THE CONCEPT OF MAN IN GREEK THOUGHT
I CREATIVITY AND CULTURE
- Prescott Johnson
Presented at Roberts Wesleyan College, May, 1968.
* * * *
INTRODUCTION
Since my field is philosophy, and since, therefore, my meager knowledge of the Greeks is pretty well confined to that area, you would expect that I shall discuss my topic, “The Concept of Man in Greek Thought,” with major reference to philosophy. In this expectation you will not be disappointed. However, a philosophy emerges out of a general culture and, in its turn, exerts an influence upon that culture. Hence a discussion of our topic must, for the sake of adequacy, relate to broader phases of Greek culture.
In this first paper I wish to show how the Greek concept of man relates to the broader culture of the Greeks. In particular, I want to show how that concept defines a practice and theory of art and society. Man expresses himself and his nature in the creation of culture. Greek man did this and left his record and reflective thought in his architecture and sculpture, in his history and literature, in his religion and philosophy. This story and legacy is the theme of the present discussion, under the topic “Creativity and Culture.”
- The Turn to Mind
What distinguishes the ancient Greek is his resolute and joyful affirmation of the way of the mind, of the intellect. He wished to understand himself and his world. He bequeathed to the world a distinctively realist mentality, and the generations since, especially the West, have been molded by it and have in their turn added to it. The Greek way is the way of mind.
Today we are apt to lose sight of the meaning and importance of the Greek emphasis upon mind. The Greek mentality is modern and Western. It affirmed the supremacy of mind in the affairs of men. This cannot be said, for example, of ancient Rome. Although Rome was filled with practical, common sense men of affairs, it had elements of the old world of the East. The emperors were gods. They gave to their brutalized people amusements full of horror and cruelty. In Rome the oriental state had its revival. In the Egypt of antiquity, again, the mind was held in check. Man was preoccupied with the dead. The masses of the people lived in extreme misery and wretchedness. Their only hope lie in the world of the dead. Added to this misery, there was the Egyptian priesthood. To it belonged the domain of the intellect. But it employed the intellect to organize and guard the kingdom of the dead. The priests were “. . . guardians of what seekers of old had found, never using their own minds with freedom.”[1] They kept all they knew within their organization to insure their authority and power. They kept the people in ignorance, lest light shine upon the dark mystery of death and so release men’s mind and energy as to destroy the constricting walls of organized priesthood. In India, too, there occurred a profound disregard for the intellect and its penetration into a world of objective truth. For if the outside world is illusion, then truth is separated from outside fact. It becomes an inner disposition, an inversion of mind which overcomes the duality of subject and object and achieves consciousless absorption into the oneness of reality.
So different from all this is the Greek mentality. In the Greek view, or at least its prevailing view, there are disassociations within reality; there is no manifold of objective illusion which must be made to disappear in all-absorbing unity. The ego is a free existent disassociated from the will in nature. Man can view nature with the eye of the mind and come to understand and appreciate it. He can achieve knowledge and truth as these are measured in terms of mind’s accord with external fact and reality. Such knowledge is efficacious in the ordering of his life and its affairs. The interest is that of life, not death. Man’s intellect is life at its highest pitch; in its activity man achieves his substantial humanity. There is no domination of his mind by an organized priesthood. For Prometheus has given to man his portion of the heavenly gift of fire‑-that knowledge which achieves his free destiny. A century before Plato, Aeschylus had voiced his criticism of the dark powers exercised by the priesthood:
And, truly, what of good
ever have prophets brought to men?
Craft of many words,
only through
evil your message speaks.
Seers bring aye
terror, so to keep
men afraid.[2]
The Greek’s love of reason and his love of life is reflected even in his games and amusements. The Greek rejoiced in life and found the world beautiful and delightful to live in. This joy of life, “the exercise of vital powers along lines of excellence,” found expression in play and the great Olympic games. In his delight in the use of mind and body, the ancient Greek turned full-face toward life.
Thus ancient Greece turned to mind. It so infused life as to make it a thing of joy; it so understood and responded to the world as to make it a thing of beauty. This attitude of knowing appreciation of the mind is found preeminently in Greek art.
- Creativity in Art
Greek art reveals the valuation which the Greek placed upon intellect and reason. It further reveals the way in which the intellect view matter, as something real in its own right but yet capable of becoming infused with reason and becoming a medium through which reason shines forth. Greek art is accordingly intellectual art.
If, for example, we contrast Greek art with the art of India, we can better appreciate the character of Greek art. In distinction to the realism of Greek thought, for the Indian the outside world is all illusion. The Upanishads express this fundamental doctrine:
The infinite is the Self. He who perceives this, is lord and master of all the world. Air, fire, water, food, appearances, disappearances‑-all spring from the Self. He who sees this sees everything and obtains everything.[3]
If, now, the outer world is illusory, it is not a fit medium for artistic expression. Thus the Buddhist artist is required to look away from the world, to meditate upon the emptiness and non-existence of all things, to turn to a place of solitude, and finally to lose consciousness and identify himself with the divinity he desires to portray. But he finds no material capable of becoming the medium through which to render his vision. Yet render that vision he must. His only way as an artist is to distort his material, to free it from human shape and natural form, in the hope that it will thus manifest the eternal, undefiled with sense and earth. Thus he freely improvises his symbolism to express his mystic vision: many arms to express multiform power, many breasts to express spiritual nourishment.
The Greek artist has his vision of the ideal, it is true, but he finds it and expresses it through concourse with the real world. The vision of ideal beauty is suggested in the forms and shapes of things which surround him. From these impressions the artist forms his deal, fairer and more beautiful than anything which he has seen, and then uses matter, the medium at hand, to express that ideal. The matter does not need to be distorted; it is accepted as given by nature. But it is purified of imperfection, vivified and enhanced, so that it can better express the ideal. the artist accepts his matter, the forms and shapes he finds in his world, but, by the power of the ideal which he envisages, reforms and reshapes his medium along natural lines so that, as nature cannot, it may fully, or more fully, disclose the ideal. Thus when Polygnotus wished to paint Helen of Troy, he went to Crotona, famed for the beauty of its women, and asked to see those who were the most beautiful. These he studied before painting his picture. The finished picture, however, was not a representation of any of the lovely faces he had seen. It was fairer by far than the fairest of them all. But it was not super-natural; it had no distortion. For it was based on the women he had studied, it was conditioned by their actual bodily shapes. It was super-individual‑-the beauty of woman idealized.
Greek sculpture, too, reveals the intellectual tone of Greek art. No one expresses this more beautifully than does Edith Hamilton in The Greek Way:
The Olympic Hermes is a perfectly beautiful human being, no more, no less. Every detail of his body was shaped from a consummate knowledge of actual bodies. Nothing is added to mark his deity, no aureole around his head, no mystic staff, no hint that here is he who guides the soul to death. The significance of the statue to the Greek artist, the mark of his the divinity, was its beauty, only that. His art had taken form within him as he walked the streets, watched the games, noted perpetually the people he lived among. To him what he saw in those human beings was enough for all his art; he had never an impulse to fashion something different, something truer than this truth of nature. In his eyes the Word had become flesh; he made his image of the eternal what men could be.[4]
The intellectual tone of Greek art finds conspicuous expression in the architecture of Greece. The endowment of reason is simplicity and clarity. It is the grasp of essential structure, brushing aside all obscuring, entangling superfluity. Thus the Greek temple is the creation, par excellence, of an unclouded reason. The mind of the Greek architect kept him firmly within the visible world. He placed his temple upon a hill, outlined against the sweep of the sky and the curve of the sea. He flung a challenge to nature, built something more beautiful than nature. But he did no violence to nature or to the forms and shapes which express themselves in nature. The Parthenon is absolute simplicity of structure. Straight columns rise to plain capitals; a pediment is sculptured in bold relief; there is nothing more. Yet, and for this reason, the Parthenon is alone in majestic beauty among the temples and cathedrals of the world.
Like architecture, Greek literature is marked by simplicity. Greek writing shuns ornamentation and superfluity. It is plain and direct, penetrating to the essence of things, laying hold of the naked fact. The Greek poem exalts the beauty of things, as in the Hymn to Demeter:
The strange glory of the narcissus . . . a wonder to all, immortal gods and mortal men. A hundred blossoms grew from the roots of it and very sweet was the fragrance, and all the wide sky above and all the land laughed and the salt wave of the sea.[5]
When Bryon describes a mountain he writes:
‑-the monarch of the mountains
They crowned him long ago
On a throne of rocks, in a robe of clouds,
With a diadem of snow.
But Aeschylus expresses the same thought simply and directly:
the mighty summit, neighbor to the stars.[6]
The literature of Greece finds its highest achievement in the tragedy. Its intellectual tone is voiced in its simple and uncomplicated structure. In Agamemnon, Aeschylus employs but three actors. He is reluctant to use them all at once in speaking action. The scene of the drama is kept simple: a familiar fixed position before the doors of the house, a palace. the plot is correspondingly simple. There are only a few events which take place: the return of Agamemnon, the murder of Agamemnon. The dramatic time elapsing between these events is occupied by a web of numerous lines which induce a growing strain of suspense. Memory and forecast‑-imagination‑-work to bring scope to plot and action, so that the present is woven into the tissue of past and future. The chorus assumes divining powers, remembering the far-off past which set in motion the chain of events culminating in present tragedy, anticipating the unborn future pregnant with tragic consequences awaiting fulfillment. In all of this network something eternal is caught hold of: the timeless way of things, events, actions of men and gods. Simplicity in scene, plot, dramatic action, but yet comprehensive in scope, powerful in expression‑-this is the way of Greek tragedy.
There is a further, substantive, sense in which the intellectual character of Greek tragedy is evident. The Greeks were the first to grasp the idea of tragedy. The Greek mind saw that there was something inexplicable in the nature of things, something irremediably wrong in the world. The Greek poet saw this truth of human life, expressed it in the beauty of dramatic line and action, and tragedy was born. The people of the cities of ancient Greece met together in the open under the star-decked sky and wept together, united in single emotion, as they watched lyric tragedy unfold before them. What is there about tragedy that gives it such power ;and hold over men’s minds and emotions? What sort of thing had Aeschylus seen and set forth in his great trilogy? He was the inexplicable and irremediable in the world. He saw that in this world, too, there was something of dignity and significance‑-the dignity and significance of human life. Humanity may bow before the inexplicable in things, the irremediable wrong in life, but it need not give up its distinctive excellence. For nowhere is the dignity and significance of human life more evident than in its power to suffer. Man knows his transcendent worth because ;he is able to suffer so terribly. The passionate soul can suffer greatly, in pain and death transform that pain and death, and catch sight of a deeper and more ultimate reality than that in which we live our lives. Thus Aeschylus saw that suffering has its purpose: it is man’s high road to knowledge.
God, whose law it is that he who learns must suffer. And even in our sleep pain that cannot forget, falls drop by drop upon the heart, and in our own despite, against our will, comes wisdom to us by the awful grace of God.[7]
This discussion of the various arts serves, not only to point up the intellectual character of Greek art, but to suggest a general theory of art. The Greeks used the word τέχvη (texne) to mean what we today call both art and craft, the creation of both beautiful and useful objects. In the Cratylus, the word is derived from _ξιv vo_, or “active disposition of insight.”[8] The suggestion is that in texne human reason flows out of itself into other forms of activity, directing them in certain ways. The artist does nothing at random, but imposes upon his behavior a “certain orderly arrangement” which he “has in view” from the very beginning. “Where there is such a standard,” Plato says, “there is art [texne]; where there is no standard there is none.”[9]
There are certain essential factors belonging to the structure of techne following its definition as “active disposition of insight.” First, techne has a useful end, on account of which the art exists. The work of each art is accomplished for the sake of something. In the Gorgias, Plato states that the end, or object, of medicine is to make the body healthy.[10] Second, techne includes the work (_ργov) of art, the specific achievement of the art, which enables it to serve its purpose. The finished temple is the work of the art of building. Third, the work of art displays a general form or structure, which enables it to achieve its end. There is a certain formal order or arrangement which enables a building to perform its function. Fourth, a technical procedure is necessary to impose the form upon some matter. In the Republic, Plato says that art gives something, form, to something else, matter.[11] Finally, there is some concrete matter on which the form is imposed.
The work of art is achieved through the imposition of form upon material. The concrete material is thereby transformed into a certain order or structure. It is precisely this form, apprehended by reason, and its structuring and organizing action upon the material which makes Greek art intellectual art. The artist envisages patterns which are rational and coherent in that they are ruled by balance and harmony. The material at his disposal is not alien and recalcitrant to form and reason. By his technical ability the artist can devolve the forms upon matter, and so transform matter that it becomes the intelligible medium expressive of reason. Through the art object‑-the painting, sculpture, temple, or poem‑-the intelligible and the ideal shine resplendently in concrete embodiment. Art, in fine, is the oracle of reason: it is this fusion of word and flesh which constitutes the beautiful.
III. Creativity in Society
Like art, human society at its best is a creation of reason. In principle the politeia, the state of commonwealth, is the expression and embodiment of reason in man’s social life. Plato’s great work, the Politeia, or Republic, points up unmistakably the intellectual nature, at least ideally, of society.
In what amounts to a rational, rather than historical, reconstruction of society, Plato shows that society has its roots in human need and ability. People have certain needs which can be met by others, and those whose needs are thus met have abilities which supply the needs of others. In receiving from and in turn giving to each other, a rudimentary society is instituted. A social and economic structure providing for men’s basic needs is established. Plato’s thesis here is that society is something natural, an interdependence of people specializing according to innate aptitudes. It is not something “unnatural,” such as an outcome of arbitrary compact.[12]
Plato goes on to show that men cannot achieve their true humanity in a society where only their basic needs are met. The refinements of civilization and culture must be provided by a more developed society. With opportunity, however, comes danger: the complexity and sophistication of a developed society, so necessary to the creation of a high culture, can be misused so as to entail unhealthy elements of luxury which frustrate both individual and social excellence. Thus it is necessary to bring reason to bear upon the elements and organization of social life. A worthy society is one which is pervaded by intelligence. As is art, society is intellectual in its essential nature.[13]
The articulation of men and their activities according to their special aptitudes brings, for Plato, a threefold division of society. Some citizens provide for the material necessities of life, others for the security of the society from internal disturbance and external aggression, and others for the governance of the state according to reason. These groups are called laborers, guardians, and governors. Justice in society occurs when the factors in society function properly and harmoniously.[14]
A somewhat detailed consideration of the structure of a just society and the means by which this is brought about will show the place which the intellect has in social life. As in art, reason is the creative force in society. And the nature and demands of reason are very clearly revealed in society. The reason in man enables him to know the essential nature of things, to know what each thing is. In connection with the social order, reason enables one to know the nature and function of each element in society. In knowing what each thing is, however, a principle of preferential order, a principle of hierarchy, is implicated. Individual things differ in the degree of value and reality which they possess and express. In apprehending these individuals, man’s reason is thus constrained to order them hierarchically in a scale of value. Thus man’s reason enables him to assess the elements of society and relate them to each other in a hierarchical scale.
It is the function of the governing, or teaching, element in society to see to it that the other elements in society perform the activities for which they are fitted and to integrate them with each other and the economy of the state. It does this by an understanding, or envisagement, of the common good. The governors, in other words, exercise their intelligence and develop an enlightened plan of action in which the common good can be realized, or in which men together can develop their potential and achieve their humanity. The guardians provide the conditions of stability and security which are requisite for the carrying out of the plan. The laborers provide the material conditions of society, in accordance with the enlightened goals of that society. All this does not involve, as is sometimes supposed, a “class” society. In Plato’s Republic there are no “classes,” and there are, incidentally, no slaves. The reason and wisdom, which are the distinctive virtues of the governors, are shared by all citizens. The guardians and laborers freely subordinate themselves under the rule of reason, freely institute concerted action culminating in the realization of the common good. All phases of society are ruled by reason, and certain phases, the guardians and laborers, are assigned places in a hierarchical structure of subordinate functions. In this manner a just society is procured.
The intellectual nature of a just society as a hierarchical structure of subordinate functions can be pointed up by reference to the phenomenon of social inversion. In social inversion the place of reason, embodied in the governors, is usurped by the other phases of society. It often happens that the enlightened determination of a corporate policy is replaced by the rule of tradition and authority. Insight and knowledge which have consciously ordered the affairs of the society become dim, rationally determined plans and goals are obscured. Some semblance of intelligence is retained, of course, in those traditions in which previous wisdom has been preserved. But then traditions lose their meaning, because their rationale and justification are lost. Government by authority then takes over. This state of affairs is Plato’s timocratic state. The inversion continues as administration gives over to material demands and the accumulation of wealth. Legislation is then based on wealth and has for its purpose the protection of the wealthy. Foisted on society is a laissez faire economic policy and legislation in the interest of private capital and capital production. Plato’s oligargic state comes into being. The rule of wealth then gives way to a kind of democratic anarchy, in which other, neglected interests clamor for consideration. The consumptive interests of the people then become the basis of legislation, ushering in the “democratic” society. Parenthetically, has not Plato accurately described much of our own economic history: oligarchic production combined with democratic consumption mysteriously fused in a blind coefficient of supply and demand, upon which policy and legislation are predicated? The balance of consumptive interests, fragile and precarious, is finally disrupted by the force of some dominant interest which comes to tyrannize over the whole of social life. The tyrannical state emerges with its absolute dictator, and social inversion reaches its culmination.[15]
Social inversion, then, comes about when non-rational elements usurp the place of reason in a society. The hierarchy, in which reason is dominant and all other elements are ordered in terms of their proximity to reason, is disrupted and, at worst, inverted. Under this condition, no society can be good and just. Reason, and reason alone, must govern and institute policy and legislation, and order the various phases of society according to their place in the hierarchical structure of intelligibility. Thus the social order is the intelligible life of a corporate people, a creation and achievement of reason.
While it is required that reason insinuate and govern the just society, the state is a composite body and not an individual, and does not itself possess reason. Individual men, and the alone, possess that reason which is to govern society. This consideration raises a question to which I wish to give some attention in closing this discussion, namely, the relation between the state and individual men.
Society both antedates and postdates the individual. It is there when he is born and it is there after he dies. His existence is dependent on, and conditioned by, the society. The material necessities of life are provided by the technical hierarchy of a cooperative society. Protection and security are granted by the social order. The intellect is conditioned by early training. Materially and effectively, then, the individual is dwarfed by society.
But it is the individual intellect alone which actually achieves insight. “Things in themselves,” Plato says, “must be beheld by the soul in herself.”[16] In this respect, the individual intellect dwarfs society. It makes possible a mode of life more unified, more clear, more stable, and more sharply articulated than that of its reflected social counterpart. The intellect thus is free from social conditioning, and transcends the structure of society. The transcendent life of intellect is seen in the experience of “conversion.” A society may be so corrupt and degenerate that it fails to provide the conditions conducive to the development and cultivation of the individual intellect. Nevertheless, Plato observes, the intellect in man enables him to think for himself. And he is free to act on his own information and knowledge, and when he does his “conversion” is complete. “Our own account,” he says, “signifies that the soul of every man does possess the power of learning the truth.”[17] Man’s redemption lies in “the excellence of thought . . . a divine quality, a thing that never loses its potency.”[18]
The transcendent life of mind is further seen in its creative power exerted upon society. The reason and wisdom capable of redeeming and elevating society are precisely the insight of individual men who have dared to perceive and act on the truth. As long as men form their opinions on the basis of those factors in society which lack rational support or are hostile to intelligence and insight, society cannot creatively enact itself in history. And it is a mistake to suppose that the infusion of creative impetus can be brought about merely and only by the management of the elements that condition society. Conditioning factors are not themselves creative and causative. That creative impetus can come only from individuals, who employ their knowledge and wisdom in the pursuit of intelligent social goals. It is an individual responsibility. Men who themselves live the life of reason must govern and lead society, if it is to viably endure. This is the meaning of Plato’s famous passage;
Unless . . . rulers come to be sufficiently inspired with a genuine desire for wisdom; unless, that is to say, political power and philosophy [love of wisdom] meet together, . . . there can be no rest from troubles . . . for states nor . . . for all mankind.[19]
The transcendence of the individual mind over society is a fact which is consonant with the thesis of this discussion: that man’s creativity brings his culture into being. Art and society are creations of mind. But mind is individual, something deeper and more fundamental than its reflection in culture. We are thus led imperceptibly to the question as to the nature of man as individual. Who and what is man? What is involved in his high privilege of knowing the truth? And what is his destiny as the bearer of reason? These questions I propose to discuss next, under the title “Individulity and Destiny.”
[1]Edith Hamilton, The Greek Way (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., Inc., 1942), p. 25.
[2]Aeschylus, Agamemmnon 1132.
[3]Quoted from Hamilton, op. cit., pp. 57-58.
[6]Aeschylus, Prometheus Bound 721.
[11]Plato, Republic i. 332c ff.
[15]bid., viii. 534a-ix. 576b.