Domhnall

208 pages may be a little too short to summarise all Classical philosophy and one reading is certainly too hasty to grasp it. Instead, this is better described (I think) as a thoughtful and thought-provoking meditation on major themes addressed by the ancients. This includes the expected topics - concerning ethics, morality, the meaning of life, how we know and what we can believe. For myself a number of features stood out, as follows.

The opening challenge of the history is to attack and undermine the myth of a distinct and uniquely Greek philosophy emerging as it were by virgin birth in an island of reason surrounded by a sea of barbarian ignorance and primitive mysticism. It is not enough even to list off the sources of Greek thought in Mesopotamia, Persia, Egypt or India, as though there was an evolutionary progression from the early efforts of those predecessors and the pinnacles of Greek synthesis and creativity. Quite simply, Greek philosophy always was and it remained entirely a part of a widespread conversation between cultures that, while retaining their diverse characters, were never isolated from each other. This is why the book’s title is “Ancient Mediterranean Philosophy” rather than Greek.

It is also wrong to accept the propositions that Christian suppression terminated rational Greek philosophy, or that barbarian invasions terminated educated thought and debate with the fall of the Roman Empire. He points out that the Vandals, the Visigoths, and other barbarian peoples were in fact already fully converted to Christianity when they engaged with the declining empire. He observes that, had the emperor Julian [“the apostate”] or some other force rescued paganism from the Christians, it is absurd to imagine that this would have resulted in a world ruled by scientific and rational thought rather than religion.

In any case, Greek philosophy always was essentially religious. “The fate of Anaxagoras (imprisoned, threatened with death and finally dismissed from Athens) fits similar stories about the anger felt by established or conventional thinkers at the attempt to dethrone Zeus ... This seems to suggest, to moderns, that philosophers were secular scientists, at odds with a superstition. This theme reappears in discussing later centuries: it is supposed, for example, that a Christian mob murdered Hypatia, in 415 AD, because she was a rationalist (and a woman). The truth is otherwise: few moderns who now mourn Hypatia endorse her probable beliefs, which were mostly Pythagorean. The violence of Alexandrian – or more broadly Egyptian - mobs was a familiar theme and Hypatia, sadly, paid a price...” [p91]

“At any rate, anyone supposing that the Christian Churches have made life worse than it was in heathen times and places should read more history!”[p180]

“However important their disagreements, Philo of Alexandria (Jewish), John Evangelist and Clement (Christian), and Plotinus (pagan) shared a world. The grand deductive structure created by the pagan Platonist Proclus was mirrored in the work of the Christian ps-Dionysius a few years later, and in later Christian and Islamic texts.” [p181]

The book stands on its own merits but it can also be asked – why is it written in this way at this time? Without knowing the author at all, I have several guesses to offer. Bear in mind these are my reflections and not those of the author. One is simply that scholarship has altered our perception of the history of this (very lengthy) period, for example concerning the “Fall of the Roman Empire”, which is true but that seems too detached and “academic” a line of enquiry. One, I hope, is the need to confront and rebut the escalating appeals to “Western” superiority over alternative cultures – not distant ones, but particularly Islam, which of course is as integral to the “Western” tradition as any other strand of thought, certainly Christianity or Judaism, but also “Greek” philosophy. Another is to acknowledge that the simplistic expectation that Science and Reason would make religion irrelevant, or that the two fields of thought are incompatible and mutually destructive, has lost its appeal to those – religious or not - dissatisfied with the resulting dialogue of the deaf. Whatever the motivation for the book, I hold to the view that history is always the history of the present moment, and works best when it is most relevant. In that respect, for my money, this book is terrific.