PANDEMONIUM BOOKS & PUBLICATIONS.
Merida, Venezuela, 1999. COPYRIGHT: Franz J. T. Lee.
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CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
HISTORY OF WISDOM IV
A WISE MAN
Beyond any reasonable doubt, as our alma mater teaches us, for any scholar of the "History of Philosophy" Thales of Miletus was a "Wise Man", a sophós; in fact, he was the first philósophos, the Arch-Lover of Wisdom. Let us illuminate this ancient "Age of Wisdom", the natural habitat and the social environment of this famous hylozoist, of the Father of Philosophy. As we know, only Ancient Greek "Mythology" had some Mothers of Wisdom like Gaia, Athena or Minerva, Aphrodite, Venus or Diana.
Know Thyself!
Between the 7th and 6th Century B.C., a hybridous
process between Cosmogony and Philosophy was ushered in: the intra-systemic,
patrian, qualitative leap from magical beliefs to "scientific knowledge".
It is well-known that the most important cosmogonic sanctuary in Ancient
Greece was the Oracle of Delphi, the Temple of Apollo, the Sun-God,
who had extradited the ancient Great Mother, Gaia. It had the wise inscription:
gnothi
seautón
(Know Thyself!).
This is surely a wise "Commandment" to remember. This oracle ordained sophía,
Wisdom; and its Divine Superintendent was the Goddess Minerva (Athena).
It is pertinent to note that the ancient "Seven Wise Men" still had their
genesis and sanction in Greek feminist mythology and cosmogony. In this
sonorous group always appeared: Thales
of Miletus, Solon
of Athens and Bias
of Priene. Other interchangeable erudite thinkers were Pittakos
of Mytilene, Periander,
the Tyrant of Corinth,
Epimenides
of Crete, Cheilon
and Anarcharsis,
the Schyte.
Knowledge is Power!
Obviously, the Greek Sophos was a pagan, a chthonic artisan, a banausikos, a handicraftsman, who also involved himself in matters of the Polis. He saw his social task as not to be "banausian", not to be a vulgar member of the community, on the contrary, he wanted to be active, cosmic, praxical. This is the fons et origo of the future businessman, of the homo faber. His praxical real life experiences the Sophos reflected and reproduced in his mind, in his intellect. Here we note the archaic relation between action and thought, between praxis and theory, that as production unfolds, progressively will be transformed into dualistic, clashing physical and intellectual labour forces.
This mental product he expressed as a gnome
(Latin: sententia), as a guide for future social praxis and
theory. Truly, this still has nothing to do with goblins or dwarfs, or,
in a modern sense, it has not yet the coming ideological relation
to the capitalist Gnomes of Zurich, Switzerland, or to the CEO's of Corporate
America. These wise, ancient gnomes were somehow still inspired by gnosis,
by "Know Thyself"! In essence, however, knowledge was already related to
"human" power, to social power. If we exclude the gifted Athenian courtesan,
Aspasia, the hetaira of Pericles, we have to realize that
the
"WISE MEN" were already well on
their way towards patriarchal empiricism, to patrian positivism, to
"Knowledge is Power" (Francis Bacon).
Early Fiery Flashes of Prometheus and Heracleitus
Surely this intellectual process reflected severe
economic and social tension and conflict in Hellas, especially in the "colonies"
of Asia Minor, particularly
in Miletus and Ephesus, the flourishing commercial
and cultural centres. They, social expressions of the primitive accumulation
of capital, generated the revolutionary seeds, the agon
and agony of the future intrasystemic, formal-logical and dialectical "negation",
of the slave revolts, of the artisan and peasant unrest: the archaic, patrian
roots of Spartacus, Thomas Münzer, Danton, Robespierre, Babeuf, Blanqui,
Bakunin, Marx, Lenin, Trotsky, Che, Castro, etc.
Thus, permanently, social conflicts had haunted Miletus, the birthplace of Thales. They did not only involve the wealthy social classes, even more so, they shook the very foundations of ancient labour, of the "free" population, the slaves, the "wretched" of Ancient Greece. In their eternal wrath and sempiternal frustration, the latter social classes occasionally killed aristocratic wives and children; in revenge, in the style of the coming Inquisition, the tyrannical, aristocratic or democratic rulers publicly burned the plebeian underdogs and "witches" alive on the market squares.
Crucifixion, Coming "Gas Chambers"
and "Extermination of Vietcong"
Everywhere in the ancient Greek colonies such
burning, living, "non-human" or "sub-human" torches were serving as horrendous
warnings against any future attempts to change the status quo,
the then slave-owning society. Later this practice was continued in the
Greco-Roman Empire, by means of crucifixion, in the "Third Reich" as gas
chambers for "dirty, filthy Jews", and in the Vietnam War, as extermination
of the "communist" or "terrorist" Vietcong. The ancient Greek slave hirrient
death-cries, and the hesternal Spartacus sparks in agony, were destined
to reach the contemporary colonial, neo-colonial and anti-imperialist emancipatory
movements. In this macabre atmosphere Thales and "Western Philosophy" were
born, and its modern up-graded, neo-fascist, globalized version still flows
in this ancient "river of blood", in this "master and slave" vale
of sorrows.
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