Download The Monotheistic Revolution

The Monotheistic Revolution
Pages 34 - 36
Two ideas that proved central to Judaic monotheism:
1. History had a divine plan, God’s punishment for
failing in their covenant (solemn agreement) duties led
to the idea of Israel as the “suffering servant”.
The Israelites example would purify other nations and
bring them ultimately to the monotheistic God and
universalize Yahweh, now God of all.
Page 36
2. The nature of Yahweh or God was a
righteous God who expected righteousness from
human beings. He was a moral God who
demanded goodness, not blood offerings or
empty prayers. (from premoral to moral) page 36
History thus took on
transcendent meaning. God
had created human kind for a
good purpose; they were
called to be just and good like
their Creator, for they were
involved in the fulfillment of
His divine purpose.
Peace and blessedness under God’s rule did not come for
the Jews. This brought forth the concept that history’s
culmination would come in a future Messianic age (age of
a Messiah – redeemer whose coming Jews believed would
establish the kingdom of God on earth.)
These ideas played a key role in
similar Christian and Muslim
ideas of a Messianic deliverer,
resurrection of the body and life
after death.
The five books of the Torah endured
and together with the books of the
prophets and other writings were the
physical compilation into the Holy
Scriptures or Bible.
Greek Philosophy pages 37 - 44
• Greeks raised questions about nature that
produced an intellectual revolution.
• They made guesses with no reference to
supernatural powers.
Thales of Miletus, the first Greek
philosopher put the question of the world’s
origin in a naturalistic form. He was the first
to use reason to investigate the universe
thus beginning Western philosophy and
Western science.
Reason and the Scientific Spirit
Thales observed water (liquid, solid and gaseous), saw how
“land” was created by alluvial deposits and thus declared
water as a primary substance. The world was knowable,
rational and simple.
Heraclitus of Ephesus believed that world order was
governed by a guiding principle called logos. Logos
has several meanings “reason” being one meaning.
He implies that the physical world could be explained
by reason.
Democritis believed the world consisted of tiny,
solid particles (atoms) that could not be divided
or modified and that moved about in the void
Sophists were professional teachers who traveled about
and received pay for teaching practical techniques of
persuasion, such as rhetoric (public speaking). Rather than
speculation, they applied reasoned analysis to human beliefs
and institutions.
Political and Moral Philosophy
The starting point for all three famous philosophers
(Socrates, Plato and Aristotle) was the Great
Peloponnesian War the great crisis for the polis or citystate. This civil war threatened the very entity they
believed in.
Socrates
• Committed to the search for the truth and for the
knowledge about human affairs that he believed
reason could reveal.
• Socratic method or questioning and cross
examination.
• Athenians thought he was undermining the
beliefs and values of the polis due to his
contempt for democracy which relied on
“ignorant amateurs”.
• He chose death over renouncing his teachings
or beliefs.
Plato
• Socrates student who founded the Academy, a center of
philosophical investigation and a school for training
statesmen and citizens.
• Knowledge was episteme, science, a body of true and
unchanging wisdom open to only a few philosophers
whose training, character and intellect allowed them to
see reality.
• Only such people should rule, “philosopher kings”.
• Solution for the polis was moral and political.
Harmony achieved by destroying causes of strife:
private property and the family which stood between
citizens and devotion to the polis.
• The Republic
Aristotle
• Pupil of Plato founded his own school in Athens,
the Lyceum. Its members were concerned with
gathering, ordering and analyzing all human
knowledge.
• The purposes of most things were easily inferred
by observing their behavior in the world.
• His epistemology finds room for both reason and
experience; his metaphysics gives meaning and
reality to both mind and body; his ethics aims at
the good life, which is the contemplative life, but
recognizes the necessity for moderate wealth,
comfort and pleasure.
The polis made individual’s self-sufficient and
allowed the full realization of their potentiality. It
was therefore natural and the highest point in the
evolution of the social institutions that serve the
human need to continue the species: marriage,
household, village and finally polis.
Moderation, naturally gave power to neither the rich nor
the poor but to the middle class, which also had to be the
most numerous. It possessed many virtues: moderate
wealth, free of arrogance (unlike the rich) and malice for
the poor. It was the most stable class.
Famous books: Politics and Ethics saw best government as
a blending in some way the laws of democracy and those of
oligarchy.