[lit-ideas] Re: The 'Near-Eastern' influences on the Greek philosophy, sc...

  • From: Scribe1865@xxxxxxx
  • To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Fri, 9 Apr 2004 10:12:20 EDT

Some argue that the Greek turn of thought was the transformation of mythic 
thinking to philosophic thought. 
Below is a cut and paste excerpt from _The Intellectual Adventure of Ancient 
Man, An Essay on Speculative Thought in the Ancient Near East_ by Henri 
Frankfort, H.A. Frankfort, John A. Wilson, Thorkild Jacobsen, and William A. 
Irwin 
(University of Chicago Press, 1946, 1977).
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How was Greek philosophy different from what came before? Or was it 
different? Even though "philosophy" is a Greek word, from phileîn, "to love," 
and 
sophía, "wisdom," perhaps it was just a continuation of how people had always 
thought about things anyway. After all, it is not uncommon now for items of 
Egyptian literature, like the Instruction of Ptah.h.otep, to be listed as 
Egyptian 
"philosophy." So if Greek philosophy is to be thought of as different, there 
must be ways of specifiying that difference. Similarly, if Greek philosophy is 
to 
be compared with Indian and Chinese philosophy, there must be something that 
they have in common, and that can be mutually contrasted with 
pre-philosophical thought. 

As it happens, Greek philosophy, and Indian and Chinese, were different from 
what came before; and we can specify what the differences were. 
Pre-philosophical thought can be characterized as "mythopoeic," "mythopoetic," 
or "mythic" 
thought. "Mythopoeic" means "making" (poieîn, from which the word "poet" is 
derived) "myth" (mûthos). There is a large and growing literature about 
mythology, but here all that is necessary are the points what will serve the 
purpose of 
distinguishing philosophical thought from the thought of people about things 
in earlier Middle Eastern civilizations (Egyptians, Babylonians, etc.). With 
the identification of the characteristics of mythic forms of human thought, it 
becomes possible to identify the unique innovations of philosophy. Note that 
philosophic thought does not replace mythopoeic thought but supplements it. 


Myths are stories about persons, where persons may be gods, heroes, or 
ordinary people. 

Example: The Babylonian Epic of Gilgamesh. King Gilgamesh seeks to become 
immortal, after the death of his friend Enkidu, but fails. This is still a 
poignant story, since human beings still face loss and grief and death, just as 
did 
Gilgamesh. Indeed, Enkidu's vision of death is still chilling: 

There is the house whose people sit in darkness; dust is their food and clay 
their meat. They are clothed like birds with wings for covering, they see no 
light, they sit in darkness. I entered the house of dust and I saw the kings of 
the earth, their crowns put away for ever... [N. K. Sanders, Penguin, 1964, 
p. 89]

Changed in Philosophy: Thales' proposed a theory of earthquakes, that they 
are just when a wave in the cosmic ocean rocks the earth, which floats like a 
plate on the ocean. This explanation eliminated the actions or intentions of 
the 
gods.

*Myth allows for a multiplicity of explanations, where the explanations are 
not logically exclusive (can contradict each other) and are often humorous. 

*Changed in Philosophy: The theories of the earliest Greeks philosophers, 
especially those about whom we know the most, like Anaximander and Heraclitus, 
are systematic and internally coherent.

*Mythic traditions are conservative. Innovation is slow, and radical 
departures from tradition rarely tolerated. 

*Changed in Philosophy: Greek philosophy represented a burst of creativity. 
While Thales' views about water reflected long held mythic accounts (both 
Egyptian, Babylonian, and Biblical creation stories begin with water), he was 
immediately superseded by the multiple novel theories of Anaximander, 
Anaximenes, 
Xenophanes, Pythagoras, and Heraclitus, all within 80 years.

*Myths are self-justifying. The inspiration of the gods was enough to ensure 
their validity, and there was no other explanation for the creativity of 
poets, seers, and prophets than inspiration by the gods. Thus, myths are not 
argumentative. Indeed, they often seem most unserious, humorous, or flippant 
(e.g. 
Rê-Khepere above). It still seems to be a psychological truth that people who 
think of new things are often persuaded of their truth just because they 
thought of them. And now, oddly, we are without an explanation for creativity. 

*Changed in Philosophy: Parmenides, after the invocation of an unnamed 
goddess in his poem, The Way of Truth, offers substantive arguments for his 
views.

*Myths are morally ambivalent. The gods and heroes do not always do what is 
right or admirable, and mythic stories do not often have edifying moral lessons 
to teach. 

Example: The Egyptian god Seth (St) murdered and dismembered his brother 
Osiris (Wsyr), but is later forgiven by Isis ('st), his sister and the wife of 
Osiris, even though Seth had badly damaged Horus's eye in their fight. The 
Egyptian king Sethi I, who built a great temple to Osiris at Abydos, the cult 
center 
of Osiris, was named after Seth (Styy) and so politely alters his name in the 
temple inscriptions to commemorate Osiris (Wsyryy) instead of Set. Thus, the 
Egyptians recognized the moral awkwardness of putting the name of Osiris's 
murderer on his temple, but this did not discredit the cult of Seth or the king 
named after him.

Example: The Greek hero of the Iliad, Achilles, seems to be a far less 
admirable character than the Trojan hero, Hector, whom Achilles slays at the 
climax 
of the epic. Even the king of the gods, Zeus, is unhappy that the better man 
will lose, but it is the fate of Hector to die. Later, Roman readers of the 
Iliad did not hesitate to imagine themselves descendants of the Trojans -- as 
in 
Virgil's Aeneid, where the Prince Aeneas, saved from Troy by his mother 
Aphrodite, travels to Italy and, anticipating Romulus, founds the Roman nation. 
There is also a school in Southern California, the arch-rival of the University 
of 
California at Los Angeles, where the student body is named after the warriors 
of Troy. 

Changed in Philosophy: The Presocratic philosopher Xenophanes criticizes the 
poets for ascribing shameful acts to the gods: 

Homer and Hesiod have attributed to the gods everything that is a shame and 
reproach among men, stealing and committing adultery and deceiving each other. 
[from Sextus Empiricus, Against the Mathematicians, translated by Kirk & 
Raven, The Presocratic Philosophers, Cambridge, 1964, p. 168]

Heraclitus condemns blood sacrifice. The moralization of the Greek gods is 
thoroughly effected by Socrates and Plato, who cannot imagine the gods doing 
anything wrong or evil. A similar moral critique is carried out in contemporary 
Persian religion by the prophet Zoroaster (Zarathushtra); and Judaism, over a 
period of time, undergoes a similar process, as the Prophets represent God 
requiring just and holy actions.

Given these characteristics, we can say that the Instruction of Ptah.h.otep, 
and similar items of Egyptian literature, display no break with mythpoeic 
modes of thought. Indeed, if Ptah.h.otep were to count as philosophy, it is 
hard 
to see why parts of the Bible would not also count. But the Bible is never 
proposed as the first example of Jewish philosophy, probably because this would 
confuse the distinction people would want to make between religion and 
philosophy. 

On the other hand, works like the Mân.d.ûkya Upanis.ad and the Tao Te Ching 
are clearly impersonal, systematic, and innovative; and, although they are 
arguably religious, they are so in a way that is not recognizably analogous to 
Judaism, Christianity, and Islâm, since a personal God does not appear in them. 
Indeed, they are impersonal to a higher degree than much of Greek philosophy. 
On the other hand, they are not argumenative, so they have not reached quite 
the same point as Parmenides in breaking with the fourth characteristic of 
mythic thought. 

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