Ancient Greece Importance of Ancient Greece Greek culture

Ancient Greece

Importance of Ancient Greece �Greek culture was a powerful influence in the Roman Empire, which carried a version of it to many parts of Europe. �Ancient Greek civilization has been immensely influential on the language, politics, educational systems, philosophy, art and architecture of the modern world �It was the basis of the Renaissance in Western Europe and again during various neo-classic revivals in 18 th 19 th century Europe and The Americas.

Importance of Ancient Greece �Great inventions of the Greeks: �Democracy �Philosophy �Pythagorean theorem (math) �Hippocratic oath (medicine) �Art, architecture

The Nature of the Greek Gods �Most of what we know about Greek gods comes from Homer’s epics Iliad and Odyssey. �The twelve most important of the gods, headed by Zeus, lived atop Mount Olympus, the highest peak in mainland Greece. �They were conceived in anthropomorphic form, both female and male.

The Nature of the Greek Gods �The gods were regarded as especially concerned with certain transgressions �forgetting a sacrifice, �violating the sanctity of a temple area, �breaking an oath or sworn agreement made to another person. �Not bothered with common crimes.

The Nature of the Greek Gods �Gods demanded hospitality for strangers and proper burial for family members. �Humans made sacrifices and offerings to sanctuaries to honor and to thank the gods. �Offerings could consist of works of art, money, and other valuables. �Priests and priestesses possessed essential knowledge of how to perform the gods' rites according to tradition.

The Nature of the Greek Gods �Greek religion had no systematic theology or any institutions comparable to today's religious institutions to oversee doctrine. �Sacrifices ranged from the offering of fruits, vegetables, and small cakes to the slaughter of large animals. �The Greeks often sacrificed valuable domestic animals such as cattle.

The Nature of the Greek Gods �The orator Lysias explained the necessity for public sacrifice: “Our ancestors handed down to us the most powerful and prosperous community in Greece by performing the prescribed sacrifices. It is therefore proper for us to offer the same sacrifices as they, if only for the sake of the success which has resulted from those rites. ” � Gods not concerned with morality. Morality is human creation.

Fifth-Century Greece �Trojan War – twelfth century BCE. �Followed by the Dark Age. �Greece fragmented – city-states. �Age often marked by turbulence and war. �By fifth century Athens and Sparta most prominent city-states. �Sparta and Athens allied to defeat the invading Persians in 479. �Sparta and Athens gradually became more and more hostile to each other in the course of the fifth century.

Fifth-Century Greece �Peloponnesian War (431 -404) between Athens and Sparta. �Athens feared the Spartan army, Greece's most formidable infantry force. �Sparta dominated politically by a conservative oligarchy, feared Athenian democracy. �Athens' defeat in this war brought an end to the Athenian Golden Age.

Fifth-Century Greece �Athenian democracy was direct, not representational. �All free adult males could participate. No women. �Intellectual revolution in second half of fifth century. �Reevaluation of accepted ideas. �Demand for an education that would prepare men for public service. �Importance of public speaking.

Philosophy. The Sophists. �Itinerant intellectuals, taught courses in various subjects. �Employed rhetoric to achieve their purposes, generally to persuade or convince others. �Many of them taught their skills for a price. �Practitioners often commanded very high fees. �Questioning the existence and roles of traditional deities. �Prompted a popular reaction against them.

Philosophy. The Sophists. �Protagoras is regarded as the first of the sophists. �There is no absolute truth, two points of view can be acceptable at the same time. � "Man is the measure of all things“. � "Justice is nothing other than the advantage of the stronger“

Philosophy. The Sophists. �Since truth was relative, speakers should be able to argue either side of a question with equal persuasiveness. �Absolute truth does not exist. �Sophists were also some of the world's first lawyers, making full use of their highly developed argumentation skill.

Socrates �Socrates the most famous philosopher of the late fifth century B. C. �First to make ethics and morality a central concern. �Search to discover valid guidelines for leading a just life and to prove that justice is better than injustice under all circumstances. �Lived in poverty, disdained material possessions, did not charge for his lectures.

Socrates �Paid little attention to his physical appearance and clothes. �Scorned shoes no matter how cold the weather. �Wore the same coat winter and summer. �Resembled his fellow Athenians, who placed great value on the importance and pleasure of speaking with each other at length. �Wrote nothing.

Socrates �Our knowledge of his ideas comes from the writings of his pupil Plato. �Made his students examine the basic assumptions of their way of life. �Socratic method: he never directly instructs his conversational partners; instead, he leads them to draw conclusions in response to his probing questions and refutations of their assumptions.

Socrates �Would begin one of his conversations by asking the interlocutor for a definition of an abstract quality such as happiness, or a virtue such as courage. �This indirect method forced interlocutor to conclude that they were ignorant of what they began by assuming they knew very well.

Socrates �His wisdom consisted of knowing that he did not know. �Wanted to discover through reasoning the universal standards that justified morality. �Passionately believed that just behavior was better for human beings than injustice and that morality was justified because it created happiness.

Socrates �True knowledge of justice would inevitably lead people to choose good over evil and therefore to have truly happy lives. �Behaving justly was always in the individual's interest. �It was ignorance to believe that the best life was the life of unlimited power to pursue whatever one desired. �Moral knowledge was all one needed for the good life.

Socrates �Undermine the stability of society by questioning Athenian traditions and inspiring young men to do the same with the passionate enthusiasm of their youth. �Socrates accused of impiety. �State accused Socrates of not believing in the gods of the city-state. �Morally, they charged, he had corrupted the young men of Athens away from Athenian conventions and ideals.

Socrates �Sentenced to death. The defendant was then expected to offer exile as the alternative, which the jury would then usually accept. �Socrates chose death. �He was executed by being given a poisonous drink concocted from hemlock. �Later source reports that the Athenians soon came to regret the condemnation of Socrates as a tragic mistake that left a blot on their reputation.

Plato (ca. 428 -348 B. C. ) �Student of Socrates. �Plato disagreed with Socrates's insistence that fundamental knowledge meant moral knowledge based on inner reflection. �Plato concluded that knowledge meant searching for truths that are independent of the observer and could be taught to others. �He acted on this latter belief by founding the Academy.

Plato �The Academy was an informal association of people, who were interested in studying philosophy, mathematics, and theoretical astronomy with Plato as their guide. �The Academy became so famous as a gathering place for intellectuals that it continued to operate for nine hundred years after Plato's death.

Plato �Composed works called dialogues - conversationalists (often including Socrates), who talk about philosophical issues. �He developed theory that the virtues cannot be discovered through experience. �Virtues are absolutes that can be apprehended only by thought and that somehow exist independently of human existence.

Plato �The separate realities of the pure virtues Plato referred to in some of his works as Forms. �Among the Forms were Goodness, Justice, Beauty, and Equality. �Forms were invisible, invariable, and eternal entities located in a higher realm beyond the empirical world of human beings.

Plato �The Forms such as Goodness, Justice, Beauty, and Equality are, according to Plato, true reality. �What humans experience with their senses are the impure shadows of this reality. �What is the nature of reality? �Wheel example.

Plato �With his theory of Forms, Plato made metaphysics a central issue for philosophers ever since. � Metaphysics: a theory of the essence of things, of the fundamental principles that organize the universe. Metaphysics is supposed to answer the question "What is the nature of reality? “ �The Platonic Demiurge: figure responsible for the fashioning and maintenance of the physical universe.

Plato �Plato believed that humans possessed immortal souls distinct from their bodies. �Separation between spiritual and physical being. �This notion of the separateness of soul and body would play an influential role in later philosophical and religious thought. �Pre-existing knowledge possessed by the immortal human soul is in truth the knowledge known to the supreme deity, the Demiurge.

Plato �A knowing, rational God created the world, and the world therefore has order. (Deism) �The Demiurge wanted to reproduce in the material world the perfect order of the Forms. �The world as crafted turned out not to be perfect because matter is necessarily imperfect. �No such thing as perfect wheel. Why? �The proper goal for human beings is to seek perfect order and purity in their own souls by making rational desires control their irrational desires.

Plato �Those who are governed by irrational desires fail to consider the future of both body and soul. �Since the soul is immortal and the body is not, our present, impure existence is only one passing phase in our cosmic existence.

Plato's Republic �In his most famous dialogue, the Republic, Plato employed his theory of Forms to show the way human society should be constructed in an ideal world. �Primarily concerns the nature of justice and the reasons that people should be just instead of unjust. �Justice is advantageous; it consists of subordinating the irrational to the rational in the soul. �Like a just soul, the just society would have its parts in proper hierarchy.

Plato's Republic �Three classes of people, as distinguished by their ability to grasp the truth of Forms. �The highest class constitutes the rulers, or “guardians” as Plato calls them, who are educated in mathematics, astronomy, and metaphysics. �Next come the “auxiliaries, ” whose function it is to defend the polis (city).

Plato's Republic �The lowest class is that of the producers (slaves), who grow the food and make the objects required by the whole population. �Each part contributes to society by fulfilling its proper function.