Transcript Document

Ancient Greece
Minoan civilization(2000-1200BC)
Homeric Age
Mycenacan civilization(1500-1200BC)
The Dark Age (1150-700BC)
Greek Archaic Age(700-600BC)
(Philosophy)
Greek Golden Age(600-400BC
(Classical)
Creation of Myths
Greek Classical Mythology
Lecturer: Wu Shiyu
Email: [email protected]
http://sla.sjtu.edu.cn/bbs
Greek Classical Mythology
 The
mythology of the Greeks has had a profound
influence on Western thought and literature.
 It offers information on the gods, goddess, and
myths of the ancient time, reflecting the social life
of ancient Greece.
 Chronologically, it covers Minoan civilization
(2000-1500B.C.) , Mycenaean civilization (15001200B.C.) , and The Dark Age (1150-700 B.C.).
Hesiod
 Born
in the 8th century B.C.; considered as the
earliest Greek poets.
 Known for his two poems, Theogony (神谱） and
Works and Days (工作与时日）.
 Theogony : Origins of the gods and the physical
universe .
Hesiod’s Theogony
 First
of all came CHAOS (complete nothingness);
 Separated itself into Uranus (sky) and Gaea
(earth);
 They produced many children, three Giants and
twelve Titans (six males, and six females);
 Among the six males, Cronus ("the wily, youngest
and most terrible of [Gaia's] children" ) castrated
(去势的,阉割的) his father and became the ruler
of the gods.
Father-against-son conflict was repeated when Cronus was
confronted by his son, Zeus.
 Because Cronus had betrayed his father, he feared that his
children would do the same, and so each time Cronus’
wife, Rhea, gave birth, he snatched up the child and ate it.
 Rhea hated this and tricked him by hiding Zeus and
wrapping a stone in a baby's blanket, which Cronus ate.
When Zeus was grown, he challenged Cronus to war for
the kingship of the gods.
 At last, with the help of the Cyclopes, Zeus and his
siblings(兄弟,姐妹) were victorious, while Cronus and the
Titans were imprisoned.

Zeus
 Zeus
was, however, lucky enough and was not
"superseded" (取代) by a child of the next
generation of gods.
 In the end, Zeus had the insuperable power and
became the king of the gods.
 With the Zeus as the ruler, they are known as the
Twelve Olympians, the principal gods of the Greek
pantheon, residing atop Mount Olympus.
The Twelve Olympians
The Twelve Olympians
 Each
of Zeus’ brothers and sisters was assigned
different offices, e.g., Hades was in charge of the
underworld, Poseidon the sea. While Apollo was
god of sun, Artemis was goddess of hunting,
Aphrodite the goddess of love, and Athena the
goddess of wisdom. (Refer to the book)
The Twelve Olympians
 The Ancient
Greeks believed their gods were
anthropomorphic (神、人同形同性), but far
surpassed mortals in beauty, strength and grandeur.
The gods had human habits, requiring daily sleep
to restore their strength and energies. The food
they had was ambrosia (仙果：神的食物) and the
drink nectar (众神饮的酒), which enabled them to
enjoy immortality.
The Twelve Olympians

They intermarried and had children. Sometimes they
coupled with human beings, producing demi-gods or
heroes with great strength or courage. The gods resembled
human beings in their feelings, not exempt from human
passions. However, they always punish the evil-doer, and
would punish any mortal who was impious or showed any
disrespect. They enjoyed immortality, but were not
invulnerable, as we often hear of them being wounded.
Other gods
 There
were also many other gods and goddesses.
 When people were trying to create some works of
art, for example, they would go to the Muses.
Hesiod himself, it is said in his Theogony, was
given the gift of poetic inspiration while he was
tending sheep.
 And those who sought revenge would pray to
Nemesis.
The Origin of Man and Woman
 The
other work of Hesiod, works and Days,
informs readers about why it is necessary to work
and why life for men is so hard.
 According to Hesiod, the Titan Prometheus had
shaped man out of clay, and Athena had breathed a
soul into him. Prometheus then tried in every way
to elevate men’s minds and improve their condition.
The Origin of Man and Woman
In the beginning, however, men did not have to work and
also feasted in the company of the gods.
 Prometheus slay an ox and divide it between men and
gods.
 Prometheus put the bones in one heap, covered with the
white fat, and put the edible (可食用的 ) parts in another,
covered with the skin.
 Zeus, pretending to be deceived, chose the heap of bones
intentionally, and then he avenged by denying man the gift
of the fire.

The Origin of Man and Woman
 Prometheus,
however, outwitted Zeus by stealing
the fire from the chariot of the sun. Irritated, Zeus
decided to punish men and Prometheus.
 To punish men, he told Hephaestus to create out of
clay a beautiful woman, through whom trouble and
misery would be brought into the world.
Pandora (all-gifted)
Hephaestus was such a skilled craftsman that his creation of
the woman was very graceful and artistic.
 The other gods were charmed with the creation and
determined to endow her with special gifts.
 Athena gave her the possession of feminine
accomplishments,
 Graces made her attractive,
 Aphrodite offered beauty and the art of pleasing, a
 nd Hermes bestowed on her a soft persuasive tongue.
 As she was all-gifted, so charming and irresistible, she was
called Pandora.

Pandora
 Pandora
was then sent by Hermes to the house of
Epimetheus, brother of Prometheus. Though
Prometheus had warned his brother to be aware of
the gods’ gift, Epimetheus was so fascinated by the
beautiful woman that he forgot all the warning and
married Pandora.
 Pandora had brought with her a box. One day, she
opened the box, and out came all kinds of misery,
diseases and pains.
Pandora’s box

Pandora hastily shut the box and only one item was left in
the box, that was Hope:
“Only Hope was left within her unbreakable house,
she remained under the lip of the jar, and did not
fly away. Before [she could], Pandora replaced the
lid of the jar. This was the will of aegis-bearing
Zeus the Cloudgatherer.”
Man and Woman
 From
then on, men have to work and life became
very hard because of the woman. Not only do men
no longer enjoy a life of ease, dining with the gods,
but also men now have an extra mouth to feed.
 The presence of woman makes life especially hard
for she is a drain on man’s resources, sitting
around and eating all day.
Man and Woman
 But
though evil, woman is necessary for the
production of an heir to keep those meager
resources within the family:
“If a man avoids
Marriage and all the troubles women bring
And never takes a wife, at last he comes
To a miserable old age, and does not have
Anyone to care for the old man.”
The Suffering of Prometheus
 Having
punished men with Pandora and her box,
Zeus had Prometheus caught and chained in Mount
Caucasus, and sent an eagle every day to pick out
his liver, which grew again every night. This
torment went on for a long time, before Heracles
passed by and killed the eagle, eventually releasing
the sufferer.
More about Hesiod
Theogony focuses on Zeus’ rise to power, but
the Works and Days gives a description of how
mortals can live justly under Zeus’ rule. Hesiod
consistently incorporates justice, a communal
virtue, with the personal matter of feeding oneself.
 The
More about Hesiod

Another theme of his Works and Days is the virtue of
arduous manual labor:
Through work men grow wealthy and rich in flocks,
And by working they become much dearer to the gods.
Work is no disgrace; idleness is the disgrace.
And if you work, the idle man will soon envy you
As you grow rich, became fame and renown follow
wealth.
An Introduction to Greek Philosophy

This lecture will introduce Greek Philosophy by
answering three questions:

A. What are we going to study? In other words, what exactly is
ancient Greek philosophy?

B. Why should we study ancient Greek philosophy?

C. How will we study it?
A. What are we going to study?

Traditionally, Ancient Greek philosophy is divided into four
distinctive periods or units.





A. The Pre-Socratics: thinkers who lived before and during the life of
Socrates. The first Pre-Socratics was Thales of Miletus, whose date is
traditionally given as 585 B.C.
B. Socrates himself: the Athenian philosopher who lived from 469–399.
C. Plato: 429–347.
D. Aristotle: 384–322.
So now in a very concrete way we can identify our subject matter:
The earliest period of western philosophy (from 585 to 322).
B. Why study these “dead” philosophers?

(1) Their historical influence was monumental.


The first answer in a sense is easy to give: The ancient Greeks is
enormously influential in the development of western
philosophy itself, all subsequent development in western
tradition, can be derived from the Greeks.
(2) In addition to its historical significance, there is a
deeper reason to study Greek philosophy. Even today,
the work of the Greeks is philosophically interesting
and valuable.
(1) Their historical influence

1. Alfred North Whitehead said, “The safest general
characterization of the European philosophical tradition is
that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato.”

Plato asked all the fundamental questions that philosophers can
ask. Plato set the agenda, Plato put every possible philosophical
question onto the table, obviously he did not answer them all, he
couldn’t. But obviously no philosophical working since Plato
had really broken new ground, in a sense that they all taken up
the very questions that Plato himself so many years ago took up.
A. Their historical influence
 2. Aristotle
was perhaps even more influential. In the
Middle Ages, he was simply known as “the
philosopher.”
 His
writings became the organizing principle of European
universities, and they still shape these institutions today.
Jewish philosophers (particularly Maimonides), Christian
(Thomas Aquinas), and Muslim (Avicenna and Averroës)
tried to synthesize their religious views with Aristotle’s
philosophical conception of the world.
A. Their historical influence
 3.
Western philosophy, indeed Western civilization
as such, was fundamentally shaped by the works of
Plato and Aristotle. To the extent that world culture
has become “Westernized,” the entire world is in
debt to the Greeks.
A. Their historical influence
 4.
However, Plato and Aristotle themselves were
influenced by, and were responding to, earlier
thinkers, namely Socrates and the Pre-socratics.
A. Their historical influence
 5.
One purpose of this course is to chart this
historical development, which begins in 585 with
the work of Thales of Miletus and ends with
Aristotle. The goal is to show how the Greeks
asked the most basic philosophical questions and,
thereby, influenced all subsequent developments in
Western philosophy.
B. A deeper reason
“Philosophy” means “love [philia] of wisdom
[sophia].”
 1.
 2.
But what is wisdom? A preliminary answer: being
able to answer the “perennial” or “fundamental”
questions.
3
It is possible that the answers to such questions
offered by the ancient Greeks are superior to the ones
produced by modern thinkers.
2. What is wisdom?

A preliminary answer: being able to answer the “perennial” or
“fundamental” questions. Some examples:



a. Is anything stable and permanent, or is reality always
changing?
b. Are human beings capable of understanding reality as it is in
itself? Or is reality always seen from a human perspective, which distorts it?
Must reality remain a mystery?
c. Are ethical values, such as justice and courage, relative? Do they depend on
the individual or group that holds them? Or are there some absolute values
that are independent of who holds them, ones that are simply and forever
right and true?
2 What is wisdom

More examples:
d. What sort of political community is most just? Is any
political system better than democracy?
 e. Is freedom the highest and most important political
value, or are there higher ones?
 f. What is the proper relationship between human
beings and the natural world? Does the natural world
exist for human consumption? Should it be revered? Can it be
understood? Should it be conquered?

3 Answers of Ancient Greeks
 a.
Of course, in the natural sciences, the ancient Greeks
were inferior. Aristotle, for example, believed that the
sun revolved around the earth.
 b. However, concerning questions of the value and
meaning of human life, the answers of the ancient
Greeks are legitimate alternatives to any produced by
the modern world.
 c. This is especially true of Aristotle. In this sense, he
will be the “hero” of this course.
How are we going to study Greek
philosophy?
 A.
First and foremost, these lectures will present
an overview of ancient Greek philosophy from
approximately 585–325.
 B. The course will be divided into the four distinct
units mentioned above: the Presocratics, Socrates,
Plato, and Aristotle.
How are we going to study Greek
philosophy?
 C.
The course will be approached “dialectically.”
 1.
The history of Greek philosophy will be approached
as a conversation between thinkers who respond to each
other. (“Dialectic” comes from the Greek dialegesthai,
“to converse.”) These thinkers acknowledge and are
dependent on their predecessors, but criticize and move
beyond them. They engage in a “dialogue.”
 2. Dialogue plays a significant role in Socrates and
Plato.