European Philosophy

A Historical Introduction

European
Philosophy

A Historical Introduction

Gerd Van Riel

Guy Claessens

Leuven University Press

Original title: Wijsbegeerte. Een historische inleiding.

Authorized revision and translation from the Dutch language edition published by Leuven University Press.

© 2015 Dutch language edition by Leuven University Press

© 2024 English language edition by Leuven University Press / Presses Universitaires de Louvain / Universitaire Pers Leuven. Minderbroedersstraat 4, B-3000 Leuven (Belgium).

All rights reserved. Except in those cases expressly determined by law, no part of this publication may be multiplied, saved in an automated data file or made public in any way whatsoever without the express prior written consent of the publishers.

ISBN 978 94 6270 396 4 (Paperback)

e-ISBN 978 94 6166 548 5 (ePub)

D/2024/1869/8

https://doi.org/10.11116/9789461665485

NUR: 732

Layout: Friedemann

Cover design: Annemie Mermans

Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION

1. Plato’s cave

2. Philosophy and ideology

3. The historicity of philosophy

Part 1.

THE FORTUNES OF PHILOSOPHICAL RATIONALITY

Chapter 1.

PHILOSOPHY IN ANTIQUITY (6th c. BC - 6th c. AD)

1. The origins of philosophical rationality

1.1 From mythos to logos

1.2 The natural philosophers: the development of a cosmology

Heraclitus: ‘everything flows’

Parmenides: ‘being is’

1.3 The emergence of ethics

The relativism of the Sophists

Socrates (469-399 BC)

2. Philosophy becomes a system

2.1 Plato (428-347 BC)

Under the spell of Socrates

The soul

The intelligible

The problem of moral education

The moral order of the state

Knowledge

Participation

The Good

Detaching the soul from the body

2.2 Aristotle (384-322 BC)

A systematic science

The categories

Four causes

Form and purpose: teleology

Soul as form

Form and matter: hylomorphism

Change: act and potency

Ethics

The divine

3. Later Antiquity: Philosophy as a way of life

An increase in scale: Hellenism (323-30 BC) and the Roman Empire (c. 200 BC-475 AD)

The Stoics

Epicureanism

Neoplatonism

Chapter 2.

THE MEDIEVAL PERSPECTIVE (5th-15th Centuries)

Christianity

1. The Early Middle Ages: Augustine (354-430)

The will and reason

The enlightenment of the mind (illumination)

Philosophia Christiana

Early medieval intellectual life

2. The High Middle Ages: The rediscovery of Aristotle

Medieval (Aristotelian) natural philosophy

3. The Integration of Aristotle

Aristotelian sources of conflict

3.1 The Synthesis of Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274)

Reason and faith

Knowledge

Universals

God

The human soul

Ethics

3.2 The Nominalism of William of Ockham (c. 1285–c. 1348)

Reaction against realism

Particulars, not universals

Ockham’s razor...

...cuts both ways

Chapter 3.

THE CRISIS OF MODERNITY (15th-19th Centuries)

1. Violence

The crisis

2. The New Science

Francis Bacon (1561-1626)

Science and philosophy drift apart

Nature as an enemy to conquer

3. The rise of the subject

4. Modern philosophy at the service of science and subject

4.1 The rationalism of René Descartes (1596-1650)

Doubt

First certainty: ‘I think, therefore I am’

Dualism

The problem of the bridge

Second certainty: the existence of God

Third certainty: the existence of the external world

The mathematical structure of reality

4.2 The empiricism of John Locke (1632-1704) and David Hume (1711-1776)

‘No innate ideas!’

Skepticism

Mind, substances and causality

Science in crisis?

4.3 The critical idealism of Immanuel Kant (1724-1804)

Rationalism and empiricism

A Copernican revolution

The transcendental point of view

Analysis of cognition: Phase 1. Transcendental aesthetic

Phase 2. Transcendental analytic

Phase 3. Transcendental dialectic

Traditional metaphysics as an impossible science

Critique of practical reason

4.4 The absolute idealism of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831)

The starting point: the French Revolution

The project: thinking the absolute

The enemy to conquer: the understanding

Hegel’s reaction to Kant

Idealism

The dialectical method

Spirit

4.5 Philosophy as a social practice: Karl Marx (1818-1883)

Historical materialism

Against Hegel

Labor

Division of labor, private property and exploitation

Self-alienation

Class struggle

Philosophy as a social practice

Chapter 4.

THE END OF MODERNITY? (19th-20th Centuries)

1. Revolution

2. Limits of the belief in science

The belief in progress debated

3. Dethroning the subject

The ‘masters of suspicion’

4. A philosophical revolution

New emphases in contemporary philosophy

4.1 Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900), philosophizing with a hammer

Mummified Concepts

Rejection of ‘the’ truth

Rejection of ‘Platonism’ and the Judeo-Christian tradition

Rejection of morality

Rejection of religion

Where do we go from here?

4.2 Edmund Husserl (1859-1938) and phenomenology

The crisis of scientific rationality

A transcendental standpoint

Phenomenology

Intentionality

The lifeworld as (re)construction

Objectivity

4.3 Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) and existential phenomenology

Dasein

Existentials

Our dealings with things in the world

Mit-sein and Mit-Dasein

The ‘They’ (das Man)

Openness (Entschlossenheit)

Temporality

Thrownness, projection and fallenness

Anxiety

Death

Being and time – and beyond

4.4 Hannah Arendt (1906-1975): The active life

Vita activa

The banality of evil

4.5 Existentialism: freedom at its peak

‘Pour soi’ and ‘en soi’

‘L’être et le néant’

Condemned to be free

4.6 The deconstruction of Jacques Derrida (1930-2004)

Structuralism

Language

Writing

Deprecation of writing

‘La différance’

The world as text

Deconstruction

Time and the ‘undeconstructible’

5. A new voice in an old debate: Analytic philosophy

5.1 Philosophy of language

‘Continental’ and ‘analytic’ philosophy

5.2 The scientific nature of the language of logic: L. Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (‘Wittgenstein I’)

The program: to avoid ‘chatter’.

Meaning, reference and truth

Only empirical statements are meaningful

Philosophy as clarification of language

The mystical

The separation of factuality and values

5.3 The reality of ‘ordinary’ language: L. Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations (‘Wittgenstein II’)

Language-game

‘Meaning is use’

Language as a tool-box

Forms of life

Part 2.

PHILOSOPHY AS A HISTORICAL-HERMENEUTICAL SCIENCE

Introduction

1. Historicism

2. History repeats itself – or doesn’t it? Oswald Spengler and Karl Popper

Patterns in history

Karl Popper’s criticism

3. The question of ‘meaning’ in the humanities and social sciences

Positivism in the social sciences

Chapter 1.

THE BIRTH OF HERMENEUTICS AS A SCIENCE

1. The emergence of a general hermeneutics

2. The reproductive hermeneutics of F. Schleiermacher (1768-1834)

Universal hermeneutics

Reproductive hermeneutics

The hermeneutical circle

Chapter 2.

HISTORICAL UNDERSTANDING IN THE HUMANITIES

1. Wilhelm Dilthey (1833-1911): Verstehen

Objective Spirit

Nacherleben

2. Martin Heidegger on understanding and interpretation

Fore-structures

Sinn

3. Hans-Georg Gadamer’s historicization of understanding

Historically-effected consciousness

Prejudices

Tradition

Fusion of horizons

Three criticisms of Gadamer. 1. Emilio Betti

Criticism 2. Jürgen Habermas

Criticism 3. Jacques Derrida

New Historicism

EPILOGUE: IS THIS THE END?

Postmodernism

The end of history?

Bibliography of quoted works

Name index

INTRODUCTION

I am here, that I may wonder!

(‘Zum Erstaunen bin ich da’ – Goethe)

Wonder is essential to philosophy. All philosophy begins with wonder, Plato says, along with many philosophers after him. This concept has a very specific meaning. Philosophy always begins with the sense that the world is not what it seems. There is a moment of ‘estrangement’ or alienation, when we begin to see the familiar as strange. We do not accept what is given right away, but call it into question. We humans have the wonderful ability to distance ourselves from the immediate situation and to examine the validity of the obvious.

1. Plato’s cave

But what can be an object of wonder? Quite simply: anything. Things may be seen as obvious, and in that respect, they may seem to be beyond all wonder. Evidently, however, all that is obvious runs the risk of being experienced as a cause of wonder by someone at some point.

On this matter, too, Plato has important things to say. He likens our everyday lifeworld to a cave in which we are chained to a low partition, with nothing but a flat wall in front of us. All we can see are shadows of objects, projected on the wall by a fire behind us. Would we not, Plato wonders, consider those shadows the only true reality? After all, we know of no other way of seeing things! One day, though, one of the prisoners is freed, compelled to stand up, and forced to see the reality behind the little wall. He discovers the ‘true’ objects, which none of his companions has ever seen. His curiosity is now awakened: can he penetrate ‘true’ reality even further? He climbs out of the cave and discovers a light that is much stronger and much more intense than the fire in the cave: the sun. With blinking eyes, he discovers a reality that, until then, he had not even suspected to exist. Filled with enthusiasm, he returns to the cave to free his former companions and to convince them of his discovery. But they ridicule him: ‘just let us sit here: we are doing just fine. How does your dreaming do us any good?’ The cave dwellers are afraid: after learning that their lives take place in a shadow world, rather than accepting the consequences of this discovery, they choose to continue their reassuring existence.

Perhaps the cave dwellers’ reaction is characterized somewhat exaggeratedly. Maybe not every philosopher shares the fate of being misunderstood, but, nonetheless, Plato shows something that essentially accompanies all wonder: suddenly, a realization dawns, undermining what used to be self-evident, in respect of which we cannot keep on ‘pretending that nothing has happened’. Not everyone will warmly welcome that message.

Fine, the scientist, the poet and the religious person may say, but surely wonder is not the privilege of philosophy: don’t we also proceed from fascination, from wonder? Indeed, other domains of the human spirit also take wonder as their starting point. Yet it is not what they are really about: the scientist does not search for wonder, but for certainty; the poet allows the mystery to remain, by expressing it in an aesthetic way: they content themselves with recognizing the existence of wonder; and religion expresses wonder through symbols and rites, knowing in what direction the answer to this kind of wonder should be sought (the journey is recorded in a revelation). Only in philosophy is wonder not merely the starting point, but also the guiding principle that always keeps a firm grip on thinking. It is, in other words, both the beginning and the principle governing philosophy. Not only has it the first word, it also has the last.

2. Philosophy and ideology

Although wonder may be the beginning and principle of philosophy, philosophy mostly presents itself as a complete account, as if wonder is not present at all. Does this mean that philosophy betrays its principle? Is it perhaps afraid of being questioned itself? No: what is at stake is philosophy’s desire to overcome wonder without therefore betraying or neutralizing it. Philosophy wants to be a science; it wants to affirm something positive about the world. Without that assumption, philosophy would be nothing more than pure cynicism or criticism of what exists. Hence, thinking needs to be done. As poets cannot leave everything up to their muse, and scientists can never solely rely on their curiosity, so the philosopher should also ‘think laboriously’: wonder alone is not sufficient. And yet, wonder always returns: only where the acquired insights are always challenged anew, can philosophy thrive. If the existing certainties are accepted unquestioningly, to the extent that the answer they provide overshadows the question they originate from, philosophy turns into ideology. Ideology is a complex of definite certainties that organize existence. Unlike ideology, philosophy cannot afford to adhere to the status quo. Wonder always returns, calling into question what is achieved, again and again. It is essential to philosophy that it always feels the need to start over from the beginning.

This impetus could give the impression that philosophy never leads to definite results. And yet: results have been achieved. Unmistakably, a continuous refinement of thought is going on. For example, slowly but surely slavery has been renounced as an inadmissible exploitation. First by a few, then by the majority, until finally its abolition was laid down in laws. Thinking needed to be done to reach that point, the results of which eventually began to be part of the ethical intuition of a community. Examples are countless: the value of the unique human being, human rights, the reaction against the unbridled exploitation of nature, and so on. One by one, these more or less generally spread insights and ideas are the unmistakable result of a philosophical tradition.

3. The historicity of philosophy

From the foregoing it may be clear that the sensitivity to the experiences philosophy wants to explain is determined culturally and therefore differs in time and space. What is meaningful to me right now will not be the same as what is meaningful to a member of an Amazonian tribe. Nor perhaps will the same things still be meaningful to me forty years from now. Thus, philosophy depends on its spatiotemporal context. While the spatial dimension may not pose too much of a problem, the temporal nature is really of essential importance to philosophy. Because of the ever-changing context, the questions asked and the answers given will always be subject to change. For example, nowadays, we would think it absurd if someone would question women’s right to vote or would want to restart a debate on the pros and cons of slavery. Those problems are passé, and society has reached a consensus. Still, the questions do return in another form: is the emancipation of women complete? Have all forms of slavery disappeared? Conversely, in our days problems exist that were not up for discussion in the past, such as the question of animal rights.

Thus, philosophy is historically determined, and what is more: philosophy is essentially historical. G.W.F. Hegel formulated it as follows: ‘Philosophy is its own time, comprehended in thoughts’ (‘Die Philosophie ist ihre Zeit in Gedanken erfasst’; Hegel, Preface to the Philosophy of Right [Vorrede zur Philosophie des Rechts], trans. Nisbet, p. 21). Philosophical questions and answers are always the expression of a certain spirit of the age (Geist der Zeiten or Zeitgeist). Every explanation or interpretation of an experience is itself the result of a certain context. The one who interprets always starts from that context, which not only determines the way to interpret, but also what is to be interpreted. And, vice versa, that context or background is itself influenced by interpretations that were given in the past.

Consequently, philosophical problems cannot exist independently of the questions asked and the answers given in the past; without a history of philosophy there probably would not be any philosophical problem at all. Therefore, an introduction to philosophy will also inevitably be historical.

The idea of historicity interferes with philosophy in an even more fundamental way. It may be clear from the problems raised in this introduction that a thorough knowledge of the history of philosophy is essential and indispensable to one’s functioning as a philosopher. Yet the matter is more complicated, in the sense that the historicity of philosophy itself is part of the process of reflection. Our thought, or any expression of philosophical thought in history, is not only determined by the results of previous reflection, but is itself a historically situated manifestation of how human beings interact with reality. An interpretation cannot escape its historicity, since it is an integral part of it. In other words: the interpretation of historical ‘facts’ or theories is itself subject to historical evolution. As a result, the term ‘fact’ becomes very problematic: historiography is not the recovery of objective data that have to be reconstructed as ‘correctly’ as possible by means of interpretation. Rather, history is a succession of horizons in which the interpretation of the ‘historical’ appears against a different background, time and again. Hence, historiography is not only concerned with the reconstruction of a historicized object, but also focuses on the historicity of the subject itself.

In the history of European rationality it took a remarkably long time for this realization to arise. Until well into the nineteenth century, historiography was practiced from a more or less positivist perspective: the understanding of an objective fact as it was experienced in its historical context. Only from the typical turn of late nineteenth-, early twentieth-century philosophy onward (accompanied by the emergence of the humanities and social sciences), the historicization of the subject became an object of reflection as well.

In this ‘historical introduction’ we want to do justice to both these aspects of the history of philosophy. Inevitably, we have to unfold the subject matter into different parts, with one part devoted to the fortunes of philosophical rationality from a historical perspective, and another part in which philosophy is discussed as a historical-hermeneutical science. It goes without saying that both these parts should be considered together, as equivalent and essential features of the fascinating story of European philosophy.

Part 1.

THE FORTUNES OF PHILOSOPHICAL RATIONALITY

“Its time, comprehended in thoughts.” Every period, every culture
has a specific way of looking at the world, a worldview that functions as a framework in which the world appears. It can also be called a strategy to bring the world under control, through which we humans secure our place in the universe and attempt to neutralize what is strange or threatening. Within this worldview, the present is organized, expectations for the future are formed, and the past is interpreted, in a continuous process of ‘reoccupation’, as thematized by Hans Blumenberg in The Legitimacy of the Modern Age (Die Legitimität der Neuzeit,
1966).

Nonetheless, this description is somewhat forced: it acts as if a worldview is chosen consciously, suggesting that it could also be taken off like an old coat that has proven its worth but is no longer useful. In reality, the process is not so conscious. Rather, the term ‘worldview’ refers to a horizon of existence into which we are born (‘thrown’) and which we spontaneously adopt. Therefore, we are always ‘children of our time’.

A community cannot consciously choose to change its worldview. Instead, gradual developments occur as reactions to specific problems that arise. In most cases, this process is so gradual that it takes place unnoticed. Sometimes, in some places, and in some domains of society, the ruptures between ‘old’ and ‘new’ do surface in a noticeable way. This is when – in hindsight, in a movement of reinterpreting the past – we speak of ‘revolutions’, an ‘avant-garde’, or ‘pioneering work’, causing the perspective on the present, the past, and the future to shift.

It is typical of historiography, including the historiography of philosophy, to focus in the first place on these ‘revolutionary’ changes. This focus will also be the case in the scope of this book. However, we would also like to go one step further. In this ‘historical introduction to European philosophy’ we want to integrate the philosophical subject matter into the study of how philosophical thought is embedded in the broader current of the ‘spirit of the age’, or the worldview, to which philosophers contribute, yet to which they are also obviously indebted. Thus, this book is conceived as a search for the continuous positioning of philosophical rationality vis-à-vis historically changing contexts. In doing so, philosophy often emerges as a critical instance, acting as a driving force of innovation, though also, at times, as an affirmative force, reflexively legitimizing the present.

Chapter 1.

PHILOSOPHY IN ANTIQUITY
(6th c. BC - 6th c. AD)

1. The origins of philosophical rationality

European philosophy originates in the sixth century BC in the Greek world. In this period, and within the specific circumstances of Greek culture, reason (logos, ratio) is discovered as a new explanatory principle.

In the centuries preceding this spectacular innovation, Greek culture, like many ancient cultures, is based on age-old traditions established through stories. These stories, myths, provide an answer to all sorts of questions: questions of origin, of meaning, of the legitimacy of power; anxious questions about fearful events; or questions, filled with wonder, about the why of things.

As a rule, a myth refers to a single, foundational event that took place somewhere in the dim and distant past or outside time. The present is subsequently derived from this event. In this tradition, the causes of events are not impersonal forces, but mostly gods or demigods who determine the course of events through their actions. Mythical people live in a universe where everything is brought about by mysterious, divine acts of will, which do not even have to be rational or moral. The fortunes of the world are the effect of sexual relationships between gods, of their internal struggle for power, of their whims, or of other contingent motives.

The Greek mythical worldview was established by poets such as Homer (eighth century BC) and Hesiod (seventh century BC). In his Theogony, Hesiod describes the origin of the gods and establishes their mutual relations. Regarding the very beginning of the cosmos, he writes:

In truth, first of all Chasm came to be, and then broad-breasted Earth, the ever immovable seat of all the immortals who possess snowy Olympus’ peak and murky Tartarus in the depths of the broad-pathed earth, and Eros, who is the most beautiful among the immortal gods, the limb-melter—he overpowers the mind and the thoughtful counsel of all the gods and of all human beings in their breasts. From Chasm, Erebos and black Night came to be; and then Aether and Day came forth from Night, who conceived and bore them after mingling in love with Erebos. Earth first of all bore starry Sky, equal to herself, to cover her on every side, so that she would be the ever immovable seat for the blessed gods; and she bore the high mountains, the graceful haunts of the goddesses, Nymphs who dwell on the wooded mountains; and she also bore the barren sea seething with its swell, Pontus—all of them without delightful love; and then, having bedded with Sky, she bore deep-eddying Ocean and Coeus and Crius and Hyperion and Iapetus and Theia and Rhea and Themis and Mnemosyne and golden-crowned Phoebe and lovely Tethys. After these, Cronus was born, the youngest of all, crooked-counseled, the most terrible of her children; and he hated his vigorous father. (Hesiod, Theogony, v. 116-138, trans. Most)

This text serves as a perfect illustration of the explanatory method used in myths. The order of reality is derived from the genealogy of the gods. Natural forces and celestial bodies are described as anthropomorphic gods, and the world order is the effect of their contingent decisions and relations.

Obviously, it cannot be denied that myths have an explanatory value: the point of myths is precisely to explain how what exists has come about. In that sense, myths tell a truth. Yet their method of explanation is distinctive in a number of ways. First, it is a kind of knowing that is not critical. Myths do not question their own explanatory method. In general, myths are also normative: they not only explain why things are what they are, but also show why things have to be that way. Hence, the present is affirmed and, what is more, legitimized. In the telling of myths, which is often accompanied by other ritual practices, the cause is re-presented, time and again. It is a contact with the divine, where the practice of telling plays a crucial role.

1.1 From mythos to logos

The sixth century witnessed a ‘culture shock’: through contact with foreign peoples, through colonization and commerce, and because of a desire for innovation, a new worldview was gradually established. Almost automatically, this development led to a critique of the obvious nature of myth. From now on, the stories have to be interpreted. A new generation of poets fiercely criticizes the immoral nature of the Homeric gods and notes how the image of god differs from people to people. The poet Xenophanes (c. 565-473) puts it as follows:

Ethiopians say that their gods are snub-nosed and black; Thracians that theirs are blue-eyed and red-haired. (Xenophanes, fr. 16, trans. Lesher)

For Xenophanes, it is not merely an ethnographic discovery, but an indication that the gods are formed after the image and likeness of humans. By extension, the same would go for animals:

But if oxen and horses or lions had hands, or could draw with their hands and accomplish such works as men, horses would draw the figures of the gods as similar to horses, and the oxen as similar to oxen, and they would make the bodies of the sort which each of them had. (Xenophanes, fr. 15, trans.
Lesher)

Xenophanes himself argues for a purification of the image of god, which can no longer be anthropomorphic. It is important to observe that the traditional representation of the gods is criticized here, which, of course, puts the explanatory value of myth into perspective as well. Moreover, Xenophanes’s criticism makes it clear that new explanatory methods are sought which are no longer connected to local traditions and myth, but offer a universal understanding instead. From now on, if myths are still to be used, they will need to be interpreted according to new standards, where the mythical representations are read as referring to explanatory principles of a different sort.

The way tradition is handed down also changes. For centuries, the Greek cultural tradition was oral. Myths, as well as the texts of Homer, were transmitted orally and were also composed for that purpose. The Iliad and the Odyssey contain numerous stereotypical phrasings and descriptions (e.g., the epithets of the gods) that could be used as mnemonic devices by reciters. The Iliad and the Odyssey were probably ‘composed’ by Homer in the sense that he organized existing material by means of a new, original plot (the wrath of Achilles). As a matter of fact, Homer’s text could slightly differ in the way it was recited by different bards. The fact that this difference was not considered an insurmountable problem is illustrative of the culture in which this practice occurred. In the sixth century, this convention also changes. Late in that century, the Athenian tyrant Peisistratus gave the order to commit a standard version of Homer to writing, which was then deposited in the Athenian city-state library. That alone is evidence of a changed mentality. The desire for codification, along with standardization and homogenization, shows a new way of dealing with the text, which now acquires an objective status. Peisistratus’s decision, which, at first glance, appears to fall into the category of trivia, is in fact the exponent of an extremely important revolution. Apparently, the previous way of dealing with Homer’s text no longer suffices, and the act of reading the great poet is subject to new requirements.

The question we have to ask ourselves is not ‘how could people be so primitive in the preceding period?’, but rather: ‘what has changed, such that the previous practice no longer seemed to work?’ From all the tendencies and examples mentioned above, a number of constants emerge: what is sought is universal validity, objective intelligibility and systematic order. This triple concern is indicated by the term logos: a word with multiple meanings, ranging from ‘word’ to ‘definition’, ‘discourse’, ‘reason’, and so on to the ‘account’ given (Gr. logon didonai) of the phenomena that need to be explained. All situations where an explanation is demanded require logos. And the explanation that is given will have to meet the requirements of universality, objectivity and systematicity. The explanatory value of myth is gone for good, and what is sought is a logos, a rational explanation.

In the transition from ‘mythos’ to ‘logos’, and in fully considering the implications for the individual and society, lies the so-called Greek miracle. As such, the critique of myth and the embrace of logos is the beginning of philosophy.

As drastic as the change may be, the culture shock exposed here did not come about unexpectedly. Myth itself already showed a desire for explanation, for strategies to bring the world under control. Hence, rational explanation – albeit with radically new answers – meets a similar need. For indeed, within the given horizon of existence of civilizations based on myth, this narrative is a strategy of the same value as science in a society governed by technology. That is the opinion of the structuralist Claude
Lévi-Strauss, Wild Thought (La pensée sauvage, 1962; for structuralism: see below,
pp. 206-207). According to him, myth is ‘wild thought’ (like that of a bricoleur), whereas logos stands for ‘domesticated thought’ (like that of an engineer). The barely conscious purpose of myth is the same as that of logos, namely control over a mysterious world.

Moreover, Greek mythology – for many the textbook example of myth – has a very peculiar status. In Greek myths, as we know them, logos itself has already penetrated mythos. Hesiod’s Theogony (7th century BC) tried to bring unity into a multiplicity of disconnected stories, in addition to an often inconsistent rendering of the genealogy of the gods. Apparently, even then, uniformity and homogenization were already sought. In that sense, we speak of ‘mytho-logy’, because an initial rationalization has already occurred. Perhaps it is closely linked to the development of a Greek cultural identity, which the Hellenes used to distinguish themselves from the ‘barbarians’. In later times, too, the Greeks appealed to their Pan-Hellenic culture, even if the various city-states faced each other on the battlefield. In Greek history there is a clear tendency toward unity, which already showed in the Pan-Hellenic sanctuaries and games (for example, the Olympic Games, which were held from 776 BC onward). It is not impossible that Greek mytho-logy is the result of this Pan-Hellenic desire for uniformity, where the different versions of myths from various Greek tribes and states were homogenized.

Still, something else comes into play. The divine itself also acquires a different status. Greek religion is, primarily, a veneration of nature: numerous divine powers animate nature. Yet, at the same time, these powers are personified and, as we have already seen, described in fundamentally anthropomorphic form. In anthropomorphism the worship of nature is profoundly transformed, however much the gods remain associated with their natural functions (as a weather god, for example, or fertility deity). After all, it becomes impossible to connect the gods with one particular natural phenomenon, let alone with one particular place of worship, if it is simultaneously maintained that they resemble humans in all respects (except their immortality). This status also becomes clear in a spatial sense. The anthropomorphic gods ‘move’, as it were, to a separate location, Mount Olympus. In this context we can speak of a certain desacralization of nature. The gods lose their place in the world, and Olympus is conceived as a symbol of a ‘supernatural’ place, from which they interact with nature, humans, and each other. As a result, nature gets, to some extent, separated from the sacred: the world loses its enchantment and is ready for the objectifying gaze of reason.

As said, this tendency made its definite breakthrough in the sixth century. From now on, the explanation of the world is no longer sought for in the omnipresent power of the gods, but in the universality of reason.

The strength and success of rational explanation are further reinforced by another element through which Greek culture distinguished itself from neighboring peoples. The Egyptians and Babylonians, in particular, had reached a very high level of knowledge in geometry and astrology, but they had never differentiated between knowledge and practical application (staking out parcels after the Nile had flooded, building pyramids, predicting propitious moments to make a decision, etc.). In Greek hands, knowledge is transformed into ‘knowing for the sake of knowing’. This new attitude is summarized under the term theōria. A theōros is a traveler who, out of interest, sets off to see objects and places worth seeing (from Gr. thea: spectacle and horān: to see). The historian Herodotus (c. 485-c. 425 BC), a well-known traveler himself, relates how the Athenian wise man Solon went to Lydia, ‘for the sake of theōria’ (Herodotus, Histories, I, 30). Theōria can also be a public assignment. In that case, a theōros is an ambassador who attends religious or sports festivals in other cities on behalf of their own city. They are spectators who, from a distance and without taking part, observe the spectacle. The Greeks transferred this terminology to knowledge: theōria becomes the purely contemplative (‘theoretical’) activity of the scientist. This transfer calls for an overall picture where every detail is assigned its own place: the various partial aspects are integrated and systematized, so that science can explain as many phenomena as possible with as few principles as possible. For the Greeks, the ideal of knowledge is the disinterested contemplation of the whole, which they want to understand and explain in
its entirety.

1.2 The natural philosophers: the development of a cosmology

Logos and theōria become the driving forces of the new scientific mentality. The expansion of commerce, the economy and socio-political contacts create a greater need for knowledge and skills. Erudition becomes a ‘craft’ in itself, and those who master this craft are called ‘sages’ or wise men
(Gr. sophoi; according to tradition they were seven in number), who, based on their theoretical knowledge, served society in numerous ways. These sages conduct research in geography, agricultural science, economics, the state structure, up to and including the most general and abstract problems. After the desacralization of nature, the explanation of nature and the cosmos is among their most important tasks. Thus, the first philosophers are natural philosophers. They study nature (Gr. physis, lit. ‘growth’ or the Latin equivalent natura, lit. ‘birth process’) as an organism that is self-sustaining, and which should therefore be explained through principles that are themselves part of nature. Hence, there is no need for external factors or supernatural forces.

The greatest source of fascination to these natural philosophers is the discovery that they can explain the order of nature in a rational way. The kosmos (literally ‘ornament’, ‘showpiece’) is itself a rationally ordered logos. Through the logical power of thought, the first philosophers uncover a logic that exists in nature itself, and from which nature derives its order.

The explanatory model of the first philosophers is materialistic. They look for the (material) first principle, the primordial matter of which the whole universe consists. According to Thales of Miletus (626/623-c. 548/545 BC) this primordial matter is water, whereas according to Anaximenes of Miletus (c. 586/585-c. 526/525 BC) it is air. How exactly this first principle is interpreted by various philosophers is not so important from a cultural-historical perspective. What is important, however, is the presupposition that there has to be such a first principle. If we take the example of the system of Anaximander of Miletus (c. 610-c. 546 BC), the contrast with Hesiod’s explanation becomes immediately clear:

After him Anaximander, who had been his [Thales’s] associate, said that the Infinite was solely responsible for the coming-to-be and the passing-away of the universe. Anaximander states that the various heavens have been secreted out of this Infinite, as more generally have been all the worlds, which are infinite in number. He declared that passing-away and (much earlier) coming-to-be take place as they all repeat a cycle from infinite time. He says that the earth is cylindrical in shape, and has a depth such as to be a third of its breadth. He says that what is generative of hot and cold from the eternal was separated off at the coming-to-be of this world, and that from this a sort of ball of flame grew round the air surrounding the earth, like the bark round a tree. When this had been torn off and shut up in certain rings, the sun, moon, and stars came into existence. (Plutarch, Stromata, fr. 179, 11-25, trans. Sandbach)

There is no longer any mention of starry Ouranos who covers his mother Gaia, nor of Erebos or Pontos, but only of strictly natural forces through which nature unfolds. Furthermore, those forces reveal a logic that can be uncovered through the logic of human comprehension.

The first interest of philosophical rationality was the explanation of nature, which gave rise to the development of cosmology. In the writings of two philosophers of this period, Parmenides of Elea (c. 515-c. 440 BC) and Heraclitus of Ephesus (born c. 543 BC), we witness the emergence of yet another tendency. With them, the discovery of an inherent order in reality leads to a spectacular reflection on Being, and how it relates to the world of Becoming.

Heraclitus: ‘everything flows’

Starting from the idea that true reality is to be found in the chaotic jumble of phenomena, Heraclitus makes his famous assertion: ‘everything flows, nothing remains’ (Gr. panta rhei kai ouden menei). The world is subject to a permanent flux, which, for example, makes it impossible to step into the same river twice. Precisely because of this continuous change, the world can exist as a kosmos. Heraclitus was convinced that the harmony of the cosmos does not lie in the neutralization of opposites, but that the tension between opposites is essential to the order of the world. ‘War is father of all’ (Gr. polemos pantōn patèr), he states: a bow or a lyre can only exist on account of the unity created by the permanent tension between the frame and the string. So, reality is not only continuously in motion but is also the result of endless conflicts between opposites. The cosmos is the result of a continually shifting balance between opposing forces.

Parmenides: ‘being is’

In many respects, Parmenides is Heraclitus’s opposite. Not only is his native city Elea (in southern Italy, also called Greater Greece) geographically far removed from Ephesus (in Asia Minor); his doctrines, too, are radically opposed to those of his older contemporary (whose work he probably never knew). Parmenides was the first to thematize being as the unique and unchanging foundation of the many beings. That way, the question of being was posed for the first time, and immediately in its most radical form. With disarming simplicity he asserts: ‘what is, is, what is not, is not’. This insight may appear simple, but its consequences are enormous.

In his didactic poem On Nature, in which Parmenides relates how he is conveyed to the palace of Light by the daughters of the Sun and receives a revelation from the Goddess, the author gives his readers the choice between two ways: either ‘that it is, and that it is impossible that it is not’, or ‘that it is not, and that it is necessary that it is not’. The two positions are irreconcilable, but the problem is that ordinary mortals did not see the dilemma. As ‘two-headed’ creatures they are governed by the senses, and out of ignorance they act as if there is no problem, as if both ways are open simultaneously. Parmenides, for his part, urged by his Goddess, radically chooses the first way. Rather than allow himself to be governed by the deceptive senses, he will only trust the coherent, intelligent argument of the logos. The importance of this choice can hardly be overrated: it is a decisive moment in the history of European philosophy.

Thus, Parmenides resolutely chooses the way of being, and takes it to its extreme consequences: (1) ‘Being is’ implies, in the first place, that being cannot come into being; where would it come from? It cannot come from nowhere, and if it comes from somewhere, this means that being already had to precede, which reconfirms the first claim that ‘being is’. On the other hand, being cannot perish, since it cannot possibly ‘cancel’ itself; if it were to become non-being, then non-being would be something that is. Nor can it transform into something else, since then it would, to a certain extent, not be, which is also impossible. Being is, in other words, unchanging and imperishable. (2) Moreover, being is indivisible; there are no degrees of being: something is or it is not. Indeed: qua being (that is: simply and solely considered in its capacity of ‘being’) all that is, is identical. Any perceived difference belongs to the order of the misleading senses. Hence being as such is an undifferentiated continuum. (3) Being is motionless and limited. That this is the case can be deduced from the foregoing. After all, if there is nothing outside being, being has to be completely separate from what is not. Not-being cannot penetrate the indivisible continuum of being, and, vice versa, being cannot move itself toward not-being. (4) Being is perfect. For it is not the result of a process of becoming. If it is, it is fully realized. This statement also immediately explains why being has to be limited: it is fully unfolded, and does not have the possibility of expanding any further; in other words, it has reached its limit. (5) Finally, Parmenides states that being also has to be spherical. If we accept that it is perfect and limited, it has to be identical everywhere and in all directions. Hence the conclusion that the sphere is the only conceivable shape that being can assume.

It may be clear from this last deduction that for Parmenides being is still completely permeated by materiality. Despite the enormous level of abstraction his thought has reached, there is still no purely abstract concept of being. For this lack, Parmenides was criticized by Aristotle, who, in his treatise On the Heavens, writes:

But however excellent their [Parmenides and his followers] theories may otherwise be, anyhow they cannot be held to speak as students of nature. There may be things not subject to generation or any kind of movement, but if so they belong to another and a higher inquiry than the study of nature. They, however, had no idea of any form of being other than the substance of things perceived; and when they saw, what no one previously had seen, that there could be no knowledge or wisdom without some such unchanging entities, they naturally transferred what was true of them to things perceived. (Aristotle, On the Heavens, 298b11-24, trans. Stocks)

Aristotle’s criticism boils down to this: Parmenides’s analyses are presented within the field of natural philosophy, but they actually belong to another philosophical discipline: metaphysics. Natural philosophy studies reality insofar as it is concrete and changeable, whereas metaphysics studies the unchanging principles that underlie it. Parmenides’s concept of being remains tied to the being of perceptible things (as part of natural philosophy) and does not concern being-in-itself. Of course, this criticism is largely anachronistic, but it helps to interpret Parmenides’s rather confusing description of being as a sphere. Parmenides’s notion of being is a metaphysical one, without being fully recognized as such. This is what Aristotle, with great lucidity, understood.

Nevertheless, the importance of Parmenides for European philosophy remains invaluable. The question that will concern philosophy from now on is raised in a spectacular way: with a radical choice in favor of reason and against the deceptive appearance of the senses, Parmenides forces his readers to take a position concerning the inescapable logic he uses to analyze being.

Thus, at the beginning of philosophy, the eternal opposition is put forward in all clarity: Parmenides’s universal permanence, the unity of abstract being, versus Heraclitus’s universal transience, the plurality of concrete reality. All later thinkers found themselves facing this opposition and have tried to position themselves somewhere between the two.

1.3 The emergence of ethics

Owing to the desacralization of the world, traditional societal relations are also jeopardized. Insofar as questions about the legitimacy of authority or moral standards were raised in the archaic worldview, they were answered by the acceptance of a sacred foundation. Besides, this acceptance was mostly implicit, so that the matter did not come up for discussion. Societal bonds were part of a global cosmic order, and the highest authority, in most cases the king (Gr. basileus) also served the highest religious function. Incidentally, in later times, when the monarchy in Athens had already for a long time been replaced with democratic forms of government, religious authority was still designated by the term basileus. At that time, however, the function was incorporated into the office of one of the three archons, the archōn basileus (responsible for religious matters).

In a world where the sacred has yielded and contacts are made with foreign peoples who, evidently, have different customs and traditions, the immediate obviousness of values and laws is experienced as problematic. Social ties and relations appear to be the result of convention, rather than to be rooted in nature. The attention paid to the tension between nature (Gr. physis) and culture (Gr. nomos) then manifests itself in all sorts of social and political change. For example, during the sixth century BC, Athens develops a democratic form of government. In jurisprudence, around 624, the blood feud was abolished by Draco, which led to the monopolization of violence by the state and to the codification of criminal law. In politics, too, a rationalization takes place: the Athenian state, previously divided into family clans (Gr. phylai), is ordered into strictly geographical districts (Gr. dèmoi) by Cleisthenes in 508 BC. Here as well, the old, ‘natural’ societal bonds are put under pressure in favor of a rationalized form of government.

The relativism of the Sophists

The process of a changing societal organization also has its downside. Old certainties are gone and are not readily replaced with new ones. What order presents itself? What standards should be applied to be ‘in order’? And what kind of behavior can be relied on? There seem to be no ready-made answers.

In this climate, during the fifth century, the Sophists appear: itinerant teachers who, in exchange for money, satisfy the need for education and knowledge, which can be used to legitimize one’s actions. This need is especially felt in ‘democratic’ Athens, since here the legitimation of decisions and the foundation of norms are of critical importance. Moreover, in democratic debates it is more often a matter of convincing others than of actually being right. Through education, the Sophists meet their students’ need to arm themselves for public debate. For that reason, the activity of the Sophists mostly comes down to education in rhetoric and the art of dispute. They reduce the word or logos to a mere means of power. Reason evolves into persuasion, a monologue aimed at winning others over.

The pejorative sense of the word ‘sophist’ today is mainly a result of Plato’s criticism. Nonetheless, at times their intentions are genuine. Protagoras of Abdera (c. 490 BC-c. 420 BC), for example, the most important Sophist, is a confirmed relativist. His principal claim is: ‘the human person is the measure of all things, of the things that are, that they are, of the things that are not, that they are not’ (fr. 1, the so-called homo mensura). This statement is based on the idea that knowledge of the ultimate truth is not possible: things are as they appear to me. What feels hot to one person, feels cold to another. For a healthy person a sip of wine is a pleasure, while it can be fatal to someone who is ill. So, there is no standard to judge things, except the individual persons themselves. Whence the need to convince others and to impose one’s own truth as much as possible.

However, one could say that, even among Sophists, Protagoras was an exception. Generally speaking, the criticism against the Sophists remains valid. In a cynical way they subordinated the art of the word to the pursuit of power. The sophistic rejection of an absolute standard results in the reduction of all their skills to purely rhetorical techniques, leading to a gap between knowledge (or skill) and wisdom, a situation against which Socrates and his student Plato, from their perspective, have to react.

Socrates (469-399 BC)

Socrates cannot be considered apart from the Sophists, or at least from the climate of relative intellectual openness in which the Sophists appeared. For many of his contemporaries (among others, the comic playwright Aristophanes) Socrates simply was a sophist. Yet there is an essential difference. As a reaction against the moral relativism of the Sophists, in which they cleverly bent the meaning of moral concepts to their will, Socrates searched for the true meaning, the indisputable definition of those concepts. He constantly bothered the authoritative speakers with questions such as ‘what is justice?’, ‘what is courage?’ and, most of all, ‘what is the good?’ The underlying idea was that insight into the true meaning of moral concepts would also lead to effective moral conduct. Unlike the Sophists, Socrates wants moral conduct to be based on knowledge. Plato has him say that ‘virtue is knowledge’, which means that the true criterion of action lies in a rationally grounded insight into the truth. If that condition is fulfilled, and if, for example, we really know what justice is, we cannot but act justly too. The criterion of action is interiorized, with the addition that the inner conviction (rational knowledge) is also directly noticeable in the external action. In this way, the logos is no longer a means of power, but the place where knowledge, truth and virtue are established. Consequently, the rhetorical tricks of the Sophists are exposed as manipulations. Their success is based on the power of persuasion, not on knowledge. Socrates, on the other hand, will only allow himself to be persuaded on the basis of insight into the truth. And that only happens through question and answer, by critically examining each other’s intuitive opinions in a conversation and refuting the mere appearance of knowledge. In doing so, Socrates always takes up the position of someone who knows nothing, but who also, for that reason, can be called wiser than someone who uncritically pretends to know something. From the standpoint of ignorance, Socrates prompts his interlocutors to articulate their own knowledge and skill:

So even now I continue this investigation as the god bade me – and I go around seeking out anyone, citizen or stranger, whom I think wise. Then if I do not think he is, I come to the assistance of the god and show him that he is not wise. (Plato, Apology, 23b, trans. Grube)

Armed with irony, through which, by praising the wisdom of others, he actually shows that they are not wise, Socrates bursts the bubble of conceitedness and compels reflection:

On the other hand, if I say that it is the greatest good for a person to discuss virtue every day and those other things about which you hear me conversing and testing myself and others, for the unexamined life is not worth living for men, you will believe me even less. What I say is true, gentlemen, but it is not easy to convince you. (Plato, Apology, 38a, trans. Grube)