Roots of the West

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Roots of the West

• Ebenstein Ebenstein
• Ch. 1

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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 mankinds great objectives, freedom and
  government or empire

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Opinion ? knowledge

• (Can we distinguish between them?)
• Judgment
• (Absolute? Historical?) Truths

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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
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Ebensteins The West is defined by

• -A set of fundamental, universal ideas
• (Greek) Reason
• (Jewish) Ethics
• (Christian) Love (lets not forget Equality!)

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Heritage

• 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.

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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
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Can

• Principles such as
• Reason
• Ethics, and
• Love
• Be all embodied at the same time?
• Tensions (Examples?)

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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 theoristsex the
  French Revolution)
• http//www.wadsworth.com/philosophy_d/special_feat
  ures/timeline/ptimeline.html

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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)
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Athens

• 590 B.C. Solons (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.

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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)

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Philosophy

• Philosophy
• Thought (experimental) Science
• Process of Learning

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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

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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?)

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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 Platos criticisms

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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.

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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

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Theory is Painful and DangerousMichel 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
  anti-democratic, 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?)