The Greeks invented neither religion nor philosophy, but they had an undoubted flair for both.
Over 2,000 years later, our language is full of words and ideas that originated with the Greeks.
Chaos, atlas, nemesis, panacea, Nike, ether, mania, paean, erotic, chronology, mnemonic, hypnotise, ocean, helium, hermaphrodite, harmony, phobia, boreal, aeon and many other words are all derived directly or indirectly from the names of Greek gods. Even now, we talk of olympian feats, creative muses and business titans.
The stories too live on - Icarus flying too close to the sun, Narcissus looking at his own reflection, Tantalus being, well, tantalised, Orpheus attempting to rescue Eurydice from Hades, Jason and the Argonauts, the odyssey of Odysseus, the labours of Hercules, the heel of Achilles and so on. When Albert Camus wanted to describe the existential pointlessness of life, he chose the image of Sisyphus forever pushing a boulder up a hill only for it to roll back down.
Then gradually the Greek gift for myth evolved into a gift for philosophy.
Socrates is regarded as the father of Western philosophy. He was not the first philosopher in the world, of course, nor even Greece. Pythagoras had lived and died before Socrates' birth in c.470BC. But it was Socrates who said "to find yourself, think for yourself" and "the hottest love has the coldest end", both of which are much snappier than "in a right-angled triangle, the square of the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides." As further evidence of his enduring cultural importance, it was Socrates, not Pythagoras, who was kidnapped in Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure, and it was Socrates who scored the winning goal in Monty Python's 'International Philosophy' match (although Karl Marx claimed it was offside).
Two more philosophical greats followed in Socrates' wake: Plato and his pupil, Aristotle. Together they cemented Greek philosophy's reputation. Plato emphasised the spiritual, whereas Aristotle concentrated on the material. Plato talked about crawling out of our cave into the light of truth, whereas Aristotle argued that "facts are the starting point". Plato asked 'why does it exist?'; Aristotle 'how does it work?' Our modern-day divide between the humanities and the sciences is an outworking of the divide between Platonism and Aristotelianism.
But the development of Greek philosophy did not stop there. If anyone has ever called you cynical or sceptical, take it as a compliment, because they are linking you to Greek schools of philosophy that are over 2,000 years old. By the time of St Paul, though, two other schools, the Epicureans and the Stoics, were dominant and he debated with both during his time in Athens.
The names of these two schools have also passed into the English language. Epicurean is used to describe fun-loving playboys, whereas stoic describes someone who suffers in silence. Unsurprisingly, though, both philosophies in their original forms had much more depth than that.
The Epicurean believed that the gods, if they existed at all, were far away and detached. The world was purely material. We were here by chance and there was no grand divine plan. In order to be happy, therefore, we too had to be like the gods; we had to be detached from the chaos around us. The way to achieve happiness was to remove pain from our lives. If Epicureanism was a slogan, it would be 'Just Do It'. If it was a song, it would be 'Imagine' - "imagine there's no heaven // it's easy if you try // no hell below us, above us only sky // imagine all the people living for today. Hey hey hey-ey-ey."
The Stoic believed the exact opposite. God was everything and everything was god. As one ancient Stoic put it: "God is the mind of the world, and the world is the body of god". Because the universe is itself divine, it has a perfect rationality. It is the highest expression of order, wholeness and structure. Our role as humans, therefore, is to align ourselves with this rationality and accept what life throws at us. You can't control what you can't control, so you might as well accept it. If Stoicism was a slogan, it would be 'Keep Calm and Carry On'. If it was a song, it would be Vera Lynn's 'We'll Meet Again' - "keep smiling through // just like you always do // till the blue skies drive the dark clouds far away".
Epicureanism and Stoicism are both surprisingly modern and remain powerful influences. Indeed, it does not take much imagination to see the recent debate about mask-wearing as a battle between Epicureanism and Stoicism, between those who want to seek pleasure by detaching themselves from perceived restrictions and those who shrug their shoulders and accept the inconveniences imposed by government.
Whether we like it or not, the Greeks still dominate the way in which we think and the ways we act.
Written by Pete Mansfield
