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Five weeks of assignments
Week one due no later than June 21st, midnight. Assignment 1/ Introductions Assignment One Please read pages 1-20 in your book and answer the following questions in no less than four pages total. Your answers must be thoughtful and complete. Also, give us a small introduction of yourself! You can find mine in the Staff Information section. 1. What does it mean to wonder about the world? 2. What is ‘inquiry’ and why do philosophers think that it is important? 3. On page 13 the author states “Philosophers’ search for the truth resembles a detective story. What is he trying to say about philosophy and why? 4. Why does the author state on page 13 that it is easier to ask philosophical questions than to answer them? Do you agree with this and if so why and if not why not. 5. The author makes an analogy with a rabbit being pulled out of a hat when he refers to human beings? Why? What is he trying to say? 6. On page 16 and 17 the author talks about thinking and being in the world in terms of habit. What is the author trying to say? How many things do you do not because it is the right way to do them but because it is the way it always has been done? 7. Why do you think philosophers are often considered troublemakers at times? Assignment Two Read pages in your book that covers the subject regarding The Myths. Then, either by book or on-line, find a myth from any country or culture you wish and answer the following questions in no less than four pages, double spaced with no less than 12 font. 1. I want you to come up with a concrete definition for what a ‘myth’ is. This means you will need to define the term and don’t just use a dictionary, use your own thoughts as well. This is important for you will use the criteria, your definition of a myth, for further questions. The following questions will help you do this. What is the purpose of a myth? What is or was the goal of those who tell myths? Basically, why do people tell and believe in myths such as the one you chose or any other for that matter? Now, after you have developed your criteria answer the following: 2. What problems was the myth you chose trying to explain? Why? What made it a myth? 3. What conclusions did the myth come to regarding the problems that it attempted to explain. 5. Now that you have defined what a ‘myth’ is, in essence you have a concrete definition of what the word means both as it is defined and as it is used, tell me what the difference is between religion and myth or if there is any difference? You will need to use the definition of a ‘myth’ that you generated in question one. Then, if there are differences between myths and religion you must state ‘why’; if there are no differences in your judgment you must state ‘why’ as well. Your answer must be well reasoned and show that you have applied the criteria for the word ‘myth’ that you came up with through your work to the last question. You can find many myths on-line or you can go to the LRC and research them. Danny Assignment Three Please read about the pre-Socratics, the Natural Philosophers (some early Greek scientists, really); we will also learn about the Sophists from where the word ‘sophisticated’ comes from. Please answer the following questions in no less than four to five pages, double-spaced. 1. What is meant by the philosopher’s project? Give an example. 2. What does it mean to be a ‘natural philosopher’ and how is ‘naturalism’ different than ‘supernaturalism’? Discuss what those words mean relevant to what you read and what you know. 3. Why do some people believe in supernaturalism as an explanation for natural phenomenon and the human condition as opposed to attributing explanations for reality and the human condition to ‘natural’ phenomenon’? Or, the question can be asked this way: Why do some people believe in ‘naturalism’ as an explanation for natural phenomenon and the human condition as opposed to atributing explanations for reality and the human condition to ‘supernatural’ phenomenon? Give reasons for your thinking. 4. What did the natural philosophers hope to accomplish? What were their goals, in general? 5. Heraclitus is one of the most important early Greek philosophers due to the fact that he embraced a certain theory of looking at the world. What was his philosophical point of view about the world? How was it the same or different than Parminedes? 6. Using what you know from http://radicalacademy.com/philsophists.htm, the Course Announcement section and your own research please tell us who the Sophists were, what their philosophical project was, what they did, and what they believed in terms of their theory of knowledge. Please, always use your own words. Who do you think might be the ‘sophists’ of today? Why? Danny Week Two Assignment #4 Students- For the first part of this assignment you are to read in your book about Greek fatalism and Socrates. Your written assignment is the following: Answer the following questions in no less than two pages giving reasons for your conclusions: 1. What is Greek fatalism and how did fatalism find its way into all aspects of Greek life? 2. Is believing in fate the same as believing in a myth or myths? If so, how? If not, then why not? Now, using your search engine I want you to research Socrates. Simply type the key words ‘Socrates’ apology’ in your search engine and you will find many active sites. However, I will not accept anything that comes from Wikpedia Encyclopedia. Wikpedia is considered a bad joke among academics and if yo are interested in why you may search for this controversy through Google or Yahoo. However, once again, no submissions that reference Wikpedia. You will find many sites on-line and those that end with ‘edu’ infer they are from a university or college. This is acceptable. Please read pages 56-72. This will cover Socrates. Then, go to the Apology website that you find in your search. You will learn about Socrates’s trial and his eventual death by the state. Once you have read the apology you will need to complete the following as indicated below: Socrates You have just finished looking over early Greek philosophy ending with Socrates. While Socrates effected perhaps the most profound shift in philosophical thinking in Greece, it’s obvious that it didn’t go over too well because he was put to death. But Socrates completely changed classical education; by the time of the Roman Republic, in fact, Socrates’s skepticism became the dominant aspect of classical education in Greece and Rome. In particular, Socratic skepticism led to the single most popular educational exercise in Roman and Greek schools, arguing in utremque partem , or arguing both sides of a question. Here’s how it worked. The teacher gave the students a question that has two sides, for instance: “Was Polyphemos justified in eating Odysseus and his men?” One student would be assigned one side of the question (Polyphemos was justified) and another student was assigned the other side of the question. They would then prepare their arguments and then publicly argue the case in front of the rest of the class. Then they had to switch sides, that is, the first student would have to argue the position opposite his own while the second student also took a position opposed to his first. In other words, each student had to argue both sides of the question. It didn’t matter which side was right. All that mattered was which student could best argue both sides of the question. This is called ‘reasoning’. While this kind of exercise is a far cry from what Socrates had in mind, you can see it starts from the same foundation: that nothing is certain. If nothing is certain, that means that there is no right or wrong answer to any question; there are only well-argued answers and poorly-argued answers. Your job is to take a position at Socrates’s trial: is he guilty of the charges brought against him or is he innocent?This is the only question you will need to answer. In other words, you will serve as either a prosecuting attorney or a defense attorney. However, you don’t get to choose your side. Instead, your side will be assigned to you. If your first name begins with an odd-numbered letter (a,c,e,g,i,k,m,o,q,s,u,w,y), then your job is to prosecute Socrates, that is, to construct a convincing argument why he should be found guilty of the charges that Meletus and company have brought against him. If your first name begins with an even-numbered letter (b,d,f,h,j,l,n,p,r,t,v,w,z), then you will act as Socrates’ defense attorney, that is, you should persuasively argue that Socrates is innocent of the charges brought against him. Your Argument The most important evidence you can use, and that you must use, to make your argument are the words that Socrates speaks in his own defense; in other words, your primary evidence is the text of The Apology (you can find it online at the website I gave you or at other sites). If you are prosecuting Socrates, you must use Socrates’s words against him. Does he prove the allegations against himself? Does his answer show that he is, indeed, undermining the moral character of Athens? If you are defending Socrates, then you should use his words to prove that the charges are groundless.In addition, you may use the submissions of others in the class as evidence; for example, if you are defending Socrates, you may respond to one of the claims of someone who is prosecuting him. The whole issue revolves around Socrates’s relentless questioning. His basic position is that no one knows anything at all except himself, and he knows one and only one thing: that he knows nothing. As a result, he has spent his life questioning people. He continues to asks questions until he catches them in a contradiction or inconsistency, at which point he has proven that they don’t know the answer. This is a radically skeptical position; imagine proving to your parents that every thing they know and every opinion they have is wrong. That’s in a nutshell what Socrates did. So the heart of your argument will revolve around this radical questioning: does such radical skepticism and questioning undermine society and morality, or does it improve society and morality? Assessment To do well, you will need to provide a strong argument either in defense of Socrates or in favor of his prosecution; this argument must be no shorter than four pages. You should begin with a clear thesis statement, and your argument should be based primarily on the words of Socrates himself from the text of the Apology. Dan Assignment five Students- Get ready to meet Plato. Plato can be complex and I wish you only to read pages 72 – 102. When you have finished, please go to the following: website: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TYKNAdbhQ-w This website compares Plato’s Allegory of the Cave with the movie, the Matrix, a movie you might have seen — it also discusses the Allegory in depth. What is important is that you understand the allegory of the cave and answer the following questions thoughtfully: 1. Explain the allegory of the cave in your own words. 2. What does this story have to do with Plato’s concept of forms and why? What is Plato’s concept of forms? Give examples. 3. What does this allegory say about Plato’s ideas? What does it have to say about today’s world? What does it have to say about how people think and why? 4. How was Plato’s academy different than today’s modern schooling? 5. What happens to the ‘soul’ according to Plato? 6. Do you think that Plato’s philosophy is similar to some religions? Why or why not? Give examples and reasons for what you believe. 7. Describe Plato’s republic, the society he envisioned and how it would work. Again, give examples and use your own words. You must answer all of the questions above in no less than six pages. Please, students, do not hand in short work that is not thoughtful or that fails to answer the quetsions posed. I will not give you credit if this is the case. As you might kow, this class if taught in a school environment would be close to three hours of instruction per week and three hours of outside work for a total of six hours. The same is true for classes taught on-line — they too conform to the same time necessities. In the interim I will be reading your papers and commenting. Please read my comments throughout the following days. The Dictionary of Philosophical terms will always be posted in the Course Information Section and will be updated consistently. Finally, due make sure you check the announcement section quite frequently for updates. Danny Assignment six Students- To compare and contrast Plato and Aristotle, see the painting by Raphael at http://www.abcgallery.com/R/raphael/raphael30.html Please read pages 94-120 and answer the following questions: 1. What does Aristotle mean that there are no innate ideas? How was this different that Plato? 2. What did Aristotle think about the ‘senses’? Why? 3. What did Aristotle mean that the form of a thing is its specific characteristic? Explain. 4. What was Aristotle’s contribution to ‘logic’? Explain. 5. Why did Aristotle divide living things into categories? 6. Explain Aristotle’s position on ethics and women? 7. What was Aristotle’s contribution to the theory of politics? Explain. 8. What was Aristotle’s contribution to science? Why? Students- You must contribute thoughtful essays no less than five pages that answer the above questions. Please do a thoughtful job and make sure you understand the questions. If you have questions, submit them through the Discussion board in the ‘question’ thread. Aristotle is an important Greek philosopher and the last one we will study. Danny Week Three Assignment seven As the Greek Empire died the Roman Empire developed. Read the following history regarding the Roman Empire. Many scholars today are comparing the Roman Empire to the rise (or fall) of the United States Empire. I have included an article that makes such an argument. You do not have to agree with the article by any means. All that I am asking is that you read the following history regarding the rise and fall of the Roman Empire and about ‘existence and reality’ as it might have been in the Roman Empire and early Republic. Then, read the article from the newspaper The Guardian, and answer the questions that are posed for you at the beginning of the article. As to how many pages, well you decide, at least as many as we have been doing. There is a lot of room for discussion here and you are encouraged to use resources such as the Internet or PBS series or the History Channel or any other source to learn more about Rome and add to our understanding of the Rise, the Decline and the Fall of the Roman Empire! Danny Existence and Reality in Ancient Rome (2,000 years ago) One of the striking features of Roman life, whether under the Republic or Empire (http://www.pbs.org/empires/romans/), was that Rome was specifically an urban culture — Roman civilization depended on the vitality of its cities. There were perhaps only a handful of cities with populations exceeding 75,000, the typical city having about 20,000 permanent residents. The city of Rome, however was greater than 500,000 and some scholars have projected a population of one million or more. Like people who today visit a place like New York City, London or Paris for the first time, most people must have been overwhelmed by the hustle and bustle of Rome. Rome must have been a rather horrifying place at the same time. The very wealthy lived in private homes called domus, which were usually single-storied houses with several rooms and a central courtyard. Although these homes were quite large, only a small percentage of Rome’s population lived in them (yet they occupied one third of the available space). Public buildings of all kinds took up about one quarter of Rome. What this meant is that less than half of the available territory in the city of Rome was used to house the vast majority of Rome’s population. Most Romans lived in multi-storied apartment buildings called insula. Amenities were few and the buildings were hot in the summer, cold in the winter and full of smoke from the fires of small, cooking stoves. Without central plumbing, the residents had to make many trips to wells or fountains for water. Chamber pots had to be emptied, usually into large vats on the landing of each floor, but sometimes their contents were emptied into the streets from a window. Although life in the city offered many cultural benefits to its people, daily life was actually quite precarious. Because the floors of apartment buildings were supported by wooden beams, and because there was no running water, fires usually meant disaster. And the dark of night brought other problems. Of Patrons and Clients Since the earliest days of the Republic, Roman society was a society of status. Institutionalized in what is called the patron-client system, Roman society was really a network of personal relationships that obligated people to one another in a legal fashion. The man of superior talent and status was a patron (patronus). It was he who could provide benefits to those people of lower status, who then paid him special attention. These were his clients who, in return for the benefits bestowed upon them, owed the patron specific duties. Of course, since we are talking about a network of relationships, a patron was often the client of a more superior patron. There were various forms of benefits as well as duties. Political careers and loans on easy terms could all be had with the proper patron-client relationship. Clients had to serve their patrons at all times — this was true whether the issues at stake were legal, financial or political. The clients of a patron would also accompany him to the forum every morning, and the more clients that accompanied the patron, the greater his status and prestige. The patron-client relationship was an important one and was built upon the Roman idea that social stability would result from maintaining the social hierarchy that managed to link all people to one anther. The Roman Family At the heart of the Roman family was the paterfamilias, the father of the family. It was the paterfamilias who possessed the patria potestas, or power of a father, over his children, regardless of their age. This power made the father the sole owner of all property acquired by his sons. You can imagine the kind of difficulties this might create. A son would work hard and acquire wealth but that wealth was not his, but his father’s. And although it was typical for both parents to have died by the time their child may have reached thirty years of age, if a father managed to live to old age his son may have built up so extreme a resentment, that he may have resorted to the murder of his father. By law, the paterfamilias could kill his wife if he found her in bed with another man. He could not only sell any of his children into slavery, he could kill them as well. And the Romans are known for practicing infanticide. The Roman household was quite large and could include the paterfamilias, his wife, his sons with their wives and children, unmarried daughters and slaves. The household, then, could be considered to be a small state within a state. Most marriages were arranged but mothers and daughters could, and often did, influence final decisions. Family life was similar to today: some marriages were happy, others not. Divorce was introduced in the 2nd century B.C. and was relatively easy to obtain — no one needed to prove grounds. Girls were pushed into marriage at an early age. Although the legal age for marriage among women was twelve, fourteen was more common in practice. For example, Tullia (c.79-45 B.C.), the daughter of the Roman orator, Cicero (106-43 B.C.), was married at sixteen, widowed at twenty-two, married at twenty-three, divorced at twenty-eight, married again at twenty-nine, divorced again at thirty-three and died in her thirty-fourth year. Roman women were not segregated as they had been at Athens. Wives were appreciated as enjoyable company and were the center of the social life of the household. Women talked in public, visited shops, went to the games, temples, and theaters. In other words, unlike ancient Athens, Roman women led a very visible existence. However, women could not participate in public life. The basic function of motherhood was to shape the moral outlook of her children. Roman upper-class women had considerable freedom in early Empire. They could acquire the rights to own a control as well as inherit property and some women owned and operated businesses in shipping and trade. And although women could still not partake in politics they could forcibly influence their husbands: for instance, what would Augustus have been without Livia, or Trajan without Plotina? During the Pax Romana, there was a decline in the number of children, especially among the upper classes of Roman society. The situation got so bad that there were imperial laws requiring parents to raise more children, but still the birthrate dropped. (On childbirth see Childbirth and Midwifery in the Roman Empire) The Romans practiced infanticide in order to limit the number of children born to the Roman family. In terms of contraception, the Romans used amulets, magic potions, formulas, potions, oils and appointments. Most were ineffective. The Romans did have condoms made from the bladder of a goat but they were very expensive. Education In the early days of the Roman Republic, Rome did not have any public education. What education there was, and we’re speaking of education for the citizens of Rome, was done within the context of the family. In other words, it was within the family that children learned the basic techniques of farming, developed physical skills for war, learned Roman traditions and legends, and in the case of young boys, became acquainted with public affairs. However, in the second and third centuries B.C., contact with the Greek world during the Macedonian Wars stimulated new ideas and education. The wealthiest classes wanted their children exposed to Greek studies, especially rhetoric and philosophy. This was necessary, so they thought, to make them fit for successful public careers. This was a practical ideal because these children would eventually serve Rome as administrators, officials, and perhaps even members of the Senate. Incorporated in this new educational ideal was the concept of humanitas, an education in the liberal arts or humanities. It was hoped that such an education in the liberal arts would prevent overspecialization and instead promote sound character. A sound knowledge of Greek was positively essential and schools taught by professional scholars began to emerge. And, of course, the Romans already had the example of Plato’s Academy and Aristotle’s Lyceum. The very wealthy provided Greek tutors for their children. For the less wealthy there were private schools in which Greek educated slaves would instruct students. Children learned the basic requirements of reading, writing and arithmetic. By the age of twelve or thirteen, and if the child had shown promise, he could attend the grammaticus, or grammar school. The standard curriculum in the liberal arts included literature, dialectics (or the art of reasoning), arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music. At the core of this curriculum was, of course, Greek literature. So, students were exposed to Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, Hesiod’s Theogony and Works and Days, as well as Pindar’s Odes. The philosophies of Plato, Aristotle and Zeno of Elea, the histories of Herodotus and Thucydides and dramas of Sophocles and Aeschylus were also standard fare. One result of all this is that the Romans were bilingual — they knew Latin and Greek. And with the growth of empire, students also knew a third language, their local dialect. Very promising students would end their education by studying Greek oratory, the best schools being found at Athens. Schools in the Empire were important vehicles for spreading Roman culture and ideas. The influx of Greeks scholars, language, and writers also stimulated the Roman mind. And there were first rate Roman writers: Virgil’s Aeneid, Ovid’s Metamorphosis, the Odes of Horace, Livy’s History of Rome, Tacitus’ Histories, and the Satires of Juvenal are just a few examples. Many of these writers simply copied Greek themes of the past and incorporated them into their own works. Virgil (70-19) is the prime example. For instance, his Georgics had its model in Hesiod’s Works and Days, but the purpose was clearly didactic — Virgil clearly celebrated the virtues of the cults, traditions and greatness of Rome. His Aeneid traces the return of Aeneas after the Trojan War. But Aeneas does not go to Syracuse as did Homer’s Odysseus. Instead he lands at Rome. The Aeneid, written during the reign of Augustus, does not glorify of the excellence of the Greek hero, but the civic greatness of Augustus Caesar. With all this literature, there were also libraries to hold books. Books were treasured possessions but were usually owned privately. So, in many wealthy Roman households, we could find slaves called “copyists” who copied texts. By A.D. 400, Rome had more than thirty libraries in existence, the most important one was located at Alexandria, and was literally a storehouse of Greek knowledge. Slavery as the Roman Economy The economy of the Romans was an economy of slavery; wealth was created by the labor of slaves. The number of slaves increased dramatically during the reign of Augustus and continued to increase for almost two centuries. Slaves were obtained during warfare, a bankrupt citizen could sell himself into slavery, and the paterfamilias could sell any of his children into slavery as well. As a result of this increase, slaves were highly visible during the Empire. The homes of the rich and were filled with slaves. The more slaves a man owned the greater was his status and prestige in Roman society. Roman slaves served as hairdressers, footmen, messengers, accountants, tutors, secretaries, carpenters, plumbers, librarians, and goldsmiths. Some slaves possessed high status jobs and served as doctors, architects, managers of business, and many educated slaves were members of the imperial bureaucracy. Slaves could be acquired like any other form of property, that is, by inheritance, gift, or purchase.The historian Pliny the Elder knew of one large landowners who owned more than 4000 slaves. It is probable that most people of middling income and prominence had less than 10 slaves and more often than not, only one or two. Slaves were bound to promote their master’s welfare at all times and without question. For example, if a master had been murdered, all his slaves were put to death without trial. Since they had not prevented the murder as they should have, they were all considered accessories to the crime. This notion was also applied to those slaves of a master who committed suicide. Although the majority of slaves lived and died in bondage, the intelligent and enterprising slave lived in the hope of eventually buying his freedom, a practice known as manumission. Full manumission brought freedom and Roman citizenship at the same time. Slavery is a prime example of how a Roman strength became an eventual weakness during the later Roman Empire. Slavery, as an economic institution, is efficient, but only up to a point. That point was reached as the Romans built their entire economy around slavery. With manumission, the number of slaves declined. Of those slaves that remained in slavery, few care to work hard and they were unwilling to produce more children. So, in the late Empire, manpower was declining, and this is one possible cause for Rome’s ultimate decline. Bread and Circuses for the Masses Beginning with Augustus Caesar, the city or ‘state’ of Rome provided bread, oil and wine to its urban population. What this meant, is that almost 250,000 inhabitants of Rome consumed about 6 million sacks of grain per year, free. Rome provided citizens with food — it also provided them with entertainment. Of the poor, the poet Juvenal could write: with no vote to sell, their motto is “couldn’t care less,” Time was when their plebiscite elected generals, heads of state, commanders of legions: but now they’ve pulled in their horns, there’s only two things than concern them: BREAD and CIRCUSES. To keep the public under control, Rome gave their citizens Bread and Circuses. For instance, at the Venatio, animals were led into an amphitheater where heavily armed men fought and killed them. This was a popular pastime which was provided to the urban poor and aristocracy by the benevolence of the emperor. These events were held in a structure called the Circus Maximus which was built during the second century B.C. between the Capitoline and Aventine Hills in Rome. After being destroyed by fire, it was reconstructed in A.D. 200 and had a capacity for 250,000 spectators. Races were held there until 549. The Romans were fascinated with wild animals — they like looking at them, seeing them perform tricks, or watching them being hunted and killed. Wolves, bears, bores, deer, and goats were indigenous to Rome and other animals were brought to Rome by imperial conquest. Elephants, ostriches, leopards and lions were imported in the first century B.C., followed by hippopotamus, rhinoceros, camels and giraffes. There were no zoos in Rome and most animals were privately owned as status symbols. Monkeys were dressed as soldiers and rode atop goats harnessed to a small chariot. The elephant was the most popular show animal and was initially used to transport wealthy men and women to dinner. However, animals were not only used for show but for what we can only call blood sports. During the reign of Augustus Caesar, 3500 animals died during the days devoted to twenty-six festivals. 9000 were killed at the games celebrating the completion of the Coliseum in A.D. 80. Finally, 11,000 were killed at the celebration of a military victory in A.D. 107, a celebration lasting 123 days. There were three kinds of blood sports: armed men fighting animals, animals fighting animals, or armed men and women exposed to starving vicious beasts, the latter usually reserved for criminals. The victim was tied to a stake, wheeled out into the arena, and exposed to a starving lion. The Romans also engaged in public hunting in which animals were simply killed in front of an audience. Before any sort of public display the animals were usually starved and perhaps beaten with a whip. The Romans also had public events called the Ludi, or the Games of Rome. By the 4th century A.D., nearly 177 days per year were devoted to the Games, held at the circus. Gladiatorial contests were originally an Etruscan practice and so date back to the days before the Roman Republic was founded. For the Etruscans, armed combat between individuals was connected to religious practice. Men fought to the death beside the tomb of their chief in order to strengthen their spirits as well as the spirits of others. The first Roman practice of these contests took place in 264 B.C. By the reign of Augustus Caesar, however, the gladiatorial contests were made public and although gladiatorial contests were a source of entertainment for everyone, there were those like SENECA who thought differently. The gladiators were usually criminals, slaves or prisoners of war. The Romans, as is well-known, forced the gladiators to attend combat schools where they would learn the necessary skills of killing. At these schools, there were three groups of gladiators, based on defense: those who were heavily armed and wore helmets; those who carried a light shield and sword; and those who carried a net, trident and dagger. The Romans also had other events during the gladiatorial contests. In one case, boxers wore leather gloves laden with metal studs. Artificial lakes were often created and ships conducted a mock battle (called the Naumachia). These “sea” battles were often recreations of past victories. The chariot races were the passion of all social classes and bound wealthy and poor together. There were keen rivalries between teams — Reds, Whites, Blues and Greens. Each team had its own faction who would find the best horses and riders. Carried out in the Hippodrome, there were 12 starting boxes, six on either side of the gate above which sat the starter. The drivers cast lots for their starting position. The races were usually seven laps in length, counted by the lowering of an egg or figure of a dolphin, and lasted about 20 minutes. Each race was run for a sum of money and prizes were given for second, third, and fourth place. When two or three chariots from one faction raced, they did so as a team and not individually. There is evidence, as in all sports, of cheating, bribery, throwing an event, and even the doping of horses. The chariot races occupied an entire day of festivities, and there were usually about 24 races. The Romans were not that much fascinated with the skill of either driver or horse, but rather, which color crossed the finish line first. In other words, allegiance was to color and not to skill. Obviously, the major attraction of the races was to place bets and people bet both at the course and off. In fact, the Romans are known for betting on the outcome of just about anything. The Fall of the Roman Empire One of the reasons for the success of the Roman Empire was that the Romans treated their Empire as the world. In other words, the world was equated with the Empire. This belief formed the social cement which kept the Empire sustained. However, this bond, this social cohesion, was temporary at best. There were, after all, forces outside the Roman Empire which were eating away at the Empire itself. And regardless of whether we accept the fact that Rome fell as a result of internal pressure or invasions from the outside, or both at one and the same time, one thing is abundantly clear: Rome fell, and did so with a loud noise. It would take Western Civilization nearly ten centuries to recover and refashion a world which could be the rival of the civilization of Rome. By the third and fourth centuries AD, it is proper to speak of a Greco-Roman tradition of thought. The Romans tried to limit the influence of Greek thought in the early days of the Empire. However, over time Greek ideas joined with Roman conceptions and a new tradition of thought was forged. In some respects, the Hellenistic world became Romanized. This is just one more example of how the Romans succeeded by assimilated other cultures. Furthermore, the Greco-Roman tradition refers as much to classical and Hellenistic Greece as it does the days of the Roman Republic and the Empire. Both civilizations produced a world view which we could only call pagan. This world view was secular through and through. Gods and goddesses were common to both civilizations and yet as time passed it was the virtuous life of the good citizen that was of supreme importance. The emphasis was on living the good life in the here and now, whether in the city state or the cosmopolis. The Greco-Roman tradition was fashioned over the one thousand year history of the classical world, the world of Greece and Rome. The Renaissance of the 14th through 16th centuries attempted to revive the ideals of the classical world, and so the humanists of the Renaissance tried to imitate the humanism of centuries past. Humanist scholars took great pains to study the texts of the ancient world, not just to “harvest” the virtuous life of classical man, but to learn classical Greek and Latin. If ancient texts needed to be studied, then they needed to be studied in the language in which they were composed. What had happened between the fall of Rome and the Renaissance was the bastardization of classical languages. As scholars, the humanists needed the classical world for its language as much as it did for its ideas. However, it was also during the age of the Pax Romana that this pagan tradition, this Greco-Roman tradition, was joined by another important tradition, by another world view. This world view is called the Judeo-Christian tradition. That is, the ethical and ordering principles of the Jewish and Christian faiths. We will look at this in the next assignment. The Greco-Roman tradition was secular: it proposed no one God and formal religion as we know it today, did not exist. While the Greeks would pay homage to their many deities, as would the Romans, there is no doubt that they placed their true faith in the hands of man. In other words, humanism: man the thinker, man the doer, man the maker. For the Greeks, man was endowed with Reason, the capacity to think and use his intellect. This initially took the form of glorifying the city state: the city state was the world. Anything outside the city state was somehow inferior, barbarian. In an important respect such an attitude was narrow in focus and provided the Greeks with a tunnel vision that prevented them from further growth during the Hellenistic Age. The Greeks were also obsessed with the personal cultivation of the individual. “Know thyself,” repeated Socrates. The good man ought to seek the good life and so become a good citizen, a virtuous citizen. And a collection of virtuous citizens would constitute the virtuous city state. The only way that the good life was at all possible was through personal examination. Or, as Socrates again argued, “the unexamined life is not worth living.” Above all, the Greeks asked questions. What is knowledge? What is the state? What is beauty? What is virtue? What is justice? Was the best form of government? The Greeks, in the last analysis, were thinkers rather than doers. In time, the Greek world view came or to be based on the intellect more than it was on action. The best illustration of this world view — a view of thought rather than of action– was the Stoic and Epicurean therapies of the Hellenistic Age. These therapies taught resignation in the face of chaos and disorder — they taught men to resign themselves in private reflection and thought. The Romans, on the other hand, were doers, they were men of action. They succeeded in translating into action what the Greeks had only thought possible. The Romans also asked questions about the world, about nature, and about man. To be sure, they inhabited the same world as the Hellenistic Greeks. They understood and accepted the chaos and disorder of the world. However, they were clearly more prepared to develop their thought of the world in relation to what kind of world in which they wanted to live. The Romans also had the example of the Greeks and their history. In other words, the Romans were cognizant of what the Greeks had accomplished and not accomplished. The Greeks had no such history to which they could refer. The end result for the Romans was that they managed to create their own world and they called it the Roman Empire. And their world view became embodied in a pagan cult. This cult was nothing less than the patriotic worship of Rome itself. And throughout the Empire we find the expression Genius Populi Romani celebrated by all Romans. If anything sustained the Empire, it was the conception of the “Genius of the Roman People.” The Romans were taught to believe that the destiny of Rome was the destiny of the world and this became embodied in a civil religion which embraced the genius of the Roman people. This civil religion was a secular, pagan religion, in which all men devoted their energies toward public service to state. It was their duty to serve the state. It was virtuous. These duties consisted of service and responsibility because only through responsible service would one come to know virtue. Despite the obvious fact that the majority of Roman emperors were scheming, devious, opportunistic, or plainly insane, the world view dominated the social life of the Roman citizen of the Empire. The history of the Empire is dotted with political assassinations, strangulations, emperors playing fiddles while Rome burned, court intrigue and rivalry not to mention a widespread incidence of downright insanity or paranoid schizophrenia. In the end, it is extraordinary that the Roman Empire existed for as long as it did. For Edward Gibbon, author of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (3 vols, 1770s), the decline of Rome was natural and required little explanation: “The decline of Rome was the natural and inevitable effect of immoderate greatness. Prosperity ripened the principle of decay; the cause of the destruction multiplied with the extent of conquest; and, as soon as time or accident and removed the artificial supports, the stupendous fabric yielded to the pressure of its own weight. The story of the ruin is simple and obvious: and instead of inquiring why the Roman Empire was destroyed we should rather be surprised that it has subsisted for so long.” [Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, 2nd ed., vol. 4, ed. by J. B. Bury (London, 1909), pp. 173-174.] It’s a complicated question and has occupied the attention of historians for centuries. One thing can be said with certainty — although Rome ultimately fell in A.D. 476, the its decline was a process that had been going on for centuries. This goes back to the comment we’ve been making all along, that Roman strengths eventually became Roman weaknesses. Another thing which we ought to remember is that the Roman Empire was large, and when we speak of the fall of Rome, we are talking about the western half of the Empire. The eastern half survived as the Byzantine Empire until 1453. Lastly, there is no one explanation that accounts for Rome’s decline and fall. Now, read the following article from The Guardian newspaper in England. You may not agree with the article and that is fine; it is not offered for you to agree with. What I would like you to do is read the following article and based on what you know about Rome, answer the following questions (you may do further research to supplement your understanding). You may come to any conclusion you wish but please do a thoughtful job and support your answers with examples and reasons. 1. After reading the article below and knowing what you do about the Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire do you think there are any similarities between the United States and the ancient Roman Empire? How? Why or why not? Some of the questions below might help you: a. Do you think that the culture of ancient Rome was similar to that of contemporary United States culture in any way? Why or why not? b. Why does the author believe that the US is creating a mythic past and how does this relate to his analogy with Rome? c. Do you think in how they used their military that Rome and the US are the same or different? Why or why not? d. In the famous work, The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire, the author states: “The decline of Rome was the natural and inevitable effect of immoderate greatness. Prosperity ripened the principle of decay; the cause of the destruction multiplied with the extent of conquest; and, as soon as time or accident removed the artificial supports, the stupendous fabric yielded to the pressure of its own weight. The story of the ruin is simple and obvious: and instead of inquiring why the Roman Empire was destroyed we should rather be surprised that it has subsisted for so long.” [Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, 2nd ed., vol. 4, ed. by J. B. Bury (London, 1909), pp. 173-174. Do you think that this applies to the current state of affairs in the United States? Why or why not? e. Why did Rome’s Emperors give their masses Bread and Circus and what would the ‘Bread and Circus’ be today in the US, if one believed that there were similarities between Rome and the United States? Why? They came, they saw, they conquered. Now the United States dominates the world. With the rise of the New Age Roman Empire, Jonathan Freedland asks how long before the fall? September 20 2002 / The Guardian England The word of the hour is empire. As the United States marches to war, no other label quite seems to capture the scope of American power or the scale of its ambition. “Sole superpower” is accurate enough, but seems oddly modest. “Hyperpower” might appeal to the French; “hegemon” is favoured by academics. But empire is the big one, the gorilla of geopolitical designations – and suddenly the US is bearing its name. Of course, enemies of the US have shaken their fist at its “imperialism” for decades: they are doing it again now, as Washington wages a global “war against terror” and braces itself for a campaign aimed at “regime change” in a foreign, sovereign state. What is more surprising, and much newer, is that the notion of a US empire has suddenly become a live debate inside the US. And not just among Europhile liberals either, but across the range – from left to right. Today a liberal dissenter such as Gore Vidal, who called his most recent collection of essays on the US The Last Empire, finds an ally in the likes of conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer, who earlier this year told The New York Times, “People are coming out of the closet on the word ’empire’.” He argued that Americans should admit the truth and face up to their responsibilities as the undisputed masters of the world. And it wasn’t any old empire he had in mind. “The fact is, no country has been as dominant culturally, economically, technologically and militarily in the history of the world since the Roman empire.” But is the comparison apt? Are the Americans the new Romans? The most obvious similarity is overwhelming military strength. Rome was the superpower of its day, boasting an army with the best training, biggest budgets and finest equipment the world had seen. No-one else came close. The US is just as dominant – its defence budget will soon be bigger than the military spending of the next nine countries combined, allowing it to deploy forces almost anywhere on the planet at lightning speed. Throw in its technological lead, and the US emerges as a power without rival. There is a big difference, of course. Apart from the odd Puerto Rico or Guam, the US does not have formal colonies, the way the Romans did. There are no American consuls or viceroys directly ruling faraway lands. But that difference between ancient Rome and modern Washington may be less significant than it looks. After all, America has done plenty of conquering and colonising. For some historians, the founding of America and its 19th-century push westward were no less an exercise in empire building than Rome’s drive to take charge of the Mediterranean. While Julius Caesar took on the Gauls – bragging that he had slaughtered a million of them – American pioneers battled the Cherokee, the Iroquois and the Sioux. “From the time the first settlers arrived in Virginia from England and started moving westward, this was an imperial nation, a conquering nation,” says Paul Kennedy, author of The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers. More to the point, the US has military bases, or base rights, in some 40 countries – giving it the same global muscle it would enjoy if it ruled those countries directly. According to Chalmers Johnson, author of Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire, these US military bases are today’s version of the imperial colonies of old. Washington may refer to them as “forward deployment”, says Johnson, but colonies are what they are. On this definition, there is almost no place outside America’s reach. So the US may be more Roman than we realise, with garrisons in every corner of the globe. But there the similarities only begin. For the US approach to empire looks quintessentially Roman. It’s as if the Romans bequeathed a blueprint for how imperial business should be done – and today’s Americans follow it religiously. Lesson one in the Roman handbook for imperial success would be a realisation that it is not enough to have great military strength: the rest of the world must know that strength – and fear it. The Romans used the propaganda technique of their time – gladiatorial games in the Colosseum – to show the world how hard they were. Today 24-hour news coverage of US military operations, including video footage of smart bombs scoring direct hits, or Hollywood shoot-’em-ups at the multiplex serve the same function. Both tell the world: this empire is too tough to beat. The US has learned a second lesson from Rome, realising the centrality of technology. For the Romans, it was those famously straight roads, enabling the empire to move troops or supplies at awesome speeds – rates that would not be surpassed for well over a thousand years. It was a perfect example of how one imperial strength tends to feed another: an innovation in engineering, originally designed for military use, went on to boost Rome commercially. Today those highways find their counterpart in the information superhighway: the Internet also began as a military tool, devised by the US Defence Department, and now stands at the heart of American commerce. In the process, it is making English the Latin of its day – a language spoken across the globe. The US is proving what the Romans already knew: that once an empire is a world leader in one sphere, it soon dominates in every other. But it is not just specific tips that the US seems to have picked up from its ancient forebears. Rather, it is the fundamental approach to empire that echoes so loudly. Rome understood that, if it was to last, a world power needed to practise both hard imperialism, the business of winning wars and invading lands, and soft imperialism, the cultural and political tricks that worked not to win power but to keep it. So Rome’s greatest conquests came not at the end of a spear, but through its power to seduce conquered peoples. As Tacitus observed in Britain, the natives seemed to like togas, baths and central heating – never realising that these were the symbols of their “enslavement”. Today the US offers the people of the world a similarly coherent cultural package, a cluster of goodies that remain reassuringly uniform. It’s not togas or gladiatorial games today, but Starbucks, Coca-Cola, McDonald’s and Disney, all paid for in the contemporary equivalent of Roman coinage, the global hard currency of the 21st century: the dollar. When the process works, you don’t even have to resort to direct force; it is possible to rule by remote control, using friendly client states. This is a favourite technique for the contemporary US – no need for colonies when you have the Shah in Iran or Pinochet in Chile to do the job for you – but the Romans got there first. They ruled by proxy whenever they could. The English know all about it. One of the most loyal of client kings, Togidubnus, ruled in the southern England of the first century AD. Togidubnus did not let his masters down. When Boadicea led her uprising against the Roman occupation in AD60, she made great advances in Colchester, St Albans and London – but not Sussex. Historians now think that was because Togidubnus kept the native Britons under him in line. Just as Hosni Mubarak and Pervez Musharraf have kept the lid on anti-American feeling in Egypt and Pakistan, Togidubnus did the job for Rome nearly two millennia ago. Not that it always worked. Rebellions against the empire were a permanent fixture, with barbarians constantly pressing at the borders. Some accounts suggest that the rebels were not always fundamentally anti-Roman; they merely wanted to share in the privileges and affluence of Roman life. If that has a familiar ring, consider this: several of the enemies who rose up against Rome are thought to have been men previously nurtured by the empire to serve as pliant allies. Need one mention former US protege Saddam Hussein or one-time CIA trainee Osama bin Laden? Rome even had its own 9/11 moment. In the 80s BC, Hellenistic king Mithridates called on his followers to kill all Roman citizens in their midst, naming a specific day for the slaughter. They heeded the call and killed 80,000 Romans in local communities across Greece. “The Romans were incredibly shocked by this,” says the ancient historian Jeremy Paterson, of Newcastle University, England. “It’s a little bit like the statements in so many of the American newspapers since September 11: ‘Why are we hated so much?”‘ Internally, too, today’s US would strike many Romans as familiar terrain. America’s mythologising of its past – its casting of founding fathers Washington and Jefferson as heroic titans, its folk-tale rendering of the Boston Tea Party and the war of independence – is very Roman. That empire, too, felt the need to create a mythic past, starred with heroes. For them it was Aeneas and the founding of Rome, but the urge was the same: to show that the great nation was no accident, but the fruit of manifest destiny. There are some large differences between the two empires, of course – starting with self-image. Romans revelled in their status as masters of the known world, but few Americans would be as ready to brag of their own imperialism. Most would deny it. But that may come down to the US’s founding myth. For America was established as a rebellion against empire, in the name of freedom and self-government. Raised to see themselves as a rebel nation and plucky underdog, they cannot quite accept their current role as master. One last factor scares Americans from making a parallel between themselves and Rome: that empire declined and fell. The historians say this happens to all empires; they are dynamic entities that follow a common path, from beginning to middle to end. “What America will need to consider in the next 10 or 15 years,” says the Cambridge classicist Christopher Kelly, “is what is the optimum size for a non-territorial empire, how interventionist will it be outside its borders, what degree of control will it wish to exercise, how directly, how much through local elites? These were all questions which pressed upon the Roman Empire.” Anti-Americans like to believe that an operation in Iraq might be proof that the US is succumbing to the temptation that ate away at Rome: overstretch. But it’s just as possible that the US is merely moving into what was the second phase of Rome’s imperial history, when it grew frustrated with indirect rule through allies and decided to do the job itself. Which is it? Is the US at the end of its imperial journey, or on the brink of its most ambitious voyage? Only the historians of the future can tell us that. The Guardian This story was found at: http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2002/09/19/1032054915705.html Assignment eight Students- We must now look at history for it is only within historical context that anything understood — that is true of your life and the life of societies and civilizations. We now look at Medieval Life, the life of the Dark Ages. For this you will need to successfully read both part one and part two of this assignment, as well as pages 165-187 in your book, Sophie’s World. Part One You can read about St. Aquinas at http://www.philosophypages.com/ph/aqui.htm as well as in your books on pages 180-186. Using the above source or any other, answer the following questions in no less than five pages: 1. What are the five ways to prove God’s existence? What is the argument for each? http://www.philosophypages.com/hy/3n.htm#fivw How would Aquinas answer Richard Dawkin’s argument presented below? What would he say in defense of his position? 2. For Aquinas, how do human beings get knowledge of the world? 3. What does it mean that Aquinas ‘Christianized Aristotle’? Why did he seek to do this? Be thorough. 4. What is ‘theoretical knowledge’ and for Aquinas how did one come to possess such knowledge? Give examples. 5. What is the tension between faith and reason? What is ‘faith’ and what is ‘reason’? How did Aquinas view this tension? What are some of your though ts regarding faith and reason? To assist you, take a look at this argument from a recently released NY Times Best Selling list: The following is an excerpt from the book, The God Hypothesis by scientist, Richard Dawkins, Houghton-Mifflin, 2006. This is a section of his book that disputes the arguments put forth by Thomas Aquinas. This is just one example of how reason answers faith. Thomas Aquinas’ ‘Proofs’ The five ‘proofs’ asserted by Thomas Aquinas in the thirteenth century don’t prove anything, and are easily – though I hesitate to say so, given the eminence – exposed as vacuous. The first three are just different ways of saying the same thing, and they can easily be considered together. All involve an infinite regress – the answer to a question raises a prior question, and so on ad infinitum. 1. The Unmoved Mover. Nothing moves without a prior mover. This leads to a regress, from which the only escape is God. Something had to make the first move, and that something we call God. 2. The Uncaused Cause. Nothing is caused by itself. Every effect has a prior cause, and again we are pushed back into regress. This has to be determined by a first cause, which we call God. 3. The Cosmological argument. There must have been a time when no physical things existed. But since physical things exist now, there must have been something non physical to bring them into existence, and that something is what we call God. All three of these arguments rely upon the idea of a regress and involve God to terminate it. They make the entirely unwarranted assumption that God himself is immune to the regress. Even if we allow the dubious luxury of arbitrarily conjuring up a terminator to an infinite regress and giving it a name, simply because we need one, there is absolutely no reason to endow that terminator with any of the properties normally ascribed to God: omnipotence, omniscience, goodness, creativity of design, to say nothing of such human attributes as listening to prayers, forgiving sins and reading innermost thoughts. Incidentally, it is has not escaped the notice of logicians that omniscience and omnipotence are mutually incompatible. If God’s omniscient, he must already know how he is going to intervene to change the course of history using his omnipotence. But that means he can’t change his mind about his intervention, which means he is not omnipotent. Karen Owens has captured this witty little paradox in an equally engaging verse: Can omniscient God, who Knows the future, find The omnipotence to Change his future mind? To return to the infinite regress and the futility of invoking God to terminate it, it is more parsimonious to conjure up, say, a “big bang singularityâ€ÂÂ, or some other, physical concept as yet unknown. Calling it God is at best unhelpful and at worst perniciously misleading. Edward Lear’s Nonsense Recipe for Crumbolious Cutlets invites us to ‘Procure some strips of beef, and having cut them into the smallest possible pieces, proceed to cut them still smaller, eight or perhaps nine times.’ Some regresses do reach a natural terminator. Scientists used to wonder what would happen if you could dissect say, gold into the smallest possible pieces. Why shouldn’t you cut one of those pieces in half and produce an even smaller smidgen of gold? The regress in this case is decisively terminated by the atom. The smallest possible piece of gold is a nucleus consisting of exactly seventy nine protons and a slightly larger number of neutrons, attended by a swarm of seventy nine electrons. If you ‘cut’ gold any further than the level of a single atom, whatever else you get is not gold. The atom provides a natural terminator to the Crumboblious Cutlets type of regress. It is by no means clear that God provides a natural terminator to the regresses of Aquinas. That’s putting it mildly, as we shall see later. Let’s move on down Aquinas’ list. 4. The argument from degree. We notice that things in the world differ. There are degrees of, say, goodness or perfection. But we judge these degrees only by comparison with a maximum. Humans can be both good and bad, so the maximum goodness cannot rest in us. Therefore there must be some other maximum to set the standard of perfection, and we call that maximum God. That’s an argument? You might as well say, people vary in smelliness but we can make the comparison only by reference to a perfect maximum of conceivable smelliness. Therefore there must exist a preeminently peerless stinker, and we call him God. Or substitute any dimension of comparison you like, and derive an equivalently fatuous conclusion 5. The teleological argument, or Argument from design. Things in the world, especially living things, look as though they have been designed. Nothing that we know looks designed unless it is designed. Therefore there must have been a designer, and we call him God. Aquinas himself used the analogy of an arrow moving towards a target, but a modern heat-seeking anti-aircraft missile would have suited his purpose better. The argument from design is the only one still in regular use today, and it still sounds to many like the ultimate knockdown argument. The young Darwin was impressed by it, when, as a Cambridge undergraduate, he read it in William Paley’s Natural Theology. Unfortunately for Paley, the mature Darwin blew it out of the water. There has probably never been a more devastating rout of popular belief by clever reasoning than Charles Darwin’s destruction of the argument from design. It was so unexpected. Thanks to Darwin, it is no longer true to say that nothing that we know looks designed unless it is designed. Evolution by natural selection produces an excellent simulacrum design, mounting prodigious heights of complexity and elegance. And among these eminences of pseudo-design are nervous systems which – among their more modest accomplishments – manifest goal-seeking behavior that, even in a tiny insect, resemble a sophisticated heat seeking missile more than a simple arrow on target. |
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