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Roots of the West

Roots of the West. Ebenstein & Ebenstein Ch. 1. Leo Strauss ( 1899 – 1973) : “What is Political Philosophy?”.

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Roots of the West

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  1. Roots of the West Ebenstein & Ebenstein Ch. 1

  2. Leo Strauss (1899 – 1973) : “What is Political Philosophy?” • “All political action aims at either preservation or change. When desiring to preserve, we wish to prevent a change to the worse; when desiring to change, we wish to bring about something better. But thought of the better or worse implies thought of the good.(…)For the good society is the complete political good.” (Strauss, p. 10) • Themes: “mankind’s great objectives, freedom and government or empire…”

  3. Opinion ≠ knowledge (Can we distinguish between them?) • Judgment • (Absolute? Historical?) Truths

  4. Why “Western” Political Theory?What is “the West”? • The West is not a geographical place. • Athens, Jerusalem, Rome, Byzantium, Paris, London, New York… Los Angeles… Where else? • (the West is not Western) Origins in the Mediterranean Sea • Worldwide expansion Geographical Mobility of “the West” Ebenstein & Ebenstein:

  5. Ebensteins: The West is defined by… • -A set of fundamental, universal ideas • (Greek) Reason • (Jewish) Ethics • (Christian) Love… (let’s not forget Equality!)

  6. Heritage • Belief in reason (Ancient Greece) 6th century B.C. The Greek civilization produced an original (distinctive and foundational) culture. 2. Monotheism and concern with moral and Justice (Judaism). The Jewish people were the first ones in organizing a whole society around the concept of an only God. consistency between beliefs and practical morality. “Whereas the supreme Greek ideal was to think clearly, the supreme Jewish aspiration was to act justly.”(5) 3. Love(Christianity). Christianity incorporated the rationalist Greek tradition and the concern with being morally and religiously consistent, but added (Paul) the idea that it is love what founds the relationship between God and humans and should found the relationships between humans themselves.

  7. Sources

  8. Can… Principles such as… • Reason • Ethics, and • Love Be all embodied at the same time? Tensions (Examples?)

  9. Greek Philosophy • Plato & Aristotle represent a decaying Greece… • (Trend in history? Cicero also represents a decaying Rome… while major periods do not necessarily produce major theorists…ex: the French Revolution) http://www.wadsworth.com/philosophy_d/special_features/timeline/ptimeline.html

  10. Birth of Western Philosophy/Science • 6th Century: Pre-Socratic Thought • Ionian communities • Miletus (Tales, Anaximander, Anaximenes) • No written works of the “Milesian School” were preserved 5th B.C. : Greek “Empire” hundreds of city-states Greek Discovery: concept of Nature (Physis) (Break with Animist conceptions)

  11. Athens • 590 B.C. Solon’s (Democratic) Constitution • 479 B.C. Defeat of the Persian Empire (peak of Athens’ power). • 430 B.C. Pericles: “Our government is called a democracy because it is in the hands of the many and not of the few.(…)we regard a person who takes no interest in public affairs, not as ‘quiet’ but as useless.” • Peloponnesian War (431-404 B.C.) Defeat • 4th century B.C. 45,000-50,000 citizens (about 150,000 people) • Self-governed polity (Greek invention of gvt. by popular assemblies) • Finally conquered in 338 B.C. by Macedon and reduced to a province of the Roman Empire in 146 B.C.

  12. From Tales onwards… • All of nature can be understood through Reason, because it is • Governed by (rational) laws • The laws of Nature express a divine rationality, but the Gods themselves are subjected to those laws. The Greek Gods (≠ the Judeo-Chistian God) are not above nature All of them live together in the Polis (Universe)

  13. Philosophy Philosophy= Thought + (experimental) Science = Process of Learning

  14. Intellectuals • For the first time in history, in Greece a group of individuals who were not priests, devoted themselves systematically to thinking (+ art) in a way that could be linked to religion but was also independent of it. • Led to the extreme, the development of critical thinking produced a the critique of religion (ex. Xenophanes) • Sophists (Protagoras) “man is the measure of all things” Humanism Realistic and tragic view of Humankind Life = work of art

  15. Pre-Socratic Thought(& Sophists) • Humanist (human beings are creative and rational but fallible) • Empiricist (commitment with empirical observation and discovery of natural laws). Knowledge is provisory • Democratic (no permanent or absolute truth; truth must result from the confrontation of opinions) • Ex: Protagoras & Democritus favored both science and democracy (Why?)

  16. Sophists (450-350 B.C.) • Originally, “skilled craftsman” and “wise and prudent man.” • The sophists traveled giving lectures and teaching (for a fee) mostly political skills. • Widening polity incorporating the middle-classes • Sophists • “Education for leadership,” • Realism (consideration of things as they are and not as they should be). • Social Contract (Laws & institutions are conventions) • Democratic views (gvt. By consent, the majority has a better right to decide than any enlightened elite) • Derogatory connotations due to Plato’s criticisms

  17. Socrates (469-399 B.C.) • No written work • Use of knowledge (philosophy) to discover the path to human self-mastery. • Dialogues (questions and answers… but no final answers). Critical examination of all positions • Dialectics (knowledge emerges from the very process, in the movement of asking questions…) • Beauty + virtue + wisdom= If moral life “depends on knowledge, then virtue, or doing the good, and philosophy, or knowing the good, become identical.” (14) • Socrates: “The unexamined life is not worth living.”

  18. Greek Inventions/Contributions • Philosophy (& science): Rational examination of nature and human nature • Physical phenomena are “general, universal, and predictable.” • Materialism vs. idealism • Secular (vs. priestly) civilization • Politics • (direct) Democracy • Free thought and free speech (because) • Truth is complex

  19. Theory is Painful and… DangerousMichel Foucault: knowledge has not been made for understanding, but for… cutting • Socrates’ commitment with critical thinking, plus the fact that several disciples of his were anti-democratic, triggered suspicion among the authorities, who accused him of corrupting the Athenian youth. • Socrates was judged and found guilty, and he chose to drink poison before the prospects of exile (Socrates’ defense is contained in the Apology, written by Plato). Witchcraft: as Socrates, many other theorists have faced political persecution for… thinking. (examples?)

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