9-4-2001
Tutor Sessions – Mondays and Wednesdays at 7:00 P.M.
Terms
- Western
o Relating to the Western Europe
o Compared to Eastern (China), and Middle Eastern (Palestine)
- History
o Everything that has happened in the human past
- Civilization
o Stage of human history
o Complex culture
- Culture
o An aspect of civilization
o Ideas, beliefs, and values
What Historians Research and Write On
- What kinds of subjects come to your mind?
- What kinds of subjects have historians traditionally written on?
o Politics
o The elite classes
- What kinds of subjects are now being studied?
o Everything!
How Historians Research
- From reading traditional written, primary sources to employing quantitative methods
- Precise and scientific
- Nature / Meaning / Usefulness of History
9-11-2001
Formation of Near Eastern Civilizations
- We tend to be eurocentric
o Biased that all of the western society originated in the west
From the Old Stone Age to the New Stone Age
- Old Stone Age – Paleolithic
o 3,000,000 B.C. – 8,000 B.C.
o Developments
§ Tools, spoken language, domesticated fire
- New Stone Age – Neolithic
o Began in near east, about 8,000 B.C.
o Revolutionary developments
§ Agriculture
· Growing food, raising animals
· People remain settled in the same area
· plow, ox yoke, wheel, sail
§ Religion became more structured
§ Use of metals – copper, bronze
Near Eastern Civilizations
- River valley civilizations
o Working together
- Mesopotamia
o Sumerians, and others
o Land between the rivers – Tigris and Euphrates
o First Sumerians transformed swamps into Barley fields
o 12 City States
o Cuneiform – pictogram alphabet
o Brick houses, irrigation, trade, currency, dictionaries, math, learning, lunar calendar
o Religion was central to their life
o Ziggurats – Temples directed economy and irrigation
o Pessimism – death
o Kingship was not divine or appointed by gods
o Code of Hammurabi
Egypt
- By 2000 B.C., Egypt was centralized under pharaohs
- Developed along the Nile river valley
- Nile flooded regularly
- Religion was also a central part of their life
o 2000 gods
- 2.3 million stone blocks used on the largest pyramid
o Still the largest stone structure in the word
- Developed math and a calendar with 12 months of 30 days
Near Eastern Empires
- Hittite Empire
o Horse drawn chariots
o Iron industry
- Phoenicians
o World’s greatest traders
o Developed alphabet
- Assyrians
o Militarily powerful
§ Developed siege weapons, i.e. rams
o Destruction of Assyrians at Ninevah by Caldeans in 612 B.C.
9-13-2001
Caldea
- Babylonian Palestine
- Successfully threatened Persians
- Syrus the Great
o Father of Darius
§ Father of Xerxes
Hebrews
- Judeo-Christian tradition
o Different view of God and the individual
o Dignity of the individual
o Law, morality, and social justice
- Political History
o Originated in Mesopotamia
o Migrated to Canaan
o Moses arose in 1250 B.C., led an exodus
§ Transformed individuals into a nation
o Twelve independent tribes
o Philistines attacked the Hebrews
§ Need for a strong central government
o Around 1020 B.C., Saul became King
§ Died around 1000 B.C.
o David – next king
o Solomon – died in 922 B.C.
§ Built the temple in Jerusalem
§ Bought the Ark to Jerusalem
- After 922, the Kingdom divides
o Judah = tribes loyal to Solomon’s son
o Israel = other tribes
- 722 B.C. – Israel fell to the Assyrians
- 586 B.C. – Caldeans conquered Judah and destroyed temple
o Both took Hebrews captive
- Torah pieced together = Pentateuch
- 538 B.C. – Cyrus of Persia allows exiles to return to Judah
- 515 B.C. – Second temple dedicated
View of God and Relation to Humans
- God is sovereign, eternal, and not subject to fate
- God is separate from nature
- God is morally good, and makes an ethical demand on people
Individuals and Moral Autonomy
- New awareness of the individual
- People freely choose between good and evil
- Obligations to the community
Covenant Law
- God’s special agreement with the Hebrew people
- Justice
History
- Hebrews saw history as important
- God revealed himself in human history
- God made holidays – Exodus
Early Greecce
- Overview of Ancient Greeks’ Importance
o Tried to construct wholly rational view of the world
- Rational / Secular Outlook
o Thales
§ 6th Century B.C.
§ Investigate the Universe rationally
§ First philosopher
o Protagoras
§ Considered the first Sophist
§ Taught a philosophy based on his maxim “Man is the measure of all things”
o Hippocrates
§ Developed school of medicine
§ Diseases are not divine – they have natural causes
o Thucydides
§ Considered the greatest historian of antiquity
§ Wrote a critical history of the Peloponnesian War
§ Law and Justice are human creations
10-2-2001
Formulated “basic questions about human life”
- Nature of the universe
- Divine Powers
- Law and Justice
Early Greece (2800 – 480 B.C.)
- Minoan Crete (2500 – 1450 B.C.)
o Bronze age civilization
o Height around 2000 – 1450 B.C.
o Palace at Knosus
o We are unsure why Minoan Crete fell
- Mycenaen Greeks (1600 – 1100 B.C.)
o Mycenae – fortifited cite
o Warrior people
o Possible military expedition to Troy
Dark Age (1100 – 750 B.C.)
- Period of Homer
- What do we mean by “Dark Age”?
o Bleak period
o Barbarous invades destroyed palaces and wealth
o Time of depopulation
o Lost the art / skill of writing
o Revival came when they adopted an alphabet that was reduced to 24 letters
- Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey
o Considered best window into dark ages
o Tell of deeds of earlier Mycenaean age heroes
o Most likely thought in his mind and orated
o Later people wrote the stories down
- Homer’s Picture of Dark Age Life
o Limited monarchial power by need to consult a council of nobles
o Keep power decentralized
o Class society
o Nobles and everyone else
o Aristocratic society – birth determined wealth
o Homeric poems reflected aristocratic code of values
o Iliad
§ Last year of the Trojan war
§ Menelaus and Helen from Sparta
§ Priam – King of Troy, Hector – Troy’s greatest hero
§ Countless wars in human history – Iliad stands for them all
§ What it means to be human and what it means to die
§ Emphasis on arête = excellence
§ Sense of honor – code of warrior
§ Heroism, pursuit of glory
§ Humanism – Gods are on periphery
o Striving for excellence was not confined to men
§ Slave women (maids and concubines)
§ Often managed the household
§ Penelope (Odysseus’s wife) remained faithful for 20 years
§ Woman move freely
§ Household is an eternal good
10-9-2001
Archaic Age (750 – 500 B.C.)
- Two major developments
o Evolution of the polis
o Colonization of some Mediterranean and Black Sea
- Reason and the Polis
o From 750 –320 B.C., Greek society was structured around the Polis – city state
o Geographically – mountains and archipelago nature of Greece led to Poli’s
o Self governing community, expressing the free will of the citizens, not the will of Priests or gods
o Role of the gods decreased
o Politics was a function of the people – human law
o Humans cause problems, and must fix them
o Peasants were still superstition
- Greeks and Free Citizenship
o Abhor the idea of tyrants and absolute Kings
o Four political stages of city-states
§ Monarchy –> Oligarchy –> Tyranny –> Democracy
o Athens was the most famous city-state
o Sparta valued discipline and order over freedom
Athens and Democracy
- By 7th century B.C., Aristocrats took over power from the monarchs
- Aristocracy – rule of the best
- Tension between the Aristocracy and the noveaux riche
o Also between the peasants and Aristocrats
o Law biased by Aristocrats
o Aristocracy gave over power to Solon in 590
- Solon was a poet with a reputation for being wise
o A principle of justice undermines human community
o Aristocracy caused an imbalance of wealth
o Commitment to moderation
o Rational approach to politics
o Open up politics to people beyond aristocracy
o Retired from office
o Refused to use his popularity to become a tyrant
- In 540 B.C., Pisistratus seized power
o Was an aristocrat
o Exiles the other aristocrats
o Initiated reforms on behalf of the poor
o Gave state loans to farmers who needed financial assistance
o Subsidized big architectural projects
o Endeared himself to the general masses
o Made culture more accessible
§ Dramas of Homer’s epics
§ Made Athens the cultural leader of Greece
o Used power in a benevolent way
o Paved the way to democracy
- Cleisthene’s Reforms (508 – 501 B.C.)
o Only broad participation could solve the problems
o Redrew the city lines
o Redirects people from religion and ethnicity to the community
o Made the Assembly supremely important
§ All males were members
o Might have invented ostracism
§ Once a year, Athenians could write on an ostrecon the name of someone threatening to disrupt power of the government
§ If enough people write a name, the person is exiled for a year
Classical Greece (479 – 338 B.C.)
- 479 – Persians defeated by Greece
- 338 – Greece loses independence to Phillip of Macedon
- The importance of the Persian Wars (490 – 479 B.C.)
o Persians spreading westward, Greeks spreading eastward
o Collision of two advancing separate empires
o 490 – Darius sends army to take over Aegean
§ Defeated on the plain of Marathon
o Xerxes, Darius’s son
§ Led a major military offensive
§ ¼ million men marched
§ 500 ships launched toward Athens
§ Parallel to the Spanish’s attempted invasion of England in 1688 with the Invincible Armada
o Victory brought upon Greece a soaring confidence and the reflection of reason, rationally developed
Politics
- Domestic: The Flowering of Democracy
o By 462, democracy was firmly entrenched
§ Aristocratic council stripped of power
§ Citizens made laws
§ Met 40 times per year
§ Debated on major issues
o By 450’s, the will of the people was supreme
o Equality in right to vote and submit motions
o A council of 500 managed state
§ Chosen by lot
§ Could hold office twice in a lifetime
§ Office lasted for a year
o 350 magistrates chosen by lot, and paid by the government
o The government was described as a government of amateurs
o No professional soldiers or judges
o Assumed most citizens would be able to handle the government
o Serve without complaints – civic duty
o ¼ population of Athens were slaves
o Aristotle believed that Men are the dominant sex and should rule. Women are the weaker sex, and should be ruled
o Women married at age 14
o Greeks had a narrow conception of what rights are
§ Depended on the city-state
10-9-2001
Politics
- Foreign
o Athenian Imperialism
§ Began after defeating Persia in 479
§ Delian League (478 B.C.)
§ More than 150 city-states
§ Designed to prevent further attempts of Persians to take over
§ Voluntary when it was first began
§ Athens came to dominate, and used it to imperialize other city-states
§ The money taken from members was used to build the Parthenon
o Seemed bent on preserving sovereignty of city-states
o Sparta concerned by the Delian league
§ Decided on war against Athens
§ 431 – 404 B.C.
§ Great Peloponnesian War
- Effects of the Peloponnesian War
o Internal Decadence
§ Period of deterioration or decline
o Moderation gave way to extremism
o Love of Power was the cause of all these evils
- Phillip II of Macedon came to power over the Greeks in 338 B.C.
Thought and Culture
- Philosophy
o Cosmologists – A rational inquiry into nature
o Nature is not operated by gods or chance, but by principles and laws of order
o Origins of scientific thought
o World can be investigated rationally and systematically
o Thales (624 – 548 B.C.)
§ Water is the basic element of nature
§ The surface of the earth floated on the water
· When the water became turbulent, earthquakes resulted
§ Predicted a solar eclipse
· Heavenly objects move in patters
o Anaximenes (? – 525 B.C.)
§ Rejected the idea that rainbows represent the goddess Iris
§ Thought that they were sun rays going through dead air
§ Matter philosopher
· Believed everything came from elements
· Air is the basic element
o Pythagoras (580 – 507 B.C.)
§ Essence of things is mathematical
§ Cosmos have a mathematical nature
o Parmenides (515 – 450 B.C.)
§ Apply mathematical logic in philosophical argument
§ Father of logic
· Arguments must me consistent, and faultless
§ Reality is eternal, and unchanging
§ Genuine truth came through abstract reasoning
o Democritus (460 – 370 B.C)
§ Universe is made of atoms
§ We should be able to defend theory logically
§ Differentiated between medicine and magic
o Sophists: A rational Investigation of Society
o Apply tools of logic to the human world
o Some argue that sophists invented secular education
o Barbarians are meant to be slaves
o Slavery is by chance
§ People are fundamentally alike
o Protagoras (481 – 411 B.C.)
§ Man is the measure of all things
§ Good and evil, true and false depend on the individual
§ Law is the invention of the rich to keep the poor in check
10-11-2001
Socrates (469 – 399 B.C.): The Rational Individual
- Born in Athens, 10 years after the Persian War
- Lived during the Classical Period and the Peloponnesian War
- Education improves individual
- Attacked relativism of the Sophists
o No insight into profound questions – “Meaning of Life”
- Try to perfect your character
- Reason is the predominant guide of the soul
- Wrong thinking resulted in wrong doing
o Knowledge of what is right helps you to act rightly
- Dialectics – way of inquiry
o Logical discussion, Socratic method
o People could make good moral choices
o Made individual center of the universe, reason the center of the individual, and morality the center of reason
- Came to be formally charged with corrupting the youth, because they were not believing in the city’s gods
- Trial when he was 70 years of age
- Ordered to drink poison
- Saw himself as a prophet of sorts
Plato (428 – 347 B.C.): The Rational Society
- Established the Platonic Academy
o A forerunner of the modern universe
- Divided education into three categories
o Primary, secondary, and higher education
- One couldn’t perfect oneself if the society is not perfect
- Theory Of Ideas
o Built on Socratic ideas and Hermenides
o Existence of higher reality
§ The World of Ideas or Forms
§ Unchanging, eternal, universal standards
§ No human can draw a perfect square, but there are perfect squares
- The Just State
o Developed a rational model of the State
§ The Republic was the first major work of Utopian literature
o Influenced by his own experiences
o Lived through Peloponnesian War, and rational society putting to death a rational man (Socrates)
o Athenians slid downhill morally
o Plato tried to reform Athens politically and morally
o Democracies could degenerate into anarchy
§ Citizens became intoxicated with liberty
o The average person could be a good public servant
o Felt people would be better under a philosopher-king than under democracy
o People are unequal skill and talent-wise
§ Some are good as Philosopher-Kings, and some are good plumbers
o Is Platonism compatible with Christianity?
§ God is a higher form
§ Plato taught life after death – rewards and punishments
· Immortality of the soul
§ Differences:
· No divine revelation
· Salvation through personal goodness
· Unaided reason is good in a servant, but not good in a master”
Aristotle (384 – 322 B.C.): A Synthesis of Greek Thought
- Studied at Plato’s Academy
- Tutor to Alexander the Great
- Established a school in Athens – the Lyceum
o Studying animal parts and metaphysics
§ The branch of philosophy that examines the nature of reality
- Took on the monumental task of organizing Greek thought
o Considered “the authority” on all subjects except math
- Critique of Plato’s Theory of Ideas
o Like Democritus, renewed confidence in the senses
o Felt two-world model was too mysterious
o Believed Plato undervalued the world of facts
9-16-2001
(Aristotle Continued)
- Ethical Thought
o A knowledge of ethics should be rationally derived
o Reason and rationality differentiated humans and animals
o Through proper training, people could regulate desires
§ No extremes
- Political Thought
o To live a good virtuous life, you need to live in a political community
o Community might help to moderate behavior
o Only a polis could do this
o Did not want women to participate in politics
§ Silence is a woman’s glory
o Did not aim for utopia
§ Wanted to find the most effective government for people in normal circumstances
o Trusted law more than individuals
§ At times, laws should be changed
§ Infrequently though – If changed too often, people lose respect for the law
o Tyrants threatened the rule of law
o Middle-class people made better rulers
§ They had enough land, not too much or little
o Aristotle liked constitutional government best
Art
- The mirror of culture
- Order, harmony, balance, rationality, moderation, and humanism
- The Parthenon typifies the principles of classical architecture: the search for calmness, clarity, and freedom from superfluous detail. The individual parts of the temple were constructed in accordance with certain mathematical ratios also found in natural phenomena (Spielvogel, 81)
- Naturalistic, realistic
- Not perfectly representational
o Idealized realism
o Portrays the “essence” of a thing
Poetry and Drama
- Rise of the individual
- Sapph (600 B.C.)
- Pindar (518 – 438 B.C.)
o Praises an athlete who strives for excellence
o Striving in the face of difficulty
- Drama originated in Greece
o In religious festival to Dionysus, the God of Wine
o Thespus engaged in a monologue, stepping out of the choir
o Actors today known as Thespians
o Some think Socrates was influence by the theater
o Used masks, so the same player could act in several roles
- Aeschylus
o Wrote play called “Persian”
o Singled out Xerxes as greedy, wanting more land
- Sophocles
o “Father of the modern tragedy”
o Characters often resisted reason
o Oedipus Rex
- Euripides
o Human beings have a strong rational component
o But also strong emotional and irrational motives
History
- History as we know it, as the systematic analysis of past events, was a Greek creation. Herodotus (c. 484 –c. 425 B.C.), a Dorian Greek from Asia Minor, has rightly been called the “father of history” since his History of the Persian Wars is usually regarded as the first real history in Western civilization. It is indeed the earliest lengthy Greek prose work to have survived intact. The Greek word historia (from which we derive our word history) means “research” or “investigation” . . . (Spielvogel, 78)
- General Historical Ideas
o Humans are the agents in history
o Wrote in prose “the language of rational thought”
o Analyzed things in history – understanding the story
- Herodotus (484 – 425 B.C.)
o “Father of History”
o Bridge between Homer and Thucydides
o History of the Persian Wars – clash of world views
§ Persian despotism and Greek freedom
o Goes to sources for information
§ Human interview
o Non partisan, unbiased writer
§ Gave respect to Persians
o True historian: examined the
§ Value in studying the past
§ Worth studying
§ Cause and effects, reasons why
- Thucydides (460 – 400 B.C.)
o History of the Peloponnesian War
o Political history is the guts of history
o Idea of the balance of power
o The growing power of Athens was causing imbalance
o Greek attack on Syracuse was a terrible blunder
Summary
- Human like anyone else
o Massacre, assassinate, slavery
- Western thought began with the Greeks
- First defined individual by the capacity to reason
- Tools for developing reason and logic
- Diminishing reliance on the gods
- Emphasized political liberties
- People weren’t subjects – Citizens
o Had a rational say
- Political community free
- Political power should be regulated by law
- Law was an expression of reason
- Conception of ethical freedom
o People had moral choices
o Choose between shame and honor, moderation and excess
o Worth of human beings, and their significance