THE SEARCH FOR A JUST SOCIETY
JOHN HUDDLESTON
GEORGE RONALD 1989
PART VII
Chapter 7: Greece and the Rational Philosophers
The spotlight now switches westward to Greece, like Israel a relatively small society when compared to the great empires of Egypt, Mesopotamia, Iran, India, and China. Like Israel too, its special contributions to the heritage of the just society were its ideas and experience: accountability to government and the theme of freedom and democracy. It is perhaps no coincidence that later in history these themes were to be further developed in other small-scale societies, such as Switzerland in the Middle Ages and the Netherlands in the 16th century, before beginning to flourish in the 18th and 19th centuries in the larger countries such as Great Britain, France and the United States.
The earliest known Greek civilization was the Minoan, centred in Crete (though with subsidiary colonies on the mainland) from about 1900 to about 1400 BC. These were not rich agricultural lands and the Minoans, like the Greek societies which succeeded them, acquired a certain toughness from the struggle to survive through the cultivation of marginal land (they were the first to develop the vine and the olive) and through sea trade. A second Greek civilization was that of the Mycenaeans during the 15th and 14th centuries BC. It arose from a mixing of the original inhabitants of the peninsular with invading barbarians from the north, spread all around the Aegean coast and islands, and established the city of Troy in modern-day Turkey. The third Greek civilization developed after another wave of invasions from the north by the Doric and Ionian peoples. This society gradually crystallized in the 7th century BC into a series of small city states of which the most important, in the perspective of history, were to be Sparta and Athens. Both of these states were to make significant contributions to the heritage of the just society.
Sparta had two outstanding virtues. Its people put great emphasis on physical and mental fitness and self-discipline, and thus became amongst the best soldiers in the world. Their discipline and skills made it possible for them to execute complex manoeuvres in the field, enabling them to defeat armies far larger than their own. (Though it was the Spartans who became a byword for this characteristic, physical fitness had been cultivated by all the Greek states as far back as 776 BC when the annual competition of the Olympic Games first began.) The second Spartan virtue was their simple, communal style of living and the absence in their city of many normal temptations. It is of interest that they had an iron coinage and that for a long period their wars were purely for self-defence and they did not attempt to set up colonies as did Athens and other states.
The attractive qualities of the Spartans were balanced by two major weaknesses. First, their society rested to a large extent on the exploitation of a lower class of near-slaves (helots) and their society tended to be tense and harshly militaristic as a consequence of the perpetual fear of a violent uprising. Second (and perhaps not unconnected with the first), Sparta was, by sharp contrast with Athens, a closed-minded society ruled by a council of old men which did not respond well to discussion of ideas nor, in the long run, to changing conditions.
In its earliest days Athens was ruled by a king but the monarchy was soon replaced, as in several other Greek states, by a council of hereditary aristocracy (the Eupatridae) which took over most of the ownership of the land. Popular discontent with this arrangement led to the dominance in the 6th century of a series of tyrants who in turn were eventually replaced by a new system of representative government designed by Cleisthenes. One of the leaders of the opposition to the tyrants, Cleisthenes is considered the founder of Athenian democracy (c. 500 BC). Under the new constitution a direct participation assembly (ecclesia) was established for the first time, based on ten districts which cut across the old diverse tribal lines, and on wide participation including resident aliens and emancipated slaves. The ten districts each had fifty representatives on a council of five hundred (bouje) which prepared the agenda of the assembly and supervised the magistrates. Being somewhat unwieldy in size, the council operated by delegating day-to-day affairs to an Executive Committee of fifty whose membership was rotated between the ten delegations. The assembly also elected a court of nine magistrates, each of whom was responsible for a specialized function of the state. To provide a means of removing future tyrants without violence, the device of ostracism was introduced.
- The new system gave considerable power to the assembly and encouraged genuine debate on issues, which resulted in decisions being made on the merits of an argument rather than on the basis of the interests and individuals involved.
- It was during the period of early Athenian democracy that Greek civilization reached its peak.
- Cities united in defence against invasion by the Persians and successfully defeated them at the battles of Marathon (490 BC), Thermopylae (480 BC) and Salamis (480 BC).
- Democratic Athens, like Sparta, suffered many weaknesses: it practised slavery like every other society of the time (though less harshly than in many later societies); women were treated as second-class citizens; though in theory the assembly was open to attendance by all free men, only about one-eighth attended.
- Greed and the lack of perspective in the democracy led to corruption; the establishment of overseas colonies; and attempts to dominate the other Greek states.
- The latter characteristic resulted in a disastrous campaign to capture the Sicilian city of Syracuse (415-413 BC). In the bitterness that followed Athens executed its most distinguished citizen, the religious and highly-principled Socrates, on charges of atheism and corruption of youth.
- In the 4th century, the city democracies fell under the domination of the Macedonian monarchy, remembered principally for the extraordinary military victories of Alexander the Great (356-323 BC).
- As a result of Alexander’s campaigns there was an intensification of the process of cross-fertilization of the great cultures of Greece and the Middle East.
- For several hundred years the Greek language became a useful ‘lingua franca’ for most of the world west of India.
- These developments have undoubtedly contributed to the richness of the world’s cultural heritage.
Though Athens’s experiences with democracy were a major contribution to the growth of the idea of the just society, undoubtedly more influential in the wider perspective was its intellectual life, unprecedented in its depth and scope. It vastly strengthened man’s appreciation of rational thought as a means for the advancement of civilization and protection against superstition and prejudice. It brought into sharp focus the complexity and beauty of the universe and the humanity of man. Of special significance were the great tragic poets, Aeschylus (525-452 BC), Sophocles (496-405 BC) and Euripides (480-406 BC), who, building on the literary traditions of Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, illuminated the depth of human character and in particular showed how pride and self can bring even the greatest men to disaster. Aristophanes (450-358 BC) in his comedies added a new dimension with universal implications to the discussion of public affairs by inviting laughter at various aspects of the political and social life of the city. The fifth-century historians Herodotus and Thucydides in their respective annals of the Persian wars and the disastrous Peloponnesian civil war, set new standards for historical scholarship and intellectual objectivity for the world to follow, and a new dimension to the understanding of society. There were also great scientists, mathematicians, and engineers: Euclid, Archimedes, Eratosthenes (who worked out the size of the earth) and Hero (inventor of the first steam engine), whose use of observation and logic so enlarged man’s understanding of the natural world. One who stands out in the present context was Hippocrates (460-377 BC) who gathered together most of the medical knowledge of the time and contributed to man’s ethical life the famous oath which bears his name:
The regimen I adopt shall be for the benefit of my patients according to my ability and judgment, and not for their hurt or for any wrong. What so ever things I see or hear concerning the life of men, in my attendance on the sick or even apart therefrom, which ought not to be noised abroad, I will keep silence thereon, counting such things to be sacred secrets.
But towering above the rest were the philosophers: Socrates (470-399 BC), Plato (428-348 BC) and Aristotle (384-322 BC). In his youth Socrates had been a soldier, like others of his class. Unlike many of them, and despite his interest in public affairs, he did not become involved in politics, although many politicians sought his advice. He cared nothing for material possessions, spending most of his later years teaching in the streets and squares of Athens, wearing the same clothes year after year. He was both a mystic and a logician, a man of humour and modesty who tried to raise the ethical standards of Athens by rational argument and personal example. He believed that the care of the soul came before that of the physical body and argued the case for an absolute morality. He was a strong patriot, but believed that it was the state’s duty to put first the development in its citizens of their good qualities rather than their immediate material desires. He pointed out two major defects in Athenian democracy. First, it did not require that its leaders be educated in moral philosophy. Second, in consultation it tended to give equal weight to all opinions and there was no way of distinguishing those that were moral (and therefore in the real interest of the citizenry) from those what were not.
Plato, though not a pupil of Socrates, was a strong supporter of his general point of view. He too cared deeply about the affairs of state, but was disillusioned with politics itself and generally avoided it, except for giving advice to the rulers of Syracuse. Most of his life was spent working for the Academy he founded, the centre of Athens’s intellectual life in the 4th century BC. In discussing the various types of government, he rejected the military model because it is inclined to take action for its own sake, rather than thinking through the consequences; he rejected the aristocratic model because it merely looked after the interests of the rich and powerful; and he rejected the democratic model because of its irresponsibility and tendency to be intolerant (an example being the persecution of Socrates). He concluded that the best form of government was an aristocratic one based on merit. His ideal state, which he described in the Republic, would have rulers who had been given a thorough training in all branches of education. He believed that justice would prevail when every person in society carried out the function for which he was best suited. There should be a minimum of private property. He was so preoccupied with the need for order that, perhaps strangely for a thinker, he advocated communal censorship.
Aristotle was in his youth a pupil of Plato at the Academy, and in his middle age he was the tutor of Alexander before he became Emperor. In his Ethics he stressed the golden mean, moderation between asceticism and sensuality, and pointed to the value of good habit and meditation. In his Politics he touched on nearly all the lasting issues that pertain to social organisation. He argued forcibly that government is there only to serve the interests of the people; like all organisations and individuals it must be subject to the law, which is sovereign. Rulers are accountable to the people. He thought the city state the best form of government.
There were many other schools of philosophy at the time. There were, for example, Diogenes (412-323 BC) and the Cynics, whose reactions to the problems of the time were essentially negative: unbridled criticism and begging as a way to keep body and soul together. More interesting was the philosophy of Zeno (342-278 BC) and the Stoics who advocated acceptance of life with equanimity, and the practice of virtue for its own sake. One interesting aspect of the Stoic philosophy was that in recognizing the equality of all men it condemned the institution of slavery. Certain Stoic philosophical ideas were later to resurface in Christianity; the movement was also viewed with favour by many Romans, including the noblest Emperor of them all, Marcus Aurelius.