Download Roots of the West

Roots of the West
Ebenstein & Ebenstein
Ch. 1
Leo Strauss (1899 – 1973) :
“What is Political Philosophy?”
“All political action aims at either preservation or
change. When desiring to preserve, we wish to
prevent a change to the worse; when desiring to
change, we wish to bring about something better.
But thought of the better or worse implies thought
of the good.(…)For the good society is the
complete political good.” (Strauss, p. 10)
•Themes: “mankind’s great objectives,
freedom and government or empire…”
Opinion ≠ knowledge
(Can we distinguish between
them?)
• Judgment
• (Absolute? Historical?) Truths
Why “Western” Political Theory?
What is “the West”?
• The West is not a geographical place.
• Athens, Jerusalem, Rome, Byzantium, Paris,
London, New York… Los Angeles… Where else?
– (the West is not Western) Origins in the Mediterranean
Sea
– Worldwide expansion
Geographical Mobility of “the West”
Ebenstein & Ebenstein:
Ebensteins: The West is defined
by…
• -A set of fundamental, universal ideas
– (Greek) Reason
– (Jewish) Ethics
– (Christian) Love… (let’s not forget Equality!)
Heritage
1. Belief in reason (Ancient Greece) 6th century B.C. The
Greek civilization produced an original (distinctive and
foundational) culture.
2. Monotheism and concern with moral and Justice
(Judaism). The Jewish people were the first ones in
organizing a whole society around the concept of an only
God. consistency between beliefs and practical morality.
“Whereas the supreme Greek ideal was to think clearly,
the supreme Jewish aspiration was to act justly.”(5)
3. Love (Christianity). Christianity incorporated the rationalist
Greek tradition and the concern with being morally and
religiously consistent, but added (Paul) the idea that it is
love what founds the relationship between God and
humans and should found the relationships between
humans themselves.
Sources
Greeks
Greek history, society, thought, and
art between 6th B.C. to 3 A.D.
Jewish
Old Testament & the Prophets +
Talmud
Christian
New Testament + Augustine +
Aquinas + Luther + Calvin
Can…
Principles such as…
• Reason
• Ethics, and
• Love
Be all embodied at the same time?
Tensions (Examples?)
Greek Philosophy
• Plato & Aristotle represent a decaying Greece…
• (Trend in history? Cicero also represents a
decaying Rome… while major periods do not
necessarily produce major theorists…ex: the
French Revolution)
http://www.wadsworth.com/philosophy_d/special_features/timeline/ptimelin
e.html
Birth of Western
Philosophy/Science
•
6th Century: Pre-Socratic Thought
– Ionian communities
– Miletus (Tales, Anaximander, Anaximenes)
•
No written works of the “Milesian School” were preserved
5th B.C. : Greek “Empire” hundreds of city-states
Greek Discovery: concept of Nature
(Physis)
(Break with Animist conceptions)
Athens
• 590 B.C. Solon’s (Democratic) Constitution
• 479 B.C. Defeat of the Persian Empire (peak of
Athens’ power).
• 430 B.C. Pericles: “Our government is called a
democracy because it is in the hands of the many and not
of the few.(…)we regard a person who takes no interest in
public affairs, not as ‘quiet’ but as useless.”
• Peloponnesian War (431-404 B.C.) Defeat
• 4th century B.C. 45,000-50,000 citizens (about
150,000 people)
• Self-governed polity (Greek invention of gvt. by
popular assemblies)
• Finally conquered in 338 B.C. by Macedon and
reduced to a province of the Roman Empire in 146
B.C.
From Tales onwards…
• All of nature can be understood through Reason,
because it is
• Governed by (rational) laws
• The laws of Nature express a divine rationality, but
the Gods themselves are subjected to those laws.
The Greek Gods (≠ the Judeo-Chistian God) are not
above nature
All of them live together in the Polis
(Universe)
Philosophy
Philosophy=
Thought + (experimental) Science
= Process of Learning
Intellectuals
• For the first time in history, in Greece a group of
individuals who were not priests, devoted
themselves systematically to thinking (+ art) in a
way that could be linked to religion but was also
independent of it.
– Led to the extreme, the development of critical
thinking produced a the critique of religion (ex.
Xenophanes)
– Sophists (Protagoras) “man is the measure of all
things” 
Humanism
Realistic and tragic view of Humankind
Life = work of art
Pre-Socratic Thought
(& Sophists)
• Humanist (human beings are creative and
rational but fallible)
• Empiricist (commitment with empirical
observation and discovery of natural laws).
Knowledge is provisory
• Democratic (no permanent or absolute truth; truth
must result from the confrontation of opinions)
• Ex: Protagoras & Democritus favored both
science and democracy (Why?)
Sophists (450-350 B.C.)
• Originally, “skilled craftsman” and “wise and
prudent man.”
• The sophists traveled giving lectures and
teaching (for a fee) mostly political skills.
– Widening polity incorporating the middle-classes
– Sophists
• “Education for leadership,”
• Realism (consideration of things as they are and not as they
should be).
• Social Contract (Laws & institutions are conventions)
• Democratic views (gvt. By consent, the majority has a better
right to decide than any enlightened elite)
• Derogatory connotations due to Plato’s criticisms
Socrates (469-399 B.C.)
• No written work
• Use of knowledge (philosophy) to discover the path
to human self-mastery.
– Dialogues (questions and answers… but no final
answers). Critical examination of all positions
– Dialectics (knowledge emerges from the very process, in
the movement of asking questions…)
– Beauty + virtue + wisdom= If moral life “depends on
knowledge, then virtue, or doing the good, and
philosophy, or knowing the good, become identical.” (14)
– Socrates: “The unexamined life is not worth living.”
Greek Inventions/Contributions
• Philosophy (& science): Rational
examination of nature and human nature
– Physical phenomena are “general, universal,
and predictable.”
– Materialism vs. idealism
•
•
•
•
Secular (vs. priestly) civilization
Politics
(direct) Democracy
Free thought and free speech (because)
– Truth is complex
Theory is Painful and… Dangerous
Michel Foucault: knowledge has not been made for
understanding, but for… cutting
– Socrates’ commitment with critical thinking, plus
the fact that several disciples of his were antidemocratic, triggered suspicion among the
authorities, who accused him of corrupting the
Athenian youth.
• Socrates was judged and found guilty, and he chose to
drink poison before the prospects of exile (Socrates’
defense is contained in the Apology, written by Plato).
Witchcraft: as Socrates, many other theorists
have faced political persecution for… thinking.
(examples?)