Introduction
One of the biggest questions I have always had about the ancient Greeks was why do we give them so much credit for anything. It seems like no matter what I try to learn more about, there are elements of Greek thought somewhere involved. Studying politics, I learn it was the Greeks who put the basic concepts in place. Studying science, it was the Greeks who provided the systematic means of breaking down a question to find the answer. Learning about the arts, it was again the Greeks who brought this to the forefront and remain a constant influence on new works. As a result, when given the opportunity to know more about the ancient Greek culture and their contributions to society, I found myself focusing more on their philosophy as something that has strongly influenced the society I grew up in.
Textbook
The textbook gives a nice basic understanding of the ancient Greek philosophers. Starting with an overview of how Greek culture was largely concerned with knowledge, the text moves on to explore some of the basic schools of thought that emerged. This starts with how some Greeks concerned themselves with discovering the unity of the universe, even going so far as to suggest that all things are linked with water as a means of discovering more scientific causes than the superstitious and fanciful stories of the gods and goddesses. The Sophists developed the thought that the unity of the universe could not be discovered by mortal man, but what could be discovered was a greater state of being within man. They accomplished this primarily through the medium of rhetoric, which is still used today in a number of arenas and became the means by which future Greek scholars would act. These future scholars included Socrates, who developed the Socratic Method of questioning as a means of helping students discover the answers of life within themselves, Plato, who ensured that the world would know about Socrates and who developed his own philosophical thought including the idea of Utopia and Aristotle, who became the teacher of Alexander the Great. These men contributed a great deal of thought regarding what comprises a moral and ethical man and, by extension, what is a moral and ethical government.
The Ancient Greeks
The article “The Ancient Greeks” by Dr. C. George Boeree goes into much more detail regarding the ancient Greeks and their philosophies, particularly the earlier Greeks before Socrates. In doing so, he provides his reader with a much closer means of understanding the importance the Greeks had to today’s society. This starts with their use of the alphabet and its distribution through their sailing efforts and continues to tell about how the Greeks developed metaphysics, materialism, idealism, epistemology, empiricism, rationalism, ethics, hedonism and cynicism. He also explores the development of Greek thought from the early Ionians and how they worked to discover the unifying element of the universe to the Greeks of Italy who focused more on mathematics in their philosophy and insistence on material evidence. He discusses an entire group that wasn’t even mentioned in the textbook who he calls the Abderans who were focused more on metaphysics before he moves on to the Sophists.
Conclusion
This research really fills in the blank spots regarding how the knowledge of the Greeks has translated into the knowledge of present-day society. While the textbook focuses, like most do, on the political and ethical contributions of Sophocles, Plato and Aristotle, this article fills in the blanks regarding other ways that the Greeks have contributed to our modern thinking. I believe that any real look into the Ancient Greeks should include some of this information to illustrate that they weren’t just about politics and ethics, but that different groups were interested in different elements of thought.
Works Cited
Boeree, C. George. “The Ancient Greeks, Part One: The Pre-Socratics.” (2000). Web.