Ancient Greeks were the first to develop philosophy as a ...



The Athenian Political Experience 490-322 BCE: Historical Background

Forerunners to the Athenian Enlightenment:

• 6500 BCE – Start of Agricultural Revolution in the Middle East

• Middle Eastern pre-eminence from ca 3000 BCE - ca 500 BCE; Writing appears by 3100 BCE by Sumerians in the fertile Tigris-Euphrates Valley

• Between 1000 BCE and 500 BCE, three peripheral civilizations were developing around the Cosmopolitan Middle East (including Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Asia Minor): The Chinese, Indian, and Greek (European) civilizations

• Middle Eastern domination under Persia comes to an end circa 500 BCE. Each peripheral civilization (Greece, as well as Confucian China and Buddhist India) were developing their notable cultural characteristics by 500.

Of the three peripheral civilizations, Greeks develop a unique synthesis between the natural, supernatural, and political world.

• Began to differentiate science/material causation from myth and religious explanation

• The Greeks, through contact with Egypt and Mesopotamia, reappropriated the Egyptian political model of a God-King or Pharaoh working in concert with a religious bureaucracy.

• Sixth century Ionian Greeks broke from this and applied discernable laws of the universe and applied them to the laws governing their life in the polis.

• Began to differentiate between politics (the controllable affairs of people) and the metaphysical realm (religion/philosophy)

• Unlike the Persians, who would worship living people who were Pharaohs or Kings, the Greeks worshipped no living man or woman. A Revolutionary change: The Greeks only worshipped their Gods, who resided in a metaphysical realm.

• This important shift can be seen in Protagoras’s humanist claim that “Man is the measure of all things.”

• Greeks prized change, flux, political debate, instability, and the discernable motives of men’s actions (politics, culture, economics)

• Whereas Mesopotamians valorized supernatural intervention and monumental events, and the Egyptians valorized continuities and institutional stability

By 490, Greece is forced into war with the Persians, as the Persians try to control Greek speaking poleis in Western Asia Minor.

490 BCE to 479 BCE - The Persian Wars. Monumental importance for Greece and World History. The Spartan fleet was strongest but the Athenian fleet provided the decisive strategic difference.

A common Greek civilization: Through shared language, myth, customs, and Gods

All Greek poleis (city states) viewed themselves as part of a larger cultural or civilizational community of Hellas (Greece).

Yet, each poleis was quite different from one another: Each polis worshipped the gods somewhat differently, & there were many different types of government across poleis.

Persian invasions of 6th C and the Persian War of the early 5th century helped to overcome the narrow localisms in the poleis, through a more common Hellene nationalism.

The Persian War helped the squabbling Greek poleis to join together in a common cause and community.

At the end of the Persian War in 479, Themistocles, the Athenian commander of the fleet in the victory at Salamis in 480, declared “It is not we [Athenians] who defeated Persia, but we as a civilization of Hellas.”

In 478, Athens became the seat of an empire known as the Delian League (478-404; also 378-338). Simultaneously, the Spartans establish the Peloponnesian League.

whose chief mission was to defend the city states against foreign incursion, especially against the Persian Empire. Athens collected significant revenue for military purposes from the city-states in the Delian League. When Pericles ascends to power in 461 BCE, the revenue was increasingly channeled into the grandeur of Athens itself.



Hellas, or the ancient Greece of the 5th and part of the 4th century, was effectively a confederacy of diverse city-states, falling either under the political influence of the Athenians or the Spartans.

Fifth Century Greece:



461 BCE – 429 BCE Athens in the Age of Pericles (Athenian Enlightenment)

• Golden Age of Athenian Democracy: A robust period of direct democracy. Plato’s analyses and criticisms of democracy in The Republic were very likely ideas that began to gain currency at this time.

• This was not prolific time for written philosophy (The Republic is published ca. 380 BCE)

• Period of great dramaturgical proliferation. Many of the plays that competed for prizes at Dionysion festivals during this time are preserved

• Traditionally viewed as the beginning of European & Western civilization

• Also viewed as the beginning of a tradition of western political philosophy, distinct from a poetic tradition, musical tradition, or artistic tradition

• This Athenian Enlightenment was a late, peripheral, but very important period of human history

• Unique conceptions of justice, freedom, and membership flourish in the Athenian polis at this time

Novelty of the Athenian Political Experience (Athens was a model for hundreds of poleis in 5th Century BC)

• Majoritarian jury system

• All adult male citizens entitled to attend the Assembly (Ecclesia) after age 20

• Two most important institutions of government: The Council of 500 and the Courts, comprised of very large juries

• Enter into citizenship through one’s deme (local ward)

• Pericles famous funeral oration at the start of the Peloponnesian War is a description of and tribute to Athenian democracy. Athens had become Hellas’s indisputed center for art, literature, & architecture under Pericles.

• Unique understanding of Citizenship and Ancient Liberty (see below)

• Recognition of importance of human beings as autonomous agents who must struggle to make virtuous choices with insufficient information

431-404 The Peloponnesian War – War between Athenian Empire and Spartan Empire. Towards the end of the war, Athens begins its decline. In 404 the Spartans take down the walls around the city (of Athens).

399 – Socrates tried and convicted of impiety to the gods and corruption of the youth.

The foundational texts of political philosophy, including Plato’s dialogues, were written after Athens’ decline and after the death of Plato’s teacher, Socrates

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Socrates and the sophists importantly precipitated a crisis in Greek religion: Humanism

Each polis had its civic gods and civic laws. Morality, Justice, the Soul and its nature were not addressed by the laws or by religion.

Important questions arise from this new humanistic inquiry:

Does one obey the New Civil Law or One’s Own Conscience?

How does one manage ones conflicts over Public vs Private Duty

The Individual vs The State

Sophocles’ Oedipus the King and Antigone clearly reflect:

(i) the increasing questioning of religion,

(ii) the realization of the importance of the individual and his/her conscience

(iii) the new preoccupation with morality: How is the individual to manage conflicting responsibilities and duties? How can one best live a Good, Virtuous Life?

Different types of government found in Greek poleis in 5th Century:

- Tyranny: Dictatorship

- Aristocracy: Rule of the Best

- Oligarchy: Rule of the Wealthy Few

- Democracy: Rule of the people

- Polity, or some mixture of Aristocracy, Monrachy, & Democracy, as in Periclean Athens from 461-429 & after Pericles death until the early 400s, just before Socrates was put to death in 399.

- Monarchy was not one of the governments in 5th & 4th Century Greece. Although Socrates & Plato’s Republic is a blueprint for a Monarchical (or Aristocratic) Utopia under a Philosopher-King (PK).

According to Pericles,

When a citizen is in any way distinguished, he is preferred for the public service, not a matter of privilege, but as a reward of merit. Neither is poverty a bar, but a man may benefit his country whatever be the obscurity of his position.

461 – 429 BCE Periclean Athens (Athens under Pericles, Golden Age of Athens)

431 – 404 BCE Peloponnesian War between Athens & Sparta

After 429 BCE, the war against the Spartans helps precipitate a decline in Athens

404 BCE The Athenian empire is defeated by the Spartans in the Peloponnesian War

399 BCE Socrates tried for defamation of the gods & corruption of youth in the context of Athenian decline & instability

378 – 338 A weakened Athenian confederacy is re-established until Philip of Macedon conquers all of Greece in 338

Timeline of Ancient Greece



Key 5th Century Figures

Themistocles 524 – 459 BCE

Pericles 495 – 429 BCE

Sophocles 496 – 405 BCE Euripedes: 480 – 406 Aristophanes: 446 -386

Protagoras 490 – 420 BCE

Socrates 470 – 399 BCE

Plato 427 – 347 BCE

Aristotle 384 – 322 BCE

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Ancient Liberty: The New Athenian Conception of Citizenship in Periclean Athens after 461 BC

Citizenship in Periclean Athens was understood as an activity: Willing participation in public life.

The harmony of public life was the overriding concern of the ancient Greeks.

In the Funeral Oration, Pericles argues that in mid fifth century Athens,

An Athenian does not neglect the state because he takes care of his own household; and even those of us who are engaged in business have a very fair idea of politics. We alone regard a man who takes no interest in public affairs, not as harmless, but as a useless character; and if few of us are originators, all of us are sound judges of policy.

Their ancient liberty was Quite Unlike our modern conception of liberty.

Modern liberal citizenship provides individuals with a set of legal rights that assures us our private liberties, and that calls for us to meet certain individual obligations.

For the Athenians, the city was viewed a “mode of life” – a public practice -- rather than as a legal structure or set of institutions.

In 1816, French novelist and political philosopher Benjamin Constant famously distinguished between the “liberty of the moderns and the liberty of the ancients.”

I Ancient Liberty (or Positive Liberty) – The Athenian had obligations, but the obligations were not demanded by the city-state. The Athenian saw these obligations to the city as freedom itself. Performing public obligations and duties to the state was the only way to develop one’s capacities and potential as a human being.

Positive liberty is the freedom to participate in the public life of the city.

II Modern Liberty (or Negative Liberty) – Since the late 1700s, moderns tend to view what we do outside of the sphere of government and public (civic) life as the chief way to develop our capacities and potential. Modern liberty emphasizes freedom from gov’t.

Benjamin Constant argued that we moderns tend to over-value modern liberty. In 1958, Isaiah Berlin addressed the contrast between ancient & positive liberty. He referred to ancient liberty as “positive liberty” & referred to modern liberty as negative liberty.

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The importance of Wisdom, Learning, & Education (Paideia)

Paideia – The training of the physical and mental faculties in such a way as to produce a broad enlightened mature outlook harmoniously combined with maximum cultural development.

For Hellene culture, the development of wisdom through paideia was an essential path to eudaimonia (human well-being and happiness).

Pericles declared Athens the “school of Hellas.” The Athenian political philosophy was built on discussion, debate, and the contributions of citizens in a free state, according to one’s ability and merit.

Socrates was the first to emphasize the importance of intellectual understanding and wisdom.

We must distinguish between:

Knowledge: The accumulation of facts and information

and

Sophia - Wisdom – A way of thinking that stands behind the knowledge one has. Wisdom structures and informs information and knowledge.

and

Arete – Virtue or Excellence

All are viewed as available to any person.

Sophists – Traveling teachers who sailed around the poleis, selling instruction in rhetoric and virtue.

Sophists were not responsible for the Athenian Enlightenment, and were often denigrated by Socrates/Plato. But they helped develop a culture of public discussion and argument that was essential for the development of democracy and humanism in the polis.

Sophists’ services were in great demand: Rhetorical skills were seen as essential for skilled oratory in the Assembly, and for life in a democracy, a political culture that relies on convincing people, not dominating people.

Platonic Dialogues often feature Socrates in the process of refuting the claims and arguments of various Sophists.

Socrates believed that virtue could be learned by people, but differed crucially from the Sophists on how virtue could be acquired.

Thrasymachus – A Sophist who believed that “Justice is always the interest of the strongest.” He acts as the initial foil in Book I of Plato’s Republic for Socrates’ disquisition on Justice and the Just State.

After 461 BCE, citizenship – that is, the active participation of all citizens in the political debates of the city-state – was viewed as the supreme creative art.

Public participation in the city-state was synonymous with citizenship.

Like a sculptor, each citizen molded a fully rounded society to his preconceived notion of what that society ought to be.

The noble experiment of ancient Greece ended in the middle of the 4th century BCE as the Macedonian armies from the north overran and conquered both the Athenian and Spartan poleis (Hellas’s 2 most important city-states).

Art of citizenship in the Athenian polis

■ Valued their polis-life or agora-life more than they valued stable governmental institutions

■ They were more interested in political discussion and moral inquiry over how to live well than in “government” and the constitutional checks of institutions. In this regard, the ancient Greeks were more similar to the modern French after 1789 or Italians after 1870 than they were similar to the U.S. after 1788.

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