What we have done so far is tolook at the
two traditions that dominated Greekthought;The
tradition of faith, and thenthe tradition
of enquiry and speculation, we have briefly
looked at that.What I would like is for you
people to look at the sections from BurtonResells,
history of western philosophy which I have
asked you to look at. Those sections will
tell you a lot more about the speculative
and enquiring tradition of the Greeks.We have
in the west, a tremendous legacy which has
come up from the Greeks to the modern days,
a lot of this vows itself to the speculative
and enquiring tradition of the Greeks.
I shall not be today specifically addressing, this
tradition of the Greeks. I have probably an
intention to go back at some time in the future
to look at Aristotle in some greater detail,
but for the present let us look at some history.
It is important to look at what happened in
Europe from the time of Greeks, there is a
huge interruptnum from the time of the Greeks
and principally having in mind the period
of about, say 700 no 600BC to about 400 BC
as a very critical time in the history of
theGreeks. During this period, there was a
raise,and then the decline of the greek civilization.
We shall briefly look at this, so that we
will know how to look at what happened after
the Greeks.Greece as you know, consisted of
large number of townships, cities and the
political institution of the Greeks consisted
of the way, these city states were run. There
was not much uniformity in the way these states
were run; you have perhaps had a occasion
to study in other courses something about
the Greek city states and their politics.
Have you? Briefly,you can havean idea of the
contrast by looking at the contrast between
Athens and Sparta.
Athens Pridal itself, on its democratic traditions.
Sparta, on the other hand was conservative
and very rigid in its ways. Spartans were
known often times as great warriors but, Spartans
were often times not known at allfor their
intellectual provise Whereas, Athenians saw
the rise of very many great thinkersand the
prevalence of the great debates on great many
philosophical and speculative issues.Do you
know that the Persians invaded Greece and
captured a sizeable portion of it, Darius,Xerxes
these Persian emperors came all the way across
Asia minor, Asia minor being the present day
confluence of territories starting with Lebanon,
going to the Bosporus states.
They came across Asia minor and captured sizeable
part of Greek mainland and large number of
Greek islands,and the Greeks fought themover
a fifteen year period against two great Persian
emperors, Darius and Xerxes. While the Persians
had a single cohesive army which came as a
huge monolith across the land of Greece, the
Greeks were all city states, together for
the purpose of fighting the Persians, and
initially Athens became the coordinator or
organizer of the federation of cities which
decided to fight the Persians. So, the Persian
wars were also wars which saw a great transformation
in Greek politics and culture.As the wars
went on two things happened, Greek military
and political organization became more sophisticated,
and within the Greek forces Athens became
more and more central till finally, it acquired
soul leadership of the federation of Greek
states.
By the end of the Persian wars, Greek nation
or Greek subcontinent or Greek land was virtually
ruled by Athens. I probably should not be
calling Greece as a subcontinent,It is a bad
habit thinking of India all the time,now Greece
was not as big as a subcontinent, Greece was
not even a part of a subcontinent but, still
soby about middle of the 5th century Athens,
is at its prime, the leader of all Greece
in not just military might but, economic strength
and the very center of the cultural growth
of Greek philosophy and Greek culture. This
was all made possible because havea great
leader called Pericles .
The Athenians did not have the tradition of
a emperor but, Pericles was almost the emperor
of all Greece from Athens, because that was
the power of his leadership and the power
of the command he wielded over other Greeks.It
was during the time of Pericles that Greek
civilization roused to its apogee, to its
supreme heights.
And as Pericles rousing power, there also
came increasing tensions between Sparta and
Athens which was led by Pericles. The Spartans
were loused to listen anybody from a superior
position, and they were very proud warriors
but, that a side increasing tensions between
the two led to, a protracted war between Sparta
and Athens.A very debilitating war in which
increasingly, Athens became weaker and weaker
and weaker.Almost, as if a climax to these
wars, Pericles himself died in a plague which
swept all of Athens and decimated the population
of Athens.Pericles was one of those who killed
in the plague, which was virtually the end
of the war and also the end of Athens. And
Greece declined after this slowly but, definitely.Slowly
parts of the Greek culture which were located
in mainland Italy started growingand one of
the places which grew very rapidly as a process
of this was Rome.
Rome moderned itself politically after places
like Athens.Rome was a city state, butthe
difference was while the Greek city state
did not have a very big agricultural hinterland
because Greece was very bad as far as land
quality went for agriculture, butItaly had
rich trackswhere agriculture was possible.So,
while Rome was like a city state and while
it grew like a city state, it had a big agricultural
hinterland and so to had other big growing
city states of Italy like Padua,Milan,Nepals.
Gradually,Rome came to dominate all other
Italian states andgradually,Rome started conquering
territories and terrains outside of Italy.The
Roman empire at its peak went all the way
from Great Britainto east of Turkey,that is
a big territory.Eventually, there are came
to be two Roman empires one was,one came to
be known was the Byzantine empire based in
Constantinople and another based out of Rome,
the western and eastern empires.This took
about three hundred years, buteventually this
was how big was.Rome eventually declinedthe
spitemilitary might of the roman army, it
is the very growth of roman army which let
eventually to the decline of Rome.
As more and moresoldiers for the roman army
got recruited from very diverse civilizations
and cultures across the place, across the
empire that army became less and less manageable
and more and more prone to inefficiencies.
The big extended empire of Rome constituted another
basis of very nemesis of the empire.It became
intractable, very difficult to manage far
fang administering this big territory, gathering
the revenues and monitoring law and order
across this big territory became more and
more expensive and eventuallybecame more and
more difficult.So,finallybegan the crumbling
of 
the Roman empire.We can say the apogee of
the Roman empire was about three hundred years
after Christ and then it started declining,
butthe growth of Roman empire produced a very
interesting historical outcome, partly directly
and partly indirectly this was the rise of
Christianity.
We all know thatJesus of Nazareth, was a central
Asian Hebrew and was Jewish by faith.It has
saidthat between his 3rd or 5th year, till
his twenty ninth year very little is known
about him where he went, what he did and so
forth.I have read a fascinating bookwhose
author I do not suddenly recall, it is a Dutch
theologian I thinkafter extensive research
as read in a book called Jesus lived in India.
In the Himalayas,
In the Himalayas right, it is said that there
is there use to be a substantial Hebrew community
in Kashmir.It is said that Jesus came to this
community,when he was young and as he grew,
it is said that he came substantially under
the influence of Buddhism and he became an
expert in Buddhist kind of teaching.From 
the history of Jesus, from Christian point
of view little is known till his twenty ninth
year, butaccording to this theologian Jesus
grew up in Kashmir and he grow up inthe midst
of other Hebrews,Hebrew speaking people,other
Jews.And he walks again westwards, travels
westwards and reaches Israel and then startswhat
is known as his ministry.
He starts preaching things which go directly
against the concurrent beliefs of Jews ofhis
time.So, at the same time and increasingly
popular young man among the Jews is also felt
to be a threat by the roman governor of Palestine.We
knowthatas a result of these tensions which
Jesus turned, came the crucifixion of Jesus
and then as the bible has said his resurrection
and his liberation and the birth of Christianity
after that.Well this other book which is about
Jesus and Kashmir,Jesus came to, lived in
India.He says Jesus did not die when he was
crucified.It quotes very interesting evidence
about how several kilos of Aloe era, the juice
of which is a vitalizer, were used to wrap
Jesus in during that night when he was crucified
and next morning a very ill very sick, butstill
alive Jesus was whisked away by two people out
of that terrain, that area.
And you hear subsequentlyabout Jesus in far
of places, butaccording to this author, this
theologian, the Dutch theologian Jesus did
not die young, he lived to be a ripe old aged
in Kashmir.He preached, he had his own followers.The
evidence is in Srinagar even now, there is
tomb of Isa.Srinagar even now has the tomb
of Jesus,which is maintained by generations
of retainers who have looked after that.So,
we have different versions at this point.We
do not have to worry much about what actually
Jesus didbecause what is important to us is
that, after Jesus’s time there were large
number of followers of his message.His message
wasyou do not need a huge priestly class,
you do not need people who intervene between
you and god.The relationship between man and
god is characterized by directness,is characterized
by mans virtues conduct which will take him
to the lord.
Thus you have a growing flock of followers
of Jesus, the early Christians, who are increasingly
houndedbecause there are a threat to the prevalent
Jewish faith and to the Roman state.Probably
the greatest of the teachers of the Christians
faithlived inRome itself,Paul and Peter.Saint
Peter and Saint Paul lived in Rome and were
martyred in Rome and so, there grew around
them in Rome one of the largest communities
of Christians.Who for a couple of 100 years
went through enormous suffering and harassment
in the hands of Roman rulers.The idea of Christian
martyrdom was epitomized time and time again
by the Christian martyrs who lived in Rome
and endlessly suffered and were killed in
large numbers harassed, butdid not lose their
faith then finally.The roman emperor himself
got converted into the Christian faith and
Roman Empire became the Christian empire.
Now this is crucial because the moment Roman
Empire became a Christian Empire, the most
powerful military force and political force
in the world became a Christian force.This
was also therefore the rise, the political
rise ofChristianity in western history.As
a Roman Empire grew, it was also increasingly
harassedfrom the east, from the north and
from the northwest, by people who are known
as Barbarians.These Barbarians were liketribes,
they were from the north as I said from the
east, from the north east and from west and
northwest.Some of them are very famous
So, we can write them, put them down there
were people likeFranks,then you hadGoths,then
you had Visigoths.
Then others too further east they developed
powerful groups with the Magyars
and so on.
These Barbarians forces were continuously
harassing the boundaries of roman empire,continuously
testing its strength, continuously looking
for chinks and weaknesses so, that they could
break through the frontier defenses of German,
I am sorry frontier defenses of Roman army
and break right through into swiping into
Rome.Eventually, this did happen,the Roman
Empire knuckled under and the Barbarians swept
all across the Roman Empire and occupied Rome.Now,
the capture of Rome by the barbarians led
to all kinds of cultural and political transformations
of Europe.
Look at the differences between the Barbarian
culture and the Roman culture,Barbarian political
order and the Roman political order.Roman
Empire worked under the emperor in an extremely
structured bureaucratic form, right up to
the frontiers of roman territory highly classified;
highly structured and highly codified systems
of laws governed the whole Roman Empire.It
had an well developed judiciary, it had a
political administrators, it had governors
and of course, it had an excellent revenue
mechanism.In contrast the barbarians holds
were highly decentralized, they did not function
under single emperors,were substantially disorganized
in the sense that they were autonomous of
each other.The Goths for instance were not
a single group, there were many groups of
Goths, who were probably tied together by
a single language like Teutonic,likewise the
Franks, likewise the Visigoths.So, they were
not unified structurally, they were also not
under a single command and it is this difference
that drew the attention of the Barbarians
and urge them for the capture of Rome.Because
they envy the Romans, this magnificent structure,
butthey dint know what to do themselves.
On the other hand there were some very interesting
thingsin the Barbarians too,the Barbarians
had in them certain practices which could
beearly versions, very early versions of modern
democracy.For instance, the barbarians hada
chieftain or chieftains, who were elected
by common consensus and these chieftains were
held accountableto a groups of leaders in
the group.Their
decentralized conduct, they see decentralized
functioning made them much more cohesive in
the last days ofconfrontation between them
and the Roman army. Roman army was more bureaucratic,more
tied down by its reason to be accountable
across spaceto different levels of leadership.
Whereasthe barbarians could move very fast
very rapidly in wren decentralized groups
and organize attacks and more importantly
they could politically stake of cohesive without
any big central leadership, central structure
of laws and so on and so forth.So, eventually
it is this quality of the barbarians that
led to their triumph.
Sir
Yes
Why are they called barbarians is there a…
Very figurative because Roman culture themselves
civilized and these were considered uncivilized.
Sir sense the barbarians.
Barbarians not in figurative sense butbarbarians
in historical sense because they got to be
referred as barbarians, butif look at it in
detailed you will see them being referred
to as Franks and Goths and Visigoths and Ostrogoths
and so forth.It is true that in a measure
the western world has an unqualified admiration
for every aspect of civilization that came
from Rome.Western law is mainly Roman law,
even today western systems of bureaucracy
very much modeledafterRoman bureaucracy.Western
systems of judiciary and western systems ofjudiciary,
political accountability very much influence
by Romeand more important the power of Rad
Latin to influence all the newly growing languages
of Europe was immense.
So, you see civilizationlythe western Europe
tense to look upon itself as children of Rome
and it looks upon all those who threaten Rome,
as Romans did in their own times as Barbarians.So,
the word Barbarian has this history, it has
a pejorative history right and in a measure
large number of x Barbarians who are now modern
western civilization, probably look upon themselves
like converts to a good cause, but we are
talking about 2000 years ago.So,when barbarians
captured Rome,they are fascinated by the language,by
the culture, by all other evidences of court
and court civilization and Barbarians adopt
all of these things so, that the culture of
Rome becomes an admixture ever afterwards,
it acquires a lot of good things from the
barbarians and it ends up court and court
civilizing the barbarians.Part of this process
is the spread of Christianity all over Europe.
We have a doubt
To some extent they were not drawing a parallel
betweenthis and say globalization as a simultaneously
on a larger scale,in the sense that we were
talking about how the Barbarians sort of became
integrated with Rome culture and they became
court and court civilizedand the culture of
Rome became more diverse.Technically, right
nowwe are sort of I mean the orient, thefinal
oriental was sort of the Barbarians today.What
kind of getting more westernized whereas,
the western world is becoming more diverse.
It could be a big temptation togo along with
this analogy, butthen the non western part
of today’s world are not barbarians by any
reckoning.The always speaker is developing
person.Under development,under development,
a lot ofparameters are set bywestern and again
the eyes of a westerner,the non western world
is still under developed and they need help.Even
ifwe look atperfectly satisfaction in smoothly
functioning village community is under developed
and there were people are illiteratesome.So,
what you are saying isdevelopment has come
to be accepted as a culture.That is what am
explaining.And that is the mostmore importantly
a superior culture right.An under development
is a culture too, butan inferior culture as
represented by lower levels of literacy perhaps
and poorer health care facilities,Medicare
facilities and a lack of infrastructure and
lack of access to information of all sorts
which would make life comfortable.You are
saying basically that there is an in a tendency
to assume that the economic difference between
the west and the non west is not just a economic
difference, butis also is a cultural difference
as defined by the west.There is something
missionary, there is a thing something evangelical
about a development expert from the westtrying
to engineer development in non western countries,
is this what you saying?
Yes
Well, this isbeing a contentionnot just in
your words, but this is been a contention
since the 1970’s. It is been said for instance
the whole development language is a form of
cultural imperialism, is a form of getting
the growing a lead of quote, unquote non western
countries to accept western Morris with a
western patterns of thinking and in short
becoming western themselves and becoming the
rulers of their countries by proxy on behalf
of the west.This was the argument of cultural
imperialism.Well having a clarified this,
I can only say this much that it is a tempting
way of looking at things.It is not necessarily
notespecially because you know the western
verses non western distinction broke down
after the 70s.For instance the coming into
economic leadership of Japan and then coming
intoeconomic leadership of south east Asian
countries, south Asian countries including
Korea, they are all non western, but they
are aggressive leaders.So, and then the rise
ofthe oil empire of middle eastandthe Arab
world,they are totally non western, but they
acquired the power to determine the rise or
fall of western economies by manipulating
the prices of oil.
So, there are been lots of things happening
since the 70s which makes one question whether
this worldcan be uniformly described as western
and non western.There is a lot, which is non
western which is become extremely powerful,
not the least of which is the rise of the
people’s republic of China. Today, the people’s
republic of China is the second largest g
d p in the world after the United States,
its past Japan.Today, the people’s republic
of China holds something like 8 to 9 hundred
billion dollars of foreign exchange results.Today,
the people’s republic of China has thousands
of its products exported worldwide.
So, what I am trying to argue at this point
is that the world today is not substantially
western versus non western.Look at India,India
has in somerespects anIT leader,India has
become increasingly a hub of automobile components,India
has becoming increasingly a hub of investment
by western companies.
So,there are things happening now which do
not yield themselves into a parallel to what
happened between Rome and the Barbarians.Certainly
in the 1960s,there was this attitude which
somewhat resembled the attitude of the Romans
towards Barbarians, but it was only the 60s
that was 40 years ago.But the point is well
taken, except that we should look at the world
in its diversity much more then in terms of
uniform classifications.So, to get back to
the spread of Christianity,the growth of increasing
interplay between the Roman Empire and Barbarian
world were led to a rapid folaphelation of
Christianity across the world of Barbarians
Andby the 6th century 
the church had almost assumed completely its
modern form and modern structure centered
around Rome.
Initially,Christian church leadership did
not put much weight on the growth of Christianity
which was so obvious in the Barbarians territories.They
were still thinking as Roman as Rome as their
headquarters and the Roman Empire as the main
force of Christianity.Butthen the early signs
of pressure became bigger signs of pressure,
the biggest contradiction within the church
increasingly was the duality between in the
church itself, in the Christian,Christendom
itself.Duality between Latin and Teutonic,Teutonic
is a northern barbarian language and culture.So,
increasingly the Teutonic element started
dominating over the Latin elementwithin Christendom.
By the3rd or 4th century, this rift became
quite significantand what is more important,
this was the basis of what would happen nearly
1200 years later, when the big break away
from the influence of church in Rome was Teutonic.The
big break occurs in the German terrain. Martin
Luther starts arguing for Christians to break
away from theinfluence of the church,the part
protestant movement commences in the 16th
century.Most important therefore, is to see
the connection between the eventual reform
of Christianity and the early duality between
the Teutonic and Latin versions of Christian
culture in early Christendom. But,there were
two or three other things which developed
immenselyin the next few centuries in Europe
as the Roman empire broke down their developed
a political order, a political system which
covered most of Europe, which was to be ruling
Europe for thenext1000 years or more.This
was the system which came to be known as Feudalism.
So,Feudalism is a political and social system
came up the breakdown of the Roman Empire
and the rise of Christianity had a lot to
do with the rise of feudal political and social
structure across Europe. It is not as if all
of Europe and one type of a model of politics
called Feudalism, no.The Feudalism of Poland
was very different form the Feudalism of the
Germanic states, the Feudalism of the Germanic
stateswas extremely different from the Feudalism
of France and Ghoul.And eventually English
Feudalism was vastly different from all of
these and across the oceans you had Feudalism
even in Japan, right up to the end of 19th
century.So Japanese Feudalism on the face
of it look similar, but was vastly different
from all thesevariation of Feudalism and across
the big empire of Russia was the power of
wholly a different kind of Feudalism,Russian
Feudalism.
So, you have the rise of broad political and
social structure coming up across Europe which
had formally lot of similarities across this
huge region, but had tremendous regional variations
too.So, what we shall doafter the break is
to look at the rise of Feudalism and thegrowth
of church along the Feudalism and take it
up to the 12th or 13th centuries to the end
of what is known as the dark age of Europe.You
have any questions at this point,all right
let me sum up.What we have seen in this class
isthat the rise and fall of Greece eventually
led to the rise of another great culture and
political force, substantially influenced
by its Greek antecedence, namely the Roman
Empire.
Roman Empire rouseand spread across the whole
of Europe,North Africa and on the one hand
you had Roman Empire extending right up toSudan,that
fall down into North Africa.And on the other
hand going north the Roman Empire conquered
all of the German territories to what is today
known as German territory,Germanicterritoryright
up to the BalticSea.On the other hand you
had the Roman Empire goingright east beyond
Turkey to the borders of Persia and on the
other side in the west it had captured of
the GreatBritish isles.So, this was at its
apogee, the extent and power of the Roman
Empire.Along with the Roman Empire grew Christianity
especially, when there was no need for Christians
to be martyredfor their cause when the roman
emperor himself became a Christian, then the
Roman Empire was a Christian empire.Then came
the practice which was followed for long afterwards,
the most influential ruler of Europe who determined
the politics of Europe, who determine the
happening in Europe also came to be referred
to as a holyRoman Emperor.
For quite a while the Holy Roman Emperor was
based out of France, then out of Rome and
eventually,towards the end of the 19th century
or middle of 19th century, the end of the
HolyRoman Empire was inAustria in Vienna.So,
this was a period of the rise into politics,
the power of the church Christianity.This
was also the period as we sawwhich heralded
at the rise of a new politicaland social order
in Europe especially, when once the Roman
Empire had declined the new social and political
order which spread across Europe which had
elements of aolder barbarian social organization
and elements of roman aristocratic traditions.Feudalism,
as a political and social form spread across
Europe.
As I said,Feudalism had broad commonalities
across Europe, butit was tremendously varied
from the end of Siberia, which saw Russian;Feudalism
across the huge continent to the British Feudalism
acrossthe British isles.You had tremendous
variations in the way Feudalism worked and
operated and transformed itself through time.Along
with Feudalism as a political and social system,
grew the church, and its institutions, and
its organizations incredible power, incredible
opulence, and most important political dominance
of Europe.
By the 14th century, the shared benefits of
the church and feudal leadership across Europe
was so good, so mutually appreciated that
the aristocracy and the feudal lords were
the most divinely blessed, if the church could
so do it. And nothing would be more suitable
to the aristocracy and feudal lords, thenseeing
the church thrive all over the world.There
was some biotic growth of the two,after the
break, we shall look at this, and see where
it led to..
