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The Greek Inspiration
| Article
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11733 |
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Section : |
MODERN THOUGHT
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| Issue
Date : |
2 / 1994 |
6,724 Words |
| Author
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John Bremer
John Bremer, a Cambridge philosopher and educator, writes
mostly on Plato. |
According to Aristotle, anyone who deliberately lives an isolated life is either a beast or a god. Or, to put it positively, man is by nature a political animal, meaning that he is most fully developed when living in a polis, that is, in a small society or governing unit in which citizens know each other, face to face. If Aristotle was right--and he may well have been--we are in a parlous condition. Living in large nation states, as most of us do, obscures our interdependence.
Even if we recognize our interdependence, certain human discoveries are forever linked with the names of individuals or groups and it is understandable that we would take pride in the achievements of our forebears. There is an intellectual and artistic lineage. Newton (an Englishman) is unthinkable without Galileo (an Italian), Tycho Brahe (a Dane), Kepler (a German), Copernicus (a Pole), Ptolemy (an Alexandrian Greek), and Hipparchus (a Bithynian Greek), who, in turn, depended upon anonymous Babylonian astronomers. Newton himself said that he stood on the shoulders of giants and this is true, but it must also be acknowledged that the giants stood on the shoulders of countless pygmies. No single person invented language, no single person invented number. These are inventions of interdependent humanity, as the Apollo moon landing testifies: One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.
This is not to diminish the achievements of giants. Remember the story told of the Athenian leader Themistocles, who was taunted by a man from the insignificant island of Seriphos that his greatness was due to his city, not to himself. Themistocles replied, "It is true that if I had been born a Seriphian I would not be great, but neither would you, had you been born an Athenian." There are differences between men, as there are between societies and between historical periods.
While it is true that great achievements belong to mankind, they reach fulfillment in a Themistocles or in an Athens or in a people such as the Greeks, and it is that fulfillment that is marked and celebrated. They are a common heritage and not simply the possessions of an exclusive group.
The people we call the Greeks could scarcely be called an exclusive or homogeneous group or race. They were not indigenous, but invaders of the land we know as Greece. Some came from the north and were Indo-European, and some from the south, the Myceneans and "sea-people," but beyond that nothing is certain. Moreover, they called themselves not Greeks but Hellenes, descendants of Hellen, the son of Deucalion. In
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