𝗔 𝗙𝘂𝗻𝗱𝗮𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗮𝗹 𝗗𝗶𝗳𝗳𝗲𝗿𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗲 𝗯𝗲𝘁𝘄𝗲𝗲𝗻 𝗔𝗻𝗰𝗶𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗠𝗼𝗱𝗲𝗿𝗻 𝗣𝗵𝗶𝗹𝗼𝘀𝗼𝗽𝗵𝗲𝗿𝘀

𝗔 𝗙𝘂𝗻𝗱𝗮𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗮𝗹 𝗗𝗶𝗳𝗳𝗲𝗿𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗲 𝗯𝗲𝘁𝘄𝗲𝗲𝗻 𝗔𝗻𝗰𝗶𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗠𝗼𝗱𝗲𝗿𝗻 𝗣𝗵𝗶𝗹𝗼𝘀𝗼𝗽𝗵𝗲𝗿𝘀

In What Ways were the early Greek thinkers more open – or more directly exposed – to the whole than we late-born humans of the present world are? Were their minds more innocent, fresh, and pure – less contaminated and deformed by artificial additives than ours are? If so, how?

It is generally acknowledged (among persons who have a smattering of “liberal” education) that with “modern” philosophers like Machiavelli, Bacon, Hobbes, and Descartes, a radical change in our collective bearings and attitude toward nature was established. We associate this new attitude and orientation with modern empirical science, technology, and mass consumerism. “Knowledge is power” – over nature, which was to be conquered for “the relief of man’s estate,” as Bacon famously put it. Nature was to be put on the rack and “tortured” in order to force her to cough up her secrets and give us atom bombs and smart phones. While there are still many fundamental phenomena and processes that elude the understanding of even our best and brightest scientists, the power that has been unleashed from the many secrets they have torturously extracted from nature in their laboratories and research institutes is dazzling and dizzying.

Compared to us, the ancients may be said to have had a more “hands off” attitude toward nature. The architects or inventors of modern philosophy that I mentioned earlier took a very different view of things – a view many of us now take for granted. For a variety of reasons (political, moral, economic, etc.) these founders of modernity advocated and enabled a “hands on” approach in all of these areas, but especially towards the natural world. If ancient thinkers were, generally speaking, satisfied with contemplating and speculating about nature (the cosmos, the whole), the moderns were more interested in manipulating, exploiting, and ransacking nature in the service of material, human aims and desires. In saying this I do not mean to ignore or undervalue the astounding amount of new knowledge and information about the natural world that has come from modern science. But we must not let our appreciation of these great theoretical and intellectual advances to cloud or detract from our acknowledgment of how modern science and technology problematically affect the lives, thoughts, and behaviors of billions of ordinary human beings. What appears to matter most to them are not quantum theory, cybernetics, differential equations in economics, and the latest ideas in microbiology, but the consumer goods and services that are made available by such arcane and baffling theories.

It was a shared assumption among the architects of modern science and technology that we humans can thoroughly or adequately understand only those things we make or construct ourselves. Because the maker designs every stage of construction, he “knows” what he’s doing in a way that greatly surpasses the comparatively passive understanding of a “hands off” observer or mere speculator. Not only are we better able to understand those things we make, but we are better able to control them, and control was a high priority for these modern philosophers. Machiavelli and Bacon write a good deal about Fortuna, or “chance,” and how important it is to learn how to control her, like a prized but wild female, through crafty and clever, fair or foul, means. Reason begins, under the moderns, to concern itself more and more exclusively with means and methods, whereas those impractical, speculative ancients had squandered enormous amounts of attention contemplating ends – which, alas, turned out to be figments of the naïve imagination.

As these no-nonsense moderns saw it, the ancients wasted a lot of time and effort thinking about the “higher” ends or semi-divine possibilities of the human – and even of the cosmos and its other creatures, as well – when they could have, should have, recognized, as the moderns did, the absence of any divine, metaphysical, or supernatural purposes in nature. Spinoza, another important modern philosopher, equated “God” with nature, although, to be fair, nature for Spinoza was, or appears to have been, much more than mere material nature. For Spinoza, there are no accidents, miracles, or free acts in nature, which is strictly deterministic. The same goes for “purposes” that transcend this un-free, natural process in which we, as fleeting bodily-mental “modes” or events are immersed. Thus, there are (probably un-transcendable) limits to what we, with our brave new science, can control. But that still leaves a vast amount of unclaimed real estate that we can conquer, tame, control, and bend to our will in a cosmos that has been reduced to “matter in motion.”

But, what is this will – posing the question generally? In what direction does the collective will of our species seem to be pointing or moving? Would anyone with a lick of sense claim that, as a species, the collective will of present-day humanity points toward greater philosophical, moral, historical enlightenment or wisdom? Do most human beings occupy themselves, in their spare time, with questions and concerns of this sort? Or are they not more likely to be spending that free time at the mall, scrolling online, or in front of the television – satisfying their creaturely cravings and being entertained?

Would it be surprising to learn that the principal philosophers from the ancient world did in fact concern themselves with questions of this “impractical” sort – questions about how humans might attain some measure of wisdom, some serious understanding of the nobler and more enlightened ways of employing our brief time on earth than mere getting and spending, mere socializing, chilling out with shallow entertainments? Is the present world in which most of us live (the “developed” West) anything like what Machiavelli, Bacon, Descartes, Spinoza, and Rousseau envisioned? Perhaps Hobbes and Nietzsche would not have been surprised.

Leave a Reply