times to the Present Day Second edition, 1961)

Ancient Greece

Our story begins in the sixth century B.C., at the time of a profound change in the heart of Greek society. Traditional wisdom, all the knowledge handed down through generations in the form of myths, was no longer seen as certain and it was subjected to a severe critique. Cosmology, moral values, sociology and theology were all challenged by a diverse range of thinkers, who no longer took what had gone before as certain. The range and extent of these challenges vary, each retaining different portions of the pre-philosophical culture and criticizing others. ``In africa,OBANOR OSAYANDE ,for instance,argues that,"philosophy,like other discipline was not exempt in having its origin in africa" and G.M.james in his book stolen legacies posits that ``the Greeks were not the author of Greek philosophy,but the people of North Africa,commonly called the Egyptians." The Greeks were a loose collection of city states and territories bound together by a common language and cultural ties. They distinguished themselves from non-Greeks, or barbarians, whose speech to them sounded like 'barbarbarbar', hence the name. Although many different forms of government existed across Greece, aristocracy was prominent everywhere. The nobles, who would lead the people in times of war, were conceived as the only possessors of virtue. The Greek word for virtue (Αρετή) is often translated as excellence in an attempt to escape some of its connotations in English, many of which were introduced by Christian thought at a later stage. A man was considered especially virtuous if he possessed fame, noble ancestry and success. Failure was punished and considered shameful.

Bertrand Russell argued in his History of Western Philosophy that the greatness of the Greeks came both from their passion and their intellect.

They had a maxim 'nothing too much', but they were in fact excessive in everything--in pure thought, in poetry, in religion, and in sin. It was the combination of passion and intellect that made them great, while they were great. Neither alone would have transformed the world for all future time as they transformed it. Their prototype in mythology is not Olympian Zeus, but Prometheus, who brought fire from heaven and was rewarded with eternal torment.(Bertrand Russell: History of Western Philosophy and its Connection with Political and Social Circumstances from Earliest Times to the Present Day. Second edition, 1961. p. 41)

Essential Reading

• Ancient Greece
• Αρετή
• The myth of Prometheus in Hesiod's Theogony (507-616). A summary can be found in the Wikipedia entry for Prometheus.

Further Reading

• History of ancient Egypt
• Civilizations in Mesopotamia:
  • Sumer
  • Akkad
  • Babylonia
  • Assyria
• History of Greece:
  • Origin, Nature and History of the Aegean civilization (before 1600 B.C.)
  • Mycenaean Greece (ca. 1600-1200 B.C.)
  • Greek Dark Ages (ca. 1200-800 B.C.)

Myth

F. M. Cornford's book From Religion to Philosophy begins with the following lines:

The words, Religion and Philosophy, perhaps suggest to most people two distinct provinces of thought, between which, if (like the Greeks) we include Science under Philosophy, there is commonly held to be some sort of border warfare. It is, however, also possible to think of them as two successive phases or modes, of the expression of man's feelings and beliefs about the world; and the title of this book implies that our attention will be fixed on that period, in the history of the western mind, which marks the passage from the one to the other. It is generally agreed that the decisive step was taken by the Greeks about six centuries before our era. At that moment, a new spirit of rational inquiry asserted its claim to pronounce upon ultimate things which had hitherto been objects of traditional belief. What I wish to prove, however, is that the advent of this spirit did not mean a sudden and complete breach with the older ways of thought.

< Back to Ancient Greek Philosophy