A Great Beginning

 

The classical Greeks laid the foundation for the magnificent edifice of 2600 years of Western Civilization. Fundamentally, they determined that: 1) man was great; 2) his powerful reason made him so; 3) therefore he should employ it as much as possible. The Greeks essentially concluded that it was man’s job to use his rational mind energetically, systematically, and deeply in order to understand the universe, and thus to live a noble and happy life.

The classical Greeks left the notion of man-as-animal far behind. Rather than a beast, they largely saw man as a type of god. Their thinking and lifestyle created men of lofty minds and noble souls.

The Greeks cast aside most of superstition, magic, and mythology. They generally sought naturalistic and scientific explanations for the nature of the universe, life, society, and individual. With this approach to learning and life, they vanquished age-old ignorance and rapidly acquired a great deal of knowledge and intellectual power.

The Greeks also cast aside much of short-term thinking, narrow self-interest, and immediate pleasure-seeking, in favor of long-term planning, wide self-interest, and deep, long-lasting pleasure. They became personally moral and socially just. Their minds and spirits became healthy and alive.

* * *

It’s true, of course, that the classical Greeks also largely replaced their polytheism with monotheism, their mythology with religion. They invented the mystery cults of Eleusis and Thrace (based just west and north of Athens) putting the worship of Orpheus, Dionysus, and Demeter ahead of the former top gods of Athena, Apollo, and Zeus.

It’s also true that the early Greeks mistakenly combined reason and faith, philosophy and religion, in such loose and tricky belief-systems as that of Pythagoras, Parmenides, and Plato. And soon enough this led to full religions, such as Zarathustraism and then Judaism (based to the east and south of Greece).

But the only Greek thought which was wide-ranging, elaborate, complex, and profound was found in the realm of philosophy, such as Zeno the Stoic, Epicurus, and Aristotle. Full and rich thinking was also found in Plato’s work when he stayed away from the relative shallowness and immorality of theistic speculation.

It’s worth noting that early religious thinking, such as that found in the holy books of the Jewish and Christian bibles, was limited and poor. It was never much rational or philosophical. Religious thought only became decent after true philosophy was smashed, around 100-200 A.D., and all known subsequent ‘philosophers’ became highly religious.

* * *

The pro-reason, pro-science, pro-philosophy Greeks made man great. But the pro-faith, pro-supernaturalism, pro-religion, anti-Greeks drove man low. And it was only a few centuries after this that Western Civilization began a millennium-long Dark Age.