Well if I found the first part of the book a tad confusing and over informating, God knows what to call the hundred pages following.. Here, the author discusses Plato, Socrates and Aristotle, their views on life, on human kind, on society and everything else there is to mention about them and their role in the Greek society, and their role in history. The biggest influence on these, and other, Greek philosophers seem to be the influence of Sparta – both through the reality and through the myth. Basically, the sole purpose of Sparta and its citizens was war, and this was all that matters. Due to this fact, society and the way it was built up, did not mean as much to a citizen because all he, or she (!), was trained to do, was fight. Therefore, the constitution of Sparta was much more complex than the more structured forms of constitutions we started to see at this point in Greece. For example, two kings were ruling the country at the same time (who both belonged to two completely different families), alongside with an assembly, a council of elders and a few more bodies, all struggling, trying to share the reigning power. The Spartans seemed to be invincible for a long time, but eventually, 371 B.C. , their supremacy fell.
Plato was Socrates pupil, and these two philosophers turned out to be two of the most influential philosophers in Greek, and Western societies, philosophy. They wanted to find out whether wisdom really exist, if justice can be defined in an appropriate way, how citizens in a society can or cannot control power in a ‘healthy’ way, what, if there is one, the distinction between reality and appearance is.. the questions and thoughts keep trailing through their years alive on this planet, and some of them still keep present philosophers awake at night.
The Greeks turned out to be an important mile stone in the history of Western civilization and in mankind evolving into what it has turned out to be today. But, what would have happened if for example Sparta had managed to take Greece over and maybe destroyed the entire Greek civilization? How would for example a plague or a fatigue affect the ways the Greek society got shaped, and still is shaping the Western society today with governments and constitutions? Would we be somewhere completely different in history and would we have developed an entirely new form of ruling and reigning a country and its citizens, or is democracy, with its con’s and pro’s, the idea of a fair society that we would have ended up with – because it is the most natural way for mankind to develop into?
But, what about today’s society in another two million years time? Will the human being of that time look back at our society and thing ‘God how stupid, why didn’t they realise this and that?’, ‘Why didn’t they see that global warming was just this, and not that?’ and ‘Why on earth bother with this or that, it’s just so completely wrong!’.. We feel, with the Internet and moon landing etc., that we are at the peak of evolution, both political, technical and so on – but are we really? Is that just the same thoughts that Greek society lived in, and societies after. It must have been exactly what they felt like when they ‘discovered’ that the Earth is flat..
Cheerios
Mads
1 comment:
I think it is very unlikely that there will be human beings in two million years time. That would mean that the species line has ceased to evolve. Also it is very optimistic of you to assume that human society in the future will be more advanced in some sense than it is now. The history of civilisations is marked by decline as much as rise, so it is at least as likely that people in the future will be less advanced, than as more advanced (eg Europe after the fall of Rome went back probably 1,000 years to a level of social development similar to the very early Greeks. On the other hand if there are organic being in 2 million years time descended from you and I, they are very unlikely to be human (or at least very unlikely to be homo sapiens) and they are very unlikely to be resident on earth. This is because evolution is still taking place. So these notional creatures will look at our remains as we would look at the remains of dinosaurs or some other extinct species.
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