Abstract: Modern intellectuals, especially those who base their world view upon science, pride themselves on being totally separate from the sphere of religion. They believe their view of the world to be based on empirical data and built up with reason alone, leaving them entirely distinct from all religion. This pride is unfounded. In fact their approach and conclusions are grounded in one of the major old- time religions, namely, paganism.
Many of the ideas, and probably all of the intellectual skills, that characterize the modern secular world were once integral parts of a way of life one of whose prominent features was the worship of idols. All of the Western world is built upon the foundation of paganism. Although paganism and Christianity were open rivals for hundreds of years, eventually they seemed to have made their peace. The truth is that the conflict moved underground, and paganism eventually triumphed so thoroughly that important characteristics of the ancient religious world are no longer familiar or even understood.
Part 2
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The distinction between the cultural and the religious part of classical culture is deceptive. Renaissance thinkers thought that they could discard the overtly religious elements of paganism and relish just the cultural elements that appeared to be neutral to modern religious beliefs. However, aspects of these components of the heritage of paganism are really just as incompatible with Western deistic belief — only the incompatibility is much deeper and is superficially masked.
This is also not to say that it should all be rejected. Much of it is valuable. However this important insight must affect our understanding of what we have and of where we should go from here.
It is critical to isolate the problematic elements, and hold them up for critical inspection so that they may be accepted, rejected or contained, as may appear desirable.
What is the Relationship Between Modern Culture and Society and the Classical Greeks?
Moses Hadas was the Chairman of the Department of Greek and Latin at Columbia University. This is how he explained the continuity of modern culture with classical Greek culture: "From late antiquity to modern times there has been no absolute break in the stream of European culture. The whole Mediterranean and its appanages were more or less thoroughly Hellenized, and outsiders who impinged upon the main stream, . . . had themselves been tinctured with Hellenism." (Hadas, p. 103)
Even today, the content of modern Western society is along a line that begins in ancient Greece. According to Hadas, "If a stranger to our world should wish to understand the motive forces of European society, the premises and the objectives of our ways of life, he could learn most economically by studying the Greeks." (Hadas, p. 15)
Although nowadays few people study the classics of Greece directly, it is clear not only to Professor Hadas but to all those who are familiar with them and with the history of Western thought, that modern society, culture and learning is based on the Greek foundation. Moreover, after a break of about a thousand years in which Christianity had been dominant and had largely avoided the pagan works, the leading thinkers of the Renaissance made a self-conscious effort to go back to the Greek and Roman classics. From that time, through the Enlightenment and up to the beginning of the twentieth century, the works of the Greeks and Romans were the core of all learning. They made up the bulk of the curriculum by which all children were educated. Well into the Twentieth Century, the major component of the classical European gymnasium, was the study of the classical Greek and Latin authors.
From the time of Isocrates (a pupil of Socrates, an orator and teacher in the fourth century BCE), "education is . . . familiarity with a traditional library of books — the same library, in effect, which continued to be the mainstay of liberal education in the Hellenistic world, in Rome, and, with vicissitudes of fortune, in Europe to this day." (Hadas, p 89)
If the movers and shakers of our day do not themselves read the classic Greek and Roman authors, the writers that they read were steeped in the classics. "I have given up newspapers in exchange for Tacitus and Thucydides, for Newton and Euclid, and I find myself much the happier," wrote Thomas Jefferson. (quoted in How to Develop Self Confidence and Influence People by Public Speaking, by Dale Carnegie, Pocket Books, 1956. Page 207) Woodrow Wilson, whose presidential orders were said to have the character of great literature, read Demosthenes. (Carnegie, p. 205) Countless influential (and non-influential) people of recent centuries (such as Abraham Lincoln) have read and drawn extensively from Shakespeare, who was in turn vastly and deeply familiar with the Greek and Roman classics.
Jacques Barzun said it very clearly: "The path between the onset of the good letters and the modern Humanist as freethinker or simply as scholar is circuitous but unbroken." (From Dawn to Decadence, 500 Years of Western Cultural Life, 1500 to Present, by Jacques Barzun, HarperCollins Publishers, New York, 2000., p. 45)
What Exactly did We Get from the Classical World?
Voltaire, a leading French intellectual of the Enlightenment in 18th century France, summed it up this way: "Beautiful architecture, perfect sculpture, painting, good music, true poetry, true eloquence, the method of writing good history, finally philosophy itself, however incomplete and obscure — all these came to the nations from the Greeks alone." ("Essai sur les moeurs," I, 89 quoted in The Enlightenment, An Interpretation: The Rise of Modern Paganism (volume 1), by Peter Gay, W.W. Norton and Company, New York, 1977., p 74)
This is true, but more important than the quality of the architecture, sculpture, painting, music, poetry and so on that was bequeathed to us by classical civilization is the attitude towards these that was learned. "The important thing that the humanists learned from the ancients was that drama could be high art, mature and dignified and worthy of the best attention of the best minds . . ." (Hadas, p 4) Once the best attention of the best minds is focused on these pursuits, it is no wonder that they produce superb works in these fields.
It is worthwhile to reflect on this because this is a case in which our own critical apparatus, our own very basic assumptions about the world and the way to approach it intellectually, confuses things and prevents us from fully appreciating this point.
In our times in Western civilization, the notion that literature, poetry and music, for example, are high pursuits that are worthy of the best human intellectual effort is so entrenched as to have become axiomatic. Even more than this, it is considered so evident that it need not even be stated as an axiom at the outset. Therefore, to appreciate that this attitude is truly a part of the Greek legacy and neither self- evident nor even universally accepted by sophisticated, educated men, requires a non-trivial effort.
The notion here should not be confused with the basic educational principle of the importance of developing any talents that a person may have. The needs of psychology and the importance of efficiency, if allowed their expression, will ensure that those who are truly talented will focus their efforts on the full development of their talents.
The notion that the "best efforts of the best minds" should be directed to art goes beyond this, and encourages even those of less than outstanding talent to devote their best efforts to art. Moreover, it will even pressure those who have no artistic abilities to find some way to participate, for example by writing sophisticated and self-justifying art criticism or perhaps by raising money for the advancement of art.
End of Part 2
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