Читать книгу A Beginner's History of Philosophy, Vol. 1: Ancient and Mediæval Philosophy онлайн

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The Greek Enlightenment.

1. The Impulse for Learning. In the first place there was a general impulse throughout Greece for education. Everybody seemed to want to know what the schools of Cosmologists had had to say about science. The Greeks now had wealth and therefore leisure; they had come into contact with the Oriental peoples and therefore they had their curiosity excited. Learning, which had been confined in the Cosmological Period to a few scholars in the schools, now came forth into the market place. Learning in the fifth century B.C. was drawn from the schools into publicity. The objects of interest had greatly widened and the learning of the scholars began to filter into the general consciousness. Whereas in the sixth century philosophy was a matter between learned men, in the fifth century we find Socrates and the Sophists teaching whosoever would listen.

2. The Practical Need of Knowledge. But mere curiosity will not entirely explain the Greek intellectual movement. There had grown up an imperative practical need for knowledge. In Athens and other Greek cities the democracy of the fifth century B.C. had supplanted the tyranny of the sixth century. Duty and inclination together forced the citizen into active participation in public affairs. In these democratic cities family tradition and character were no longer sufficient for success; but it became generally recognized that the most useful and successful man was the educated man. The complex relations existing between states and between the citizens in the states made education absolutely necessary for the politician. Nowhere was the need of an education more imperative than in Athens; nowhere was the need more easily filled. In a very short time after the Persian Wars the social position of science changed to one of power; and the inner character of science changed from the study of nature to the study of ethical and political problems. Scientists became teachers of eloquence, for the citizen now needed to be an orator and a rhetorician. Statesmen and generals must know how to persuade. Courts of law were public, their proceeding oral, and personal attendance was therefore required. There was no man in Athens who might not be condemned, if he could not personally in court refute falsehoods and disentangle sophistries. Besides, to be beaten in debate was as disgraceful in the eyes of the public as to lose one’s cause.