Western Civilization. Paul R. Waibel
Aristotle (385–322 BC) wrote on every subject. He was an organizer, a systematizer. He wrote on botany, zoology, metaphysics, logic, rhetoric, poetry, ethics, and political theory, to name just a few of the areas he examined. Like Plato, who founded the Academy, Aristotle also founded a school, the Lyceum. Like Plato he wrote a book, Politics, in which he tried to describe the best form of government. But unlike Plato, Aristotle did not describe a utopia. Instead, he defended the city‐state of Hellenic Greece. For Aristotle, law, not a philosopher‐king, would rule the affairs of the city‐state's citizens.
Aristotle also departed from his former teacher with respect to where he found reality. For Aristotle, reality is in the object itself, not in a perfect realm of ideas. Whereas Plato stressed the universals, Aristotle stressed the particulars. This tension over what is real, or where reality is located, in the universals or the particulars, has troubled Western thought ever since. It became even more of an issue with the enthronement of Aristotle as the philosopher of the Middle Ages by Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) and other scholastic philosopher‐theologians (see Chapter 6).
Simply stated, the problem is, that if you begin with the particulars (e.g. the individual), how do you find ultimate and adequate meaning for the particulars? With Plato, the meaning of the particulars is found in the universals (absolutes) that exist in the realm of ideas. Clearly, Plato and Aristotle are two of the most important thinkers in the history of Western thought and examples of the importance of the classical period for the history of Western Civilization. It would be the task of the Romans to pass on this rich heritage, along with that of the ancient Hebrews, to Europe.
The Greek Legacy
The influence of ancient Greece on Western Civilization is evident everywhere. Walk down just about any street and see the Greek influence in architecture, especially in government buildings. Participate in an election, or witness a trial, where attorneys appeal to the laws of the land before judges and juries sworn to consider the evidence in light of reasoned laws passed by the citizens for the good of the community as a whole. Consider the advances in modern science, whether space exploration or the latest advances in medicine, all possible, because the Greeks established the supremacy of human reason over mysticism, religion, custom, and accepted authority.
The elevation of the individual as a reasoning being who could understand nature and human society, and thereby improve both society and the individual is perhaps the greatest achievement of the Greeks. People could create an organized society in which the people governed themselves. It was possible, they believed, to improve both society and the individual through education, the disciplined pursuit of excellence (arête, virtue). They did not see the individual as innately good in the sense that there was no dark side to human nature. Rather, by the creation of laws and public institutions, accepted moral norms, and the building of character, the flaws in human nature could be held in check.
The Greek contribution to Western Civilization can be summed up thus: “Whatever we experience in our day, whatever we set out to find, we see that the Greeks have been there before us, and we meet them on their way back” (Cahill 2003, p. 264).
References
1 Cahill, T. (2003). Sailing the Wine‐Dark Sea: Why the Greeks Matter. New York: Nan A. Talese/Doubleday.
2 Drews, R. (1993). The End of the Bronze Age: Changes in Warfare and the Catastrophe Ca. 1200 B.C. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
3 North Whitehead, A. and Griffin, D.R. (1978). Process and Reality: An Essay in Cosmology. Corrected ed. New York: Free Press.
4 Perry, M., Baker, J.W., and Pfeiffer Hollinger, P. (2003). The Humanities in the Western Tradition: Ideas and Aesthetics. Vol. I: Ancient to Medieval. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
5 Sophocles (2019). Sophocles, Tereus, fr.583 (Radt). Aleator classicus. https://aleatorclassicus.wordpress.com/2012/04/21/sophocles‐tereus‐fr‐583 (accessed 18 October 2019).
6 Stearns, P.N. (1977). The Face of Europe. St. Louis: Forum Press.
7 Van Dolen, H. (2018). Greek Homosexuality. Livius. https://www.livius.org/articles/concept/greek‐homosexuality (accessed 18 October 2019).
8 Weiner, J. (2015). What Caused The Mysterious Bronze Age Collapse? Ancient History Et Cetera. http://etc.ancient.eu/2015/05/20/what‐caused‐the‐bronze‐age‐collapse (accessed 18 October 2019).
Notes
1 1 The first flush toilets in Washington DC's White House were installed during the presidency of Rutherford B. Hayes (1877–1891).
2 2 Xerxes I is thought by some scholars to be the Persian King Achashveros in the Old Testament book of Esther.
3 3 The best known of the Sophists were Protagoras, Gorgias, Antiphon, Hippias, Prodicus, and Thrasymachus.
4 4 Alfred North Whitehead said of Plato's influence, “The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato” (Whitehead and Griffin 1978, p. 39).
3 The Roman World
Chronology
753 BC Traditional Date of Founding of Rome509 BC Rome Becomes a Republic450 BC Law of the Twelve Tables390 BC Gauls Sack Rome264–241 BC First Punic War218–202 BC Second Punic War149–146 BC Third Punic War and Destruction of Carthage134–122 BC Gracchi Brothers' Land Reform60 BC First Triumvirate (J. Caesar, Pompey, Crassus)44 BC Julius Caesar Assassinated43 BC Second Triumvirate (Octavian, Mark Antony, Lepidus)27 BC Roman Empire Begins27 BC–AD 180Pax Romana19 BC Virgil's Aeneidc. 4 BC–c. AD 30/33Jesus of Nazareth AD 235–285“Barracks Emperors” AD 293Diocletian Founded Tetrarchy AD 311Constantine's Edict of Milan AD 381Theodosius I Declares Christianity Only Legal Religion AD 378Battle of Adrianople AD 410Goths Sack Rome AD 426St. Augustine's City of God AD 476End of Roman Empire in the West
According to legend, the city of Rome was founded in 753 BC on a site occupied by an Indo‐European people known as the Latins. At about the same time that Rome was being founded, the prophets Amos and Hosea were warning the Kingdom of Judah of God's impending judgment represented by the threat from the Assyrians; Sparta was coming under the rule of Five Ephors; and in Egypt, Piankhi, an Ethiopian, was founding the 25th Dynasty. Farther afield in India, the Upanishads, the Hindu scriptures, were being written down for the first time, and in China, the original Chou Dynasty was ending, as China slipped into a 500‐year‐long era of warring barons.
Roman history extends chronologically from the middle of the eighth century BC to the fall of the Roman Empire in the West, traditionally dated in AD 476, and beyond, to the fall of Constantinople, the capital of the Eastern Roman (or Byzantine) Empire to the Ottoman Turks in 1453. Roman civilization is the direct ancestor of Western Civilization. It transmitted to Europe Classical humanism and the Judeo‐Christian religious tradition, two primary ingredients of Western Civilization. Its collapse at the end of the fifth century introduced the third major ingredient, the Germanic influence.
Much of what is regarded as typically “Western” originated with or was influenced by the Romans. Many European languages are descended from the Latin spoken by the Romans. Roman law forms the basis of not only the cannon