From story to Reason
Until the birth of doctrine in ancient Greece, people lived in communities ruled by myths and spiritual beliefs. They attributed divine powers to the forces of nature, any of them personified in the form of various deities having their names and résumés. The most crucial authority in these communities was exercised by priests, shamans, etc., who were on defender of myths and spiritual beliefs. Man was superstitious, performed witchcraft and various rituals by which he was to gain the favour of the gods or the forces of nature. The structure of these beliefs he discovered and described, for example, Mircea Eliade in his many works, indicating the presence of certain permanent archetypes, motives, rituals.
In the sixth century B.C.E., an entirely fresh approach to reality, or philosophy, was created in ancient Greece. Questions began to be asked about the anticipation of a reasonable explanation of various phenomena occurring in the world, without referring to mysterious powers and characters. The first pre-scientific theories were created, which can now make us laugh, but which in their era were revolutionary. And so Tales of Miletu claimed that the basic building block and the primary origin of the planet was water, Heraclit thought it was fire, Pythagoras—number, and Democrit created the concept of atoms. The revolutionaryness of these ideas was to look for specified an explanation of the processes taking place in reality, which would be internally logical, coherent and complete, or would explain everything. At the same time, this was accompanied by the emergence of philosophical debate, that is, seeking explanation of the planet through conversation, formulation of courts, exchange of arguments. And I guess that was the most groundbreaking and abundant effect erstwhile it comes to the intellectual improvement of the world. The philosophical discussion assumes equality between those talking, in the sense that the individual allowed to discuss is entitled to formulate his own argument, the value of which is only from the point of view of solving the discussed problem. Here there is no relation typical of priests and people—subordination and blind obedience. It was in ancient Greece that a dialog culture was born – dialogue, conversation, exchange, equality. Unfortunately, all these concepts have taken on a fresh meaning in fresh decades and most readers of the "Modern National Thought" most likely won't get along very well. And that is the problem due to the fact that they have indeed been at the heart of Europe's improvement for the last 2,500 years. What distinguishes this first approach to the thought of dialog from that of present is the attitude to the truth: the conversation was intended to scope the fact together. Now, in the planet of fashion for “truth”, it can at most service to exchange thoughts and impressions, or most frequently information about its own feelings. due to the fact that even reliable verification of facts is becoming increasingly rare.
The highest accomplishment of Greek doctrine was the works of Plato and Aristotle, which created the full intellectual canon, after which the civilized planet had moved for the last 2,500 years. This was, for example, a division into theoretical, practical, and method problems, which were divided into political, economic, and ethical ones. The conceptualization of the discrimination of cognition and action itself is the work of Greek philosophy, including Plato and Aristotle. It was there that the full concept of who man is and what is different from animals – the basic distinctive feature was pointed out by reason, which manifests itself with the ability to make concepts and formulate courts. It has been seen that beings present in nature have a permanent form, or nature, which human reason is able to distill from the planet of sensual sensations. Moreover, it has been observed that these beings stay together in certain permanent relationships that man can besides observe, analyze, name, and describe. And not only that – based on the cognition of these relationships, it can foretell and plan the improvement of certain processes in the future.
In ancient Greece, a rational man was born, or 1 who, with his reason, explores the real causes of the planet and its processes, talks about them, builds concepts explaining the world. specified a man builds his own interior structure of understanding, which makes him increasingly distant from direct sensory sensations. He knows that the senses only supply a certain material that must be decently "worked" by reason.
In Greece, a certain educational concept, celebrated paideia, was besides born. Its goal was to form a noble, wise and good man based on the highest ideals and the most perfect patterns. It put large emphasis on rhetoric education, due to the fact that it is through speech that man is distinguished from animals. The ability to usage speech, language, vocabulary, concepts, all of this affects how much we can wisely control ourselves and our surroundings. In the field of social ethics, Greece has created the thought of the virtue of justice as the basis for all another virtues concerning the treatment of another people: to give to everyone what is due to him.
Greek ideals were widely reproved in ancient Rome. Unlike the Greeks who liked to solve theoretical issues, The Romans carried out through applicable activity – building their state, developing law, spreading their own civilizational patterns to all sides of the world. It was the Romans who created the foundations of global law, which besides gives certain rights to aliens who were inactive treated as barbarians by the Greeks, and who could only have slave position in the event of a lost war.
This canon was then joined by a Christian worldview, assuming the existence of 1 Creator God, who treats all people equally. The thought of individual salvation and individual relation with God emerged, completely alien to the ancient world. St. Augustine added to this the concept of linear time, according to which the planet has its beginning and its end, and everything that happens is going to a certain goal lying in the future. The importance of certain events in past began to be measured from the point of view of the intent toward which mankind is aiming, or salvation. All of this, through which humanity draws closer to God, was recognized as good, and that is all that makes mankind distant from this purpose—evil. In this way, the perfect of perfecting all mankind and achieving its common destiny was inscribed in history. This improvement was to include both moral and cognitive spheres. The knowing of the planet was closely related to religion in God, for the Christian simply wanted to realize how his Creator worked. Hence, the strength of debates by Christian theologians and philosophers in the mediate Ages, who had the tremendous will to know how God created the world, what God himself is, and how to approach it. It was from this intellectual cut that medieval universities were born, on which they were taught alongside theology and philosophy, besides Roman law.
In this way, a Latin civilization was created, based on the belief that God created the planet according to certain rules that form a order that man can with his head discover, and imitate, creating his own culture, based on the law enshrined in the nature of things. Latin civilization was characterized by far advanced cognitive optimism, but it was realized that certain truths, especially those concerning God himself, were only available through Revelation and Grace. This cognitive optimism was derived from the belief that since the planet is reasonable—because created by Divine Reason, the Eternal Logos—and man was equipped with reason, it is able to read the same order in existence.
Latin civilization besides put large emphasis on ethics. It was understood that the laws recorded in the structure of the planet besides concern how we should treat ourselves and another people. That man was created in the image and likeness of God, and that has certain consequences. That he comes into the planet with a certain, in advance given to him, possible that can full make and can besides squander it, or due to the environment he will not be able to full live in harmony with his nature. Thus, a concept of tyrannical power was created, which is that it does not let people to live according to their nature. This is not about the form of power and the state strategy – monarchy, aristocracy or democracy – but about the attitude of power to natural law. The authority that implements the common good respects the natural law. It's hard to imagine today's man, but that's just a bad sign of the modern world...
The Latin civilization owes its name to Latin, which was utilized in the mediate Ages. From the position of the last fewer 100 years, we already realize the close relation between the form of this civilization and the Latin language, although there is inactive not adequate talk about it. Latin is the precision of concepts and courts, a concise form expressing rich content, a language of order, of reason. The value of this issue can be understood by the most avid enemies of Latin, or German Protestant-nationalist philosophers or their heirs, to whom Martin Heidegger belongs. For example, Johann Gottlieb Fichte in his celebrated work Speeches to the German Nation (1808) He launched an unparadoxed attack on Latin as a dead language which, due to its ‘dead’, has allegedly no deeper access to ‘living reality’. He opposed the German language in Latin as a “praise” (Ursprache) which has not been "stained" by the influences of Cicero's language, and thus maintained its expected unity with the "making" of the Germanic tribes. The essence of Germanism was to be the full German heritage of the time erstwhile these tribes had not yet been tainted by the influences of any alien civilization, including primarily Roman, and then Christianity, specifically Roman Catholicism. Language is simply a tool for expressing national imagination, feeling, symbolic memory, and the highest highest of specified self-expression is poesy and national poetry. Analyzing this concept of language with modern tools, it is hard not to announcement that Fichtem was all about what modern psychology involves subconscious (unconsciousness), archetypes, or even primal psyche. That is, everything that was exceeded in ancient Greece, so that humanity was introduced to a higher, due to the fact that a conscious and rational level of development. All this was condemned by the full tribe of German thinkers—from Johann Hamann, by Johann Herder, mentioned by Johann Fichty, and then Friedrich Nietzsche to Martin Heidegger. For all these thinkers, the emergence of a head forming abstract concepts is the top disaster in human history!
And what does this gotta do with Latin? It is precisely that the Latin language proved to be the most excellent tool for formulating abstract concepts, precise naming of things by name, formulating logical courts and developing human reason. With a truly hateful rage, all these thinkers have condemned this aspect of human improvement as supposedly a “alienation” from “real life”. due to the fact that man was to express himself through what was emotional, impulsive, irrational, subconscious, primal. Latin was not suitable for this, but on the contrary – a man civilized according to the patterns of Latin civilization transcends his subconscious, feelings, urges or primal psyche and seeks an knowing of the surrounding reality.
Magdalena Ziętek-Welomska
