Western political Theory ‘The
greeks’ FROM 1000 TO 1030 WORDS
Political thinking
proper began with the Greeks. It may be true that all succeeding political
philosophy is a foot-note and a commentary on Plato. This does not deny the
importance of other civilizations: the Egyptian, the Hebrew, the Persian, the
Chinese, the Indian, the Mesopotamian, and the Hittite. Historical research has
shown that Greek science was a considerable debt to Babylonia; a much more
understanding view has been recently taken of .Persian institutions. Yet while
in pre-Greek writings, there are fragments of a political nature and discussion
of some political problems— a written code of law, a tribal God. God as the
source of political authority bureaucracy and above all, the nature of the
absolute ruler or despot—there are no systematic or, exhaustive expositions. In
Homer, there are four different examples of political organization, but no
coherent view of the operation of politics. It is the Greeks of the 5th and 4th
centuries B.C. who created the terminology of politics, taking the words from
everyday usage and applied thought to political action. Politics was
indivisible from life within the polis, a town possessing common habits, strength,
a story of its origin, its own gods, faith and voters. It is this last
characteristic that differentiates the Polis and future political organization
from associations based on blood and religious ties. The city-state of Athens
in the 5th and 4th centuries B.C. with its 1,000 square miles of territory, its
40,000 citizens and 400,000 mixed populations, remains one of the pinnacles of
human civilization. Its basis was not so much individual material welfare or
comfort as communal pride, communal magnificence and dedication. Indeed,
material comforts were modest. The Greeks were badly clothed and ill-shod.
There were no such magnificent road or drainage systems as were notable in
Persia or Rome: Public affairs were regarded as more important and significant than private matters–the
opposite of politics is idiots (those who are uninterested in public affairs).
Leisure,
"that most exquisite of delights". Love of conversation, admiration
of physical beauty of both men and women; delight in the theatre and
the great trio of dramatists. Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides,
participation in communal affairs—all of these are different
aspects of a sophisticated culture that has been so prolific in influence in the arts of literature and
architecture, philosophy and political
behavior. Versatility was the hallmark of the citizens. Education, as
Pericles said, should mould a person "capable of the most varied forms of activity and able to adapt
himself to different circumstances
with versatility and grace." The dangers of such amateurism and dilettantism are obvious, as can be seen
in the remarks of Aristotle that a
gentleman should play the flute but not too well.
Yet if Athens
had the great art and literature, had its Academy and Lyceum, put great stress on education and proclaimed the value of government by discussion, its history
was marred by examples of military aggression and intolerance and by its
economic base of slavery. Its heyday was
short. In 490 and 480 B.C. the Athenians
had beaten the Persians at Marathon and at Salamis. In 432 they began the disastrous 27 year war with
Sparta which ruined their liberal
civilization, and in 332 they fell to the Macedonians. Athens’s intolerance was shown by the killing of
Socrates, the banishing of
Themistocles and the imprisonment of Miltiades: Critics, one of the pupils of Socrates became one of the thirty tyrants.
The whole economy rested on slavery, since there was no occupation except that of politics which was not performed by
slaves, even those who argued
against. Aristotle's view of slavery as natural, did not propose its abolition,
if we are more familiar with the rationalism of the Greeks, their pride in human reason and confidence in the
cosmos, permeated by reason. We must
also note that Greece produced the Orphic Pythagorean myths with their emphasis
on the sinful body, idea of guilt and the world as a place of punishment. The
Polis contained a community, the sole source of authority dedicated to the purpose
of achieving good life. This purpose would be accomplished through individual
participation in community. Affairs, a duty the individual voluntarily accepted
and which was desirable both for community and for his own development. The
general object was the creation of social balance and harmony which meant not
totalitarian control but a reconciliation of individual difference, based on
the premise that the desire for individual fulfillment need not end in anarchy.
State or social action was needed, but there was no claim that the state had an
existence of its own, apart from the individuals who made up its citizen body.
The best kind of self-realization and society as the goal: doing well or living
well was the aim. Of inquiry and action, Politics, therefore, became a proper
subject of inquiry, a process concerned with the meaning of norms—law and
custom—and with the wisdom of social organization. Sophists The first important
group of political thinkers were the Sophists, of whom Gorgas, Protagoras, Produces’,
Hippias and Thrasymachus are the most familiar. They were teachers who created
subjects by inventing definitions and concepts, and who were paid for teaching
them. Versatile in their interests and varied in their background, they
introduced ideas of cosmopolitanism, skepticism and free thinking, education
for all and academic freedom. They had no single doctrine; they shared a common
intellectual attitude and manner of life. They taught Sophia, the wisdom,
knowledge and skill that was necessary for the successful conduct of life as
individual or citizen. Above all, the study of man was important.
From their ranks came Socrates
(470-399 B.C.) Soldier, sculptor, renowned for his heavy drinking as well as
his love of inquiry, he wrote nothing himself, and contemporaries have left
conflicting accounts of him and his work. For Plato, Socrates was the great
example of intellectual integrity, the man always prepared to discuss, the
professor who sought not to profess, the teacher who refused to indoctrinate,
who aimed to make men think. His method of achieving knowledge was through the
dialectical process of question and answer, which would lead to precise
definition and to understanding.
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