Professor Donald
Kagan: Now,
I'm going to ask you this
question.
Why are you here?
That is to say,
why should you,
we, all of us,
want to study these ancient
Greeks?
I think it's reasonable for
people who are considering the
study of a particular subject in
a college course to ask why they
should.
What is it about the Greeks
between the years that I
mentioned to you that deserves
the attention of people in the
twenty-first century?
I think the answer is to be
found, or at least one
answer--the truth is there are
many answers--in that they are
just terribly interesting,
but that's very much of
a--what's the word I want,
the opposite of
objective--subjective
observation by me.
So I would say,
a less subjective one is that I
believe that it comes from their
position,
that is to say,
the position of the Greeks are
at the most significant starting
point of Western Civilization,
which is the culture that most
powerfully shapes not only the
West but most of the world
today.
It seems to me to be evident
that whatever it's other
characteristics,
the West has created
institutions of government and
law that provide unprecedented
freedom for its people.
It has also invented a body of
natural scientific knowledge and
technological achievement that
together make possible a level
of health and material
prosperity undreamed of in
earlier times,
and unknown outside the West
and those places that have been
influenced by the West.
I think the Nobel Prize
laureate, V.S.
Naipaul, a man born in
Trinidad, of Indian parents,
was right, when he spoke of the
modern world as our universal
civilization shaped chiefly by
the West.
Most people around the
world who know of them want to
benefit from the achievements of
Western science and technology.
Many of them also want to
participate in its political
freedom.
Moreover, experience suggests
that a society cannot achieve
the full benefits of Western
science and technology without a
commitment to reason and
objectivity as essential to
knowledge and to the political
freedom that sustains it and
helps it to move forward.
The primacy of reason and the
pursuit of objectivity,
therefore, both characteristic
of the Western experience seem
to me to be essential for the
achievement of the desired goals
almost anywhere in the world.
The civilization of the
West, however,
was not the result of some
inevitable process through which
other cultures will
automatically pass.
It emerged from a unique
history in which chance and
accident often played a vital
part.
The institutions and the ideas
therefore, that provide for
freedom and improvement in the
material conditions of life,
cannot take root and flourish
without an understanding of how
they came about and what
challenges they have had to
surmount.
Non-Western peoples who wish to
share in the things that
characterize modernity will need
to study the ideas and history
of Western civilization to
achieve what they want and
Westerners,
I would argue,
who wish to preserve these
things must do the same.
The many civilizations
adopted by the human race have
shared basic characteristics.
Most have tended toward
cultural uniformity and
stability.
Reason, although it was
employed for all sorts of
practical and intellectual
purposes in some of these
cultures,
it still lacked independence
from religion and it lacked the
high status to challenge the
most basic received ideas.
Standard form of government has
been monarchy.
Outside the West,
republics have been unknown.
Rulers have been thought to be
divine or appointed spokesmen
for divinity.
Religious and political
institutions and beliefs have
been thoroughly intertwined as a
mutually supportive unified
structure.
Government has not been subject
to secular reasoned analysis.
It has rested on religious
authority, tradition,
and power.
The concept of individual
freedom has had no importance in
these great majorities of
cultures in human history.
The first and the sharpest
break with this common human
experience came in ancient
Greece.
The Greek city states called
poleis were republics.
The differences in wealth among
their citizens were relatively
small.
There were no kings with the
wealth to hire mercenary
soldiers.
So the citizens had to do their
own fighting and to decide when
to fight.
As independent defenders of the
common safety and the common
interest, they demanded a role
in the most important political
decisions.
In this way,
for the first time,
political life really was
invented.
Observe that the word
"political" derives from the
Greek word polis.
Before that no word was needed
because there was no such thing.
This political life came to be
shared by a relatively large
portion of the people and
participation of political life
was highly valued by the Greeks.
Such states,
of course, did not need a
bureaucracy for there were no
vast royal or state holdings
that needed management and not
much economic surplus to support
a bureaucratic class.
There was no separate caste of
priests and there was very
little concern,
I don't mean any concern,
but very little concern with
life after death which was
universally important in other
civilizations.
In this varied,
dynamic, secular,
and remarkably free context,
there arose for the first time
a speculative natural philosophy
based on observation and reason,
the root of modern natural
science and philosophy,
free to investigate or to
ignore divinity.
What most sets the Greeks apart
is their view of the world.
Where other peoples have seen
sameness and continuity,
the Greeks and the heirs of
their way of thinking,
have tended to notice
disjunctions and to make
distinctions.
The Greek way of looking at
things requires a change from
the characteristic way of
knowing things before the
Greeks,
that is to say,
the use of faith,
poetry, and intuition.
Instead, increasingly,
the Greeks focused on a
reliance on reason.
Reason permits a continuing
rational inquiry into the nature
of reality.
Unlike mystical insights,
scientific theories cannot be
arrived at by meditation alone
but require accurate observation
of the world and reasoning of a
kind that other human beings can
criticize,
analyze, modify, and correct.
The adoption of this way of
thinking was the beginning of
the liberation and enthronement
of reason to whose searching
examination,
the Greeks thereafter,
exposed everything they
perceived natural,
human, and divine.
From the time they formed their
republics until they were
conquered by alien empires,
the Greeks also rejected
monarchy of any kind.
They thought that a human being
functioning in his full capacity
must live as a free man in an
autonomous polis ruled by
laws that were the product of
the political community and not
of an arbitrary fiat from some
man or god.
These are ideas about laws and
justice that have simply not
flourished outside the Western
tradition until places that were
outside the Western tradition
were influenced by the West.
The Greeks, however,
combined a unique sense of
mankind's high place in the
natural order.
The Greeks had the most
arrogant view of their
relationship to the divinity,
as I will tell you about later
in the course,
of any people I know.
So on the one hand,
they had this very high picture
of this place of man,
but they combined it--excuse
me,
and what possibilities these
human beings had before
that--with a painful
understanding of the limitations
of the greatness and the
possibilities before man.
This combination of
elevating the greatness in
reality and in possibility of
human beings with the
limitations of it,
the greatest limitation being
mortality;
that together,
composes the tragic vision of
the human condition that
characterized classical Greek
civilization.
To cope with it,
they urged human beings to
restrain their overarching
ambitions.
Inscribed at Apollo's temple at
Delphi, which becameâ€“well,
the Greeks came to call it the
navel of the universe,
but it certainly became the
center of the Greek world--and
which was also seen as a central
place of importance by
non-Greeks who were on the
borders of the Greek world.
That temple at Delphi had
written above the Temple these
words, "Know Thyself," and
another statement,
"Nothing in Excess."
I think those together really
mean this: know your own
limitations as a fallible mortal
and then exercise moderation
because you are not divine,
you are mortal.
Beyond these exhortations,
they relied on a good political
regime to enable human beings to
fulfill the capacities that were
part of their nature,
to train them in virtue,
and to restrain them from vice.
Aristotle, and his politics,
made the point neatly,
and I quote him,
"As a man,"
- I'm sorry,
"As man is the best of the
animals when perfected,
so he is the worst when
separated from law and justice.
For injustice is most dangerous
when it is armed and man armed
by nature with good sense and
virtue may use them for entirely
opposite ends.
Therefore, when he is without
virtue, man is the most
unscrupulous and savage of the
animals."
Aristotle went on to say that
the justice needed to control
this dark side of human nature
can be found only in a well
ordered society of free people
who govern themselves,
and the only one that he knew
was the polis of the
Greeks.
Now, the second great
strand in the history of the
West is the Judeo Christian
tradition,
a very different tradition from
the one I have just described.
Christianity's main roots were
in Judaism, a religion that
worshipped a single,
all powerful deity,
who is sharply separated from
human beings,
makes great moral demands upon
them,
and judges them all,
even kings and emperors.
Christianity began as a
persecuted religion that
ultimately captured the Roman
Empire only after centuries of
hostility towards the Empire,
towards Rome,
towards the secular state in
general.
It never lost entirely its
original character as an
insurgent movement,
independent of the state and
hostile to it,
making claims that challenge
the secular authority.
This, too, is unique to the
West, just like the Greek
experience is unique.
This kind of religious
organization is to be found
nowhere else in human society.
So the union of a
universalist religion,
with a monarch such as the
Roman Empire,
who ruled a vast empire,
could nonetheless have put an
end to any prospect of freedom
as in other civilizations.
But Christianity's inheritance
of the rational disputatious
Greek philosophy led to
powerfully divisive quarrels
about the nature of God and
other theological questions,
which was perfectly in the
tradition and uniquely in the
tradition of Greek philosophical
debate.
What I am doing is making a
claim that even the
Judeo-Christian tradition,
which is such a different one
from the Greeks,
and in so many ways seems to be
at odds with it,
even they were dependent upon
one aspect of the Greek culture,
which is inherent in
Christianity and important in
Christianity.
That too, was ultimately,
a Greek source.
Well, the people who the
Romans called barbarians
destroyed the Western empire and
it also the destroyed the power
of the emperors and their
efforts to impose religious and
political conformity under
imperial control.
The emperor in the east was
able to do that because they
were not conquered by the
barbarians,
but in the West,
you have this situation where
nobody is fully in charge.
Here we have arrived at a
second sharp break with the
general experience of mankind.
The West of the Germanic tribes
that had toppled the Roman
Empire was weak and it was
divided.
The barriers to unity presented
by European geography and very
limited technology made it hard
for a would-be conqueror to
create a vast empire,
eliminating competitors and
imposing his will over vast
areas.
These conditions permitted a
development of institutions and
habits needed for freedom,
even as they also made Europe
vulnerable to conquests and to
extinction, and Europe was
almost extinguished practically
before there was a Europe;
very early in its history.
The Christian Church might
have stepped into the breach and
imposed obedience and
uniformity,
because before terribly long,
all of the West had been
Christianized.
But the Church,
in fact, never gained enough
power to control the state.
Strong enough to interfere with
the ambitions of emperors and
kings, it never was able to
impose its own domination,
though some of the Popes surely
tried.
Nobody sought or planned for
freedom, but in the spaces that
were left by the endless
conflicts among secular rulers
and between them and the Church,
there was room for freedom to
grow.
Freedom was a kind of an
accident that came about because
the usual ways of doing things
were not possible.
Into some of that space,
towns and cities reappeared and
with them new supports for
freedom.
Taking advantage of the
rivalries I've mentioned,
they obtained charters from the
local powers establishing their
rights to conduct their own
affairs and to govern
themselves.
In Italy,
some of these cities were able
to gain control of the
surrounding country and to
become city states,
resembling those of the ancient
Greeks.
Their autonomy was assisted by
the continuing struggle between
Popes and Emperors,
between church and state,
again, a thoroughly unique
Western experience.
In these states,
the modern world began to take
form.
Although the people were mainly
Christians, their life and
outlook became increasingly
secular.
Here, and not only in Italy but
in other cities north of the
Alps, arose a worldview that
celebrated the greatness and
dignity of mankind,
which was a very sharp turning
away from the medieval Western
tradition that put God and life
in the hereafter at the center
of everything.
This new vision is revealed
with flamboyant confidence by
Pico della Mirándola,
a Florentine thinker,
who said--wrote the following:
"God told man that we,
meaning God,
have made the neither of Heaven
nor of Earth,
neither mortal nor immortal,
so that with freedom of choice
and with honor,
as though the maker and molder
of thyself,
thou mayest fashion thyself in
whatever shape thou shalt
prefer.
Oh supreme generosity of God
the Father, oh highest and the
most great felicity of man,
to Him it is granted to have
whatever He chooses to be
whatever He wills."
Now, this is a remarkable leap,
even beyond the humanism of the
Greeks, something brand new in
the world.
According to this view,
man is not merely the measure
of all things as the Greek
Sophist Protagoras had radically
proclaimed in the fifth century.
He is, in fact says Pico,
more than mortal.
He is unlimited by nature.
He is entirely free to shape
himself and to acquire whatever
he wants.
Please observe too that it is
not his reason that will
determine human actions but his
will alone, free of the
moderating control of reason.
Another Florentine,
Machiavelli,
moved further in the same
direction.
For him, and I quote him,
"Fortune is a woman and it is
necessary to hold her down and
beat her, and fight with her."
A notion that the Greeks would
have regarded as dangerously
arrogant and certain to produce
disaster.
They would have seen this as an
example of the word that they
used, and we'll talk about a lot
in this course,
hubris,
a kind of violent arrogance
which comes upon men when they
see themselves as more than
human and behave as though they
were divine.
Francis Bacon,
influenced by Machiavelli,
urged human beings to employ
their reason to force nature to
give up its secrets,
to treat nature like a woman,
to master nature in order to
improve man's material well
being.
He assumed that such a course
would lead to progress and the
general improvement of the human
condition,
and it was that sort of
thinking that lay at the heart
of the scientific revolution and
remains the faith on which
modern science and technology
rest.
A couple of other English
political philosophers,
Hobbs and Locke,
applied a similar novelty and
modernity to the sphere of
politics.
Basing their understanding on
the common passions of man for a
comfortable self-preservation
and discovering something the
Greeks had never thought of,
something they called natural
rights that belonged to a man
either as part of nature,
or as the gift of a benevolent
and a reasonable god.
Man was seen as a solitary
creature, not inherently a part
of society.
That is totally un-Greek.
And his basic rights were seen
to be absolute,
for nothing must interfere with
the right of each individual to
defend his life,
liberty, and property.
Freedom was threatened in early
modern times by the emergence of
monarchies that might have been
able to crush it.
But the cause of individual
freedom was enhanced by the
Protestant Reformation.
Another upheaval within
Christianity arising from its
focus on individual salvation,
its inheritance of a tradition
of penetrating reason,
applied even to matters of
faith and to the continuing
struggle between church and
state.
The English Revolution came
about, in large part,
because of King Charles'
attempt to impose an alien
religious conformity,
as well as tighter political
control on his kingdom.
But in England,
the tradition of freedom and
government bound by law was
already strong enough to produce
effective resistance.
From the ensuing rebellion came
limited constitutional
representative government and
ultimately our modern form of
democracy.
The example,
and the ideas it produced,
encouraged and informed the
French and the American
Revolutions,
and the entire modern
constitutional tradition.
These ideas and institutions
are the basis for modern liberal
thinking about politics,
the individual and society.
Just as the confident view of
science and technology has
progressive forces improving the
lot of humanity and increasing
man's capacity to understand and
control the universe,
has been the most powerful form
taken by the Western elevation
of reason.
In the last two centuries,
both these most characteristic
elements of Western civilization
have in fact become increasingly
under heavy attack.
At different times,
science and technology have
been blamed for the destruction
of human community and the
alienation of people from nature
and from one another - for
intensifying the gulf between
rich and poor,
for threatening the very
existence of humanity,
either by producing weapons of
total destruction or by
destroying the environment.
At the same time,
the foundations of freedom have
also come into question.
Jefferson and his colleagues
could confidently proclaim their
political rights as being self
evident and the gift of a
creator.
By now, in our time,
however, the power of religion
has faded, and for many,
the basis of modern political
and moral order has been
demolished.
Nietzsche announced the
death of God and Dostoyevsky's
Grand Inquisitor asserted that
when God is dead all things are
permitted.
Nihilism rejects any objective
basis for society and its
morality.
It rejects the very concept of
objectivity.
It even rejects the possibility
of communication itself,
and a vulgar form of Nihilism,
I claim, has a remarkable
influence in our educational
system today,
a system rotting from the head
down,
so chiefly in universities,
but all the way down to
elementary schools.
The consequences of the victory
of such ideas,
I believe, would be enormous.
If both religion and reason are
removed, all that remains is
will and power,
where the only law is the law
of tooth and claw.
There is no protection for
the freedom of weaker
individuals, or those who
question the authority of the
most powerful.
There is no basis for
individual rights,
or for a critique of existing
ideas and institutions,
if there is no base either in
religion or in reason.
That such attacks on the
greatest achievements of the
West should be made by Western
intellectuals is perfectly in
keeping with the Western
tradition.
The first crowd to do stuff
like that, you will find,
in the fifth century B.C.
in Greece is a movement called
The Sophistic Movement.
These Sophists raised most of
the questions that my colleagues
are now spending all their time
with.
Yet, to me, it seems ironic
that they have gained so much
currency in a time,
more or less,
in which the achievements of
Western reason in the form of
science and at a moment when its
concept of political freedom
seemed to be more popular and
more desirable to people in and
out of Western civilization than
ever.
Now, I've been saying kind
things about Western
civilization,
but I would not want to deny
that there is a dark side to the
Western experience and its way
of life.
To put untrammeled reasons and
individual freedom at the center
of a civilization is to live
with the conflict,
the turmoil,
the instability,
and the uncertainty that these
things create.
Freedom was born and has
survived in the space created by
divisions, and conflict within
and between nations and
religions.
We must wonder whether the
power of modern weapons will
allow it and the world to
survive at such a price.
Individual freedom,
although it has greatly
elevated the condition of the
people who have lived in free
societies,
inevitably permits inequalities
which are the more galling,
because each person is plainly
free to try to improve his
situation and largely
responsible for the outcome.
Freedom does permit isolation
from society and an alienation
of the individual at a high
cost, both to the individual and
society.
These are not the only
problems posed by the Western
tradition in its modern form,
which is what we live in.
Whether it takes the shape of
the unbridled claims of Pico
della Mirandola or the
Nietzschean assertion of the
power of the superior individual
to transform and shape his own
nature,
or of the modern totalitarian
effort to change the nature of
humanity by utopian social
engineering,
the temptation to arrogance
offered by the ideas and worldly
success of the modern West
threatens its own great
traditions and achievements.
Because of Western
civilization's emergence as the
exemplary civilization,
it also presents problems to
the whole world.
The challenges presented by
freedom and the predominance of
reason cannot be ignored,
nor can they be met by recourse
to the experience of other
cultures where these
characteristics have not been
prominent.
In other words,
to understand and cope with the
problems that we all face,
we all need to know and to
grapple with the Western
experience.
In my view,
we need especially to examine
the older traditions of the West
that came before the modern era,
and to take seriously the
possibility that useful wisdom
can be found there,
especially among the Greeks who
began it all.
They understood the
potentiality of human beings,
their limitations and the
predicament in which they live.
Man is potent and important,
yet he is fallible and mortal,
capable of the greatest
achievements and the worst
crimes.
He is then a tragic figure,
powerful but limited,
with freedom to choose and act,
but bound by his own nature,
knowing that he will never
achieve perfect knowledge and
understanding,
justice and happiness,
but determined to continue the
search no matter what.
To me that seems an
accurate description of the
human condition that is
meaningful,
not only for the Greeks and
their heirs in the West,
but for all human beings.
It is an understanding that
cannot be achieved without a
serious examination of the
Western experience.
The abandonment of such a study
or its adulteration for current
political purposes would be a
terrible loss for all of
humanity,
and at the base,
at the root of that
civilization stood the Greeks.
These are the reasons why I
examined their experience and I
trust why you are thinking about
learning about it.
Thank you.
I'll see you guys,
some of you,
next Tuesday.
 
