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Adventures in Philosophy |
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Pericles (495 B.C. - 429 B.C.) Pericles (picture) was the political leader of Athens from about 460 to 429, a time at which Athenian culture and military power were at their height. His name is associated with the greatest artistic creations of the age, both in letters and in marble, and he initiated a great public building program. His name is inseparably connected with a period that is generally considered the height of ancient Greek civilization. During the time he ruled Athens, the Parthenon was built, sculptors like Phidias, Myron, Polycletus, painters like Zeuxis, Parrhasius and Polygnotus, dramatists like Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides, created their immortal works, and Socrates began to meditate about the value of life. Pericles himself was taught philosophy by Anaxagoras. He entrusted to Protagoras an important mission. He developed what in Athens' democracy became of lasting political and humanitarian value, though he could not remove its shortcomings. As a statesman, Pericles has been judged differently. While Thucydides exalts him, Aristoteles and Isocrates think that Pericles' policy was not in Athens' best interest. Pericles entered politics in 463 by prosecuting Cimon, the greatest Athenian of the time. Shortly afterward, in association with Ephialtes, he implemented major democratic reforms. Pericles was involved in a war against Sparta and its allies that was concluded in 446-445. After peace was declared, he tightened Athenian control of the empire, which included the islands of the Aegean, much of the Aegean coastline, the Hellespont, and cities around the Black Sea. He crushed major rebellions, imposed democratic government, dispatched cleruchies -- colonies of Athenian citizens -- to strategic areas, and made tribute collection, the main source of Athenian wealth, more efficient. Convinced of the inevitability of war with Sparta and the Peloponnesians, in 433 he made an alliance with Corinth's enemy, Corcyra, knowing that it could lead to armed hostilities. Pericles refused Sparta's demand that he revoke the Megarian decree, which denied Megara access to the harbors of the empire. These actions led to the Peloponnesian War (431-404). Pericles, who was relying on the fleet and the empire's resources, planned to avoid a pitched battle with the Peloponnesians and to abandon the countryside to them. He fell victim to the plague, however, never to know that the war he initiated would result in the disastrous defeat of Athens. Modern historians hold that his foreign policy was a failure but that he later learned to calculate the forces of Athens' adversaries more rightly. Even his enemies have recognized that Pericles never resorted to the tricks of a demagogue. As a speaker he was regarded by his contemporaries as the most powerful they knew or could even imagine. He was not a frequent orator but when he delivered a speech, his political success was almost certain. Despite all rivalries, he was elected commander-in-chief for fifteen terms. Until his last years his authority in matters of state was supreme. In 430, at the close of the first year of the Peloponnesian War, which ended with Sparta's victory over Athens, Pericles, in an address celebrating the memory of the citizen-soldiers who were killed in action, defended Athens' democratic way of life. Pericles was a political idealist. His personal life was austere, although his union with the courtesan Aspasia caused gossip and slander. The historian Thucydides admired his singular control of the Athenian democracy. In The Radical Academy Elsewhere On The Internet
Plato (picture) was born the son of noble parents and was the greatest pupil of Socrates. He traveled widely, had an independent income, and lived in the highest of style. He was intimate with Dionysius I, the tyrant of Syracuse, and is said to have hoped to establish an ideal state at Syracuse. He found the Academy in a grove outside of Athens. Plato held that the state was necessary for the highest development of the individual. Goodness, for him, was not goodness in isolation, but was goodness in the group. The good man was the good citizen. Thus, the state should be so constructed that it would make possible the good life for all. He argued that the individual should subordinate himself to the state, but that this was simply a means by which the individual could reach his most perfect development. The good of each man, he believed, was tied up with the good of the group. Laws were necessary only because some people refused to cooperate with the good state. They served to bring these people in line and thus make the whole good. In the state, he argued, the best minds and the finest souls should rule. They formed a class of philosopher-rulers whose authority should not be questioned by the rest of the group. He believed that since they were philosopher-rulers their rule would be good and just. They could understand the right, and would do it without question. The rest of the members of the state he would place in classes suited to their talents. Those who had a talent for war should be placed in the warrior class. Those who had a talent for mercantile pursuits would be in the trade and merchant class. The slaves should be placed in the slave class. Plato believed that such an organization would give the best possible state and that in it each individual, doing his assigned job to the best of his ability, would be happy and would develop to his fullest. This ideal state is developed in Plato's famous book, the Republic, which outlines the structure and functions of the ideal state. It became the pattern for all the Utopias of later times. In a book written somewhat later, the Laws, he argues that all citizens should have a voice in the government and that all work should be turned over to the slaves. Plato's theory of the state is fundamentally aristocratic. He was wealthy, a son of the most favored class in Athens. Being such, he never was able to be wholly democratic, but aligned himself with the more aristocratic thought of his day. Further, his theory was socialistic in that it provided for complete control by the state of the lives of its members. The wealth of all was to be devoted to the use of all as they needed and deserved it, and the rulers could say in what class each individual should work and live. The state was supreme, but this doctrine was robbed of its sting by his added argument that in such a state each person would be happy and develop to his fullest. In The Radical Academy
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Aristotle (picture) was born at Stagira in Thrace, and began his study with Plato when he was 20 years of age. Philip of Macedon made him tutor to his son, Alexander the Great. He was accused of impiety and exiled to Chalcis where he died. Aristotle developed a philosophy of the state which resembled that of his teacher, Plato, very much. He considered man fundamentally a social creature, a political animal, and, as such, can realize his truest self only in society and among his kind. Although the earliest forms of social living were the family and later the community, the goal of social evolution was, for Aristotle, the city-state, the polis, such as was known in ancient Greece during his lifetime. Since Aristotle believed that the whole is prior to its parts, he held that the state was prior to the individual member of the state. The individual is born into the state which has existed long before he became a member. But, the goal of the state, he maintained, is to produce good citizens. Therefore, it should be organized and conducted so that it enables each member to become wholly good. To the extent that the state does not enable the individual to live a virtuous and happy life, it is evil. Any constitution, he argued, should be adjusted to the nature and the needs of the members of the particular group. But, in any group there are individuals who are unequal in many ways. Therefore, a good constitution must recognize these natural inequalities and confer rights accordingly. In so far as all men are equal, the constitution must confer equal rights, but in so far as they are unequal, it must confer unequal rights. Among the inequalities which he would recognize are those of personal abilities, property, birth, and freedom. You treat slaves differently from free men and those born of slaves differently from those born of free men. Aristotle believed that slavery was a just practice in a good state since it was, for him, a natural institution. However, he would admit only foreigners to the slave class. He took this position because he held foreigners of all nations to be inferior to the Greeks and thus not fit to enjoy the same rights as Greeks. Aristotle held that a monarchy, an aristocracy, and a "polity" in which the members are nearly equal, are the best forms of the state. On the other hand he condemned as bad a tyranny, an oligarchy, and a democracy. His great work called Politics created the basis for modern theories of government, especially by his distinction of the different forms of government. Aristotle had a little influence on the development of Classical Liberalism, specifically his concept of human nature and the importance of society in the lives of human beings, but it took later political philosophers (Locke and Mill, for instance) to fully develop that political philosophy. In The Radical Academy
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Gaius Plinius Caecilius Secundus, or Pliny the Younger (picture), became a Roman senator about the year 90 and served as consul in 100. As governor of Bithynia, about the year 111 or 112, he corresponded with the emperor Trajan on such questions as the treatment to be given Christians within the province. Ten books of Epistles, written from about 100 to 112, provide an informal account of the daily life of a rich and cultured Roman gentleman and are a valuable source of historical information. Pliny studied philosophy with Musonius Rufus, who was also the teacher of Epictetus. But Pliny's ideal was Cicero, the orator, the philosopher and letter-writer, and his ambition was to imitate his model. He followed Cicero's example too by branding corruption, and accusing officials who abused their power. Among the most famous reports ever written are two of his letters about the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in the year 79. At the age of seventeen, Pliny eye-witnessed the eruption and described the destruction of the city of Herculaneum to Tacitus, the historian. He was the nephew and adopted son of Pliny the Elder, admiral of the Roman fleet and noted naturalist, who was a victim of that disaster. Pliny the Younger had a brilliant career under Emperor Trajan. He was appointed consul and later governor of Bithynia. In his reports to the Emperor, Pliny also mentioned the Christians whose customs he had to investigate. He described their conduct of life as impeccable, but censured their disobedience to the Roman authorities in matters of religion. Pliny's letters, most of which are real essays, give valuable information about the political, social and literary life in the Roman Empire during his lifetime. In The Radical Academy Elsewhere On The Internet
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