02 The Origins of Western Humanities: Ancient Greece

Published

2026-07-13

We are all Greeks…

— Shelley

…whatever satisfies our spiritual life and gives it value and brilliance, we know comes from Greece directly or indirectly — indirectly via Rome…

— Hegel

Documentary: CCTV World History — Greece

Geography: Surrounded by the Sea — A Maritime Culture

  • Seafaring: commerce, warfare, …
  • Face West Asia across the sea

8th–6th century BCE: The Polis (city-state)

  • Athens: defeated Persia, established a slave-owning democratic polity — the flourishing of Greek culture
  • Sparta

Cultural Characteristics

“The divine” gains respect by honoring “the human,” and “the human” gains respect by honoring “the divine.”

— Hegel

  • Both reverence for the gods and high esteem for humanity
  • No clear boundary between gods and humans

Literature

  • Homeric Epics: The Iliad and The Odyssey

    • e.g., the Golden Apple: gods marrying mortals, interaction between gods and humans, conflict between gods and humans
    • The beginning of Greek literature and historiography

  • Tragedy (greater influence and achievement): Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides

    • Origin: rituals of Dionysus, the god of wine, and banquet songs

      • Form: trilogies
      • Semicircular theaters

    • Aeschylus: “Father of Tragedy” (Engels)

      • Prometheus Bound trilogy

      The highest saint and martyr in the calendar of philosophy — Marx

  • Comedy: Cratinus, Eupolis, Aristophanes

Literary Theory: Literature + Philosophy

  • Plato, Aristotle

  • Aristotle’s Poetics

    • Theory of Mimesis (imitation): art is the artist’s re-creation of the activities of life — a process of concentration, generalization, and typification

Historiography

5th–first half of 4th century BCE

Herodotus, The Histories (also known as The Greco-Persian Wars)

  • 492–479 BCE: Greece, the underdog, defeated Persia

    • Books 1–5: the rise and expansion of Persia
    • Books 5–9: the Greco-Persian Wars
    • A world history from a Greek perspective

    Here are presented the findings of Herodotus of Halicarnassus, so that human achievements may not be forgotten with time, nor the great and marvelous deeds — some performed by Greeks, some by barbarians — may lose their glory; and especially to record the causes of their conflicts.

    — Herodotus, The Histories, Book 1

  • The foundation of Western historiography

(Western) “Father of History” — Cicero

Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War

  • The Athens-Sparta war: a struggle for hegemony in Greece; Athens won, but both were greatly weakened

  • Rigorous scholarly attitude and methodology

    • Emphasized the role of economics

Xenophon, Anabasis (The March Up-Country / The Persian Expedition)

  • Served as a Greek mercenary in the campaign of Cyrus the Younger to seize the Persian throne; after Cyrus fell in battle, Xenophon became a leader of the mercenaries and led them back to Greece

Philosophy

Ancient Greek philosophy is the most illuminating part of the entire history of (Western) philosophy.

— Windelband

Two paths of ancient Greek philosophers:

  1. (Earlier) Facing the natural world — exploring human cultural existence through reflection on the relationship between humans and nature

    • Thales, Pythagoras, Zeno, Democritus, …
    • Inquiries into the arche (first principle) of the world: water, air, fire, the Boundless, number, …
    • Advanced natural philosophy and the natural sciences

  2. Facing the human self — exploring human cultural existence through reflection on inner life and moral practice

    • Socrates: the human psyche matters more; focused on the human person (psyche, virtue, “the Good”)

    • Plato: Theory of Forms / Ideas, The Republic

      • The arche of the world: the Forms

      • Humans: use reason to know the Forms → Beauty, Virtue → the Good

      • The Republic: corresponds to the tripartite soul

        • Reason → the ruling/philosopher class
        • Spirit/courage → the military/warrior class
        • Appetite/desire → the common/laboring class
        • Rulers: the most educated among the philosopher class → philosopher-kings

      • Divergence from Democritus:

        For Democritus, true being has theoretical value for explaining phenomena; for Plato, true being has practical value.

        — Windelband

    • Aristotle: synthesized natural philosophy and philosophy — the great synthesizer

      • Classification of knowledge:

        • Theoretical: physics, …
        • Practical: ethics, politics, …
        • Poetic/productive: Poetics, …

      • In ancient Greek philosophy, these disciplines were not yet clearly demarcated

The Establishment of the Classical Humanities

Humanitas: the education that makes one fully human