Download Relative and Absolute Truth in Greek Philosophy

Relative and Absolute Truth in Greek Philosophy
Bruce Harris
Wednesday, December 10, 2003
Honors Essay
Western Civilization I - HIS 101
Professor David Beisel, Ph.D.
SUNY Rockland
Fall Semester, 2003
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Can anything be known with certainty? If two individuals have an ideological
disagreement, must at least one of them be wrong? Can different ways of life all be “the
right way to live?” Today, many of us recognize the value of respecting other views, but
does respect imply legitimatization? Do we want to confer legitimacy upon views that we
think are wrong? Much as we struggle with issues such as these, the ancient Greek
philosophers wrestled with similar questions.
To properly examine the course of the ancient Greek response to the question of absolute
truth, we must first understand the intellectual environment in which Greek philosophy emerged.
In the dark ages of Greece, (c. 1200 – 800 B.C.E.) the dominant cultural theme was a powerful
religious mythology. A pantheon of humanlike deities was thought to run the world. There was
no conception of a unified absolute truth that explained the world. Much of our knowledge of
early Greek civilization comes from the works of Homer. Historian Finley Cooper elucidates:
“Homer’s epics do not offer an evolutionary development toward a higher concept of God, nor
any single set of answers to life’s major questions. As such, these ‘teachings’ gave the religion
common to all the Greeks a totally undogmatic character…there was no creed or set of tenets to
which a man must subscribe.”1 Such a weltanschauung was effective in a world where people had
little understanding of or control over nature and events, but as Greek civilization flourished and
became more sophisticated, the mythological worldview was called into question.
The early Presocratic philosophers emerged around 620 B.C.E., seeking rational
explanations for events and existence. This represented a shift to the acknowledgement and
pursuit of absolute truth. Philosophers such as Thales and Democritus utilized rational inquiry in
search of an objective scientific way to explain nature and the cosmos. There were different
conclusions reached by numerous thinkers, all of them attempting to be rational and scientific.
This school of thought was more concerned with explaining nature than determining how humans
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should conduct themselves. Hence, the scientific focus of this notion of absolute truth leaves us
with little if any moral or ethical implications.
The multitude of conflicting theories explaining the cosmos, each initially conceived as
“absolutely true,” coupled with a changing economic and social climate set the tone for the
emergence of a new school of thought that was to reverse the trend toward absolute truth. After
the Persian wars, the Athenian navy was transformed into a merchant fleet, making Athens a
powerful trading city. People from diverse cultures and religions converged in Athens to engage
in commerce. Will Durant illustrates the effect this exposure had on intellectual life in Athens:
“Tradition and dogmas rub one another down to a minimum in such centers of varied
intercourse; where there are a thousand faiths we are apt to become skeptical of them all.
Probably the traders were the first skeptics, they had seen too much to believe too much; and the
general disposition of merchants to classify all men as either fools or knaves inclined them to
question every creed.”2 It was this environment that fostered the emergence of the Sophists in the
early 5th century B.C.E.
The Sophists concluded that it was impossible to discover absolute truth. Their
predecessors had advanced logical, rational arguments and all arrived at different conclusions.
Thus, they declared that truth is relative and subjective, filtered through the individual’s unique
personhood. The negative implications of such a worldview are obvious – moral judgment is
impossible; anything goes; everything is relative. The structure of society could not be maintained
if such an attitude prevailed. The classical philosophers emerged in response to the Sophists,
restoring the conception of absolute truth.
Socrates (469 – 399 B.C.E.) sought to reconstruct ethical and political life on a more
secure foundation. He wished to reexamine all untested assumptions, and developed the Socratic
method of exploring ideas. He didn’t claim to have answers to questions, but knew what
questions to ask. Socrates was more concerned with ethics than the physical sciences, and
encouraged people to reflect on principles of conduct. He is famous for saying “The unexamined
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life is not worth living.” Ironically, he was sentenced to death, judged to have been corrupting the
youth of Athens.
Socrates’ greatest student, Plato (429 – 349 B.C.E.), carried on the trend toward absolute
truth that his mentor initiated. Like Socrates, Plato was interested in establishing a secure
foundation for ethics. He accomplished this through his doctrine of Ideas. He taught that the everchanging world that we perceive is but a reflection of a higher world of ideas that can be
understood, but not sensed directly. The ideas of justice and Good are therefore genuine
components of our reality. While such a conception of absolute truth provides a basis for moral
judgment, it does not ensure that the judgments will actually be moral. Bias and discrimination
can be justified, and indeed they were by the classical philosophers. In The Republic, Plato
described a perfect political system that he thought was possible. He shunned democracy, and
proposed instead an elitist meritocracy, to be governed by the wisest citizens. The following
excerpt from The Republic illustrates Plato’s anti-egalitarian tendencies and his attitude toward
democracy: “See too, I said, the forgiving spirit of democracy, and the ‘don’t care’ about trifles,
and the disregard which she shows of all the fine principles which we solemnly laid down at the
foundation of the city – as when we said that, except in the case of some rarely gifted nature,
there never will be a good man who has not from his childhood been used to play amid things
of beauty and make of them a joy and a study – how grandly does she trample all these fine
notions of ours under her feet, never giving a thought to the pursuits which make a statesman,
and promoting to honor any one who professes to be the people’s friend…These and other
kindred characteristics are proper to democracy, which is a charming form of government, full of
variety and disorder, and dispensing a sort of equality to equals and unequals alike.”3
(emphasis added)
Aristotle, Plato’s greatest pupil, continued the classical tradition in pursuit of absolute
truth. He taught that the highest good lay in the harmonious function of the human mind and
body. Virtue was to be found in embracing the “golden mean” – moderation in everything,
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avoiding excess in either direction. He saw politics as an end in itself, the vehicle for the exercise
of human reason. He proposed a government in which democratic, aristocratic, and monarchic
elements were combined in a system of checks and balances. Aristotle too, failed to acknowledge
the equality of all humans. Women were excluded from political life, and slaves were considered
subhuman. In the words of historian Anthony Andrews, “…when everything was questioned, the
justice of slavery was questioned also. Isolated voices were heard to say that all men were
equally men, and that slavery was against nature. The defense of Aristotle, that some were
naturally slaves, incapable of full human reason and needing the will of a master to complete
their own, rings hollow to us…”4 The classical era comes to a close around 320 B.C.E.,
coinciding with the death of Aristotle.
Hellenistic philosophy is reflective of the difficult nature of life in that period. The
Macedonian conquest at the end of the 4th century caused political, social, and economic changes
that engendered an attitude of despair among the people. The consistent theme throughout
Hellenistic philosophy is an attempt to make life more pleasant, or at least tolerable.
Stoicism and Epicureanism, two important Hellenistic schools of thought, flourished in
the 3rd century B.C.E. Both philosophies stressed the importance of reason as the key to the
solution of the human problem and acknowledged some notion of absolute truth. The Stoics
taught that suffering was unavoidable, and people can either rebel against it or accept it. It is the
duty of man to accept his fate, and through this acceptance of suffering, the greatest peace of
mind and happiness will be achieved. Their ethical philosophy was very tolerant; they had
egalitarian values and condemned slavery.
The Epicureans believed that the highest good is pleasure and serenity of the soul, and
pain must be avoided. Reason is imperative in this effort, as reason enables one to be freed of fear
of the supernatural, which they taught did not exist. Epicurus himself writes: “A man cannot
dispel his fear about the most important matters if he does not know what is the nature of the
universe but suspects the truth of some mystical story. So that without natural science it is not
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possible to attain our pleasures unalloyed.”5 We see that the Epicureans did acknowledge an
“absolutely true” explanation of the universe, which they believed was attainable through reason.
At the same time though, they rejected the notion of absolute justice, maintaining that the rule of
law is only valuable as an instrument toward human welfare.
Two other schools of Hellenistic philosophy, the Skeptics and Cynics, dispel the notion
of absolute truth. Skepticism became popular around 200 B.C.E. The Skeptics taught that all
human knowledge comes from sense perception and is therefore limited, relative, and subjective.
It is impossible for truth to be attained, even if it may exist theoretically, thus the proper course of
action is to abandon the pointless search for truth. This act of surrender will provide an escape
from the concerns of humanity and afford the greatest happiness and peace of mind. The Cynics
propounded the theory that truth simply does not exist. This provided an escape similar to that of
the Skeptics, relieving man from concern with a difficult world.
Thus, we have traced the course of the conflict between absolute and relative truth in the
thought of the ancient Greeks. This debate was largely suppressed through the middle ages and
even into the modern era, while the classical view of truth prevailed. It was only in the relatively
recent past that this notion was again seriously challenged, as the postmodern era began to unfold.
1
Finley Hooper, Greek Realities, as reprinted in Western Civilization; Sources, Images, and Interpretations
Volume 1, to 1700. Dennis Sherman. McGraw-Hill. 2003.
2
Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy. Pocket. 1991
3
Plato, The Republic, as reprinted in Western Civilization; Sources, Images, and Interpretations Volume 1,
to 1700. Dennis Sherman. McGraw-Hill. 2003.
4
Anthony Andrews, The Greeks, as reprinted in ibid.
5
From Epicurus: The Extant Remains, as reprinted in ibid.
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