The Greeks Truth

The Greeks valued good communication skills. In the competing Greek city states a gifted speaker could gain many followers through the style and delivery as well as the content of his speech. It was a very primitive and direct form of democracy. From the Greeks we get the word rhetoric. The word rhetoric means to persuade by using language effectively. Aristotle was a champion of this skill. Ancient Greek citizens could win the favor of the people by persuading them to their point of view. If they were persuasive but, bad leaders this could easily lead to continual conflict. Especially since Greeks also valued a person who added cunning, shrewdness and even lying to his speech. I suppose it was like a civilization of Lawyers.

There was great good that came from this remarkable society. The good was wrapped up in the process of reason by which they spoke. Plato pioneered inductive and Aristotle deductive reasoning. The learning processes that they pioneered are still used to unlock the secrets of form and order. Schools of philosophy like Stoicism and Epicureanism were equally important. The ancient Greek argumentative skepticism became the foundation for modern scientific and philosophical thought. Young Alexander the Great was tutored in these skills.

Permit me to conclude this discussion with a few questions from my friend Socrates. He is a man not unfamiliar with the concept of virtue.

But, what virtue is there in questioning everything and reason for reasons sake?
Is it also a quest for truth? A Greek speaker may attempt to persuade an audience with a lie. What truth can there be in a lie? Will an honest philosopher who knows his audience lead them to truth when he is mindful that they are questioning his words? Will reason’s processes lead us to truth? I hope you will have concluded that the end of reason must be the virtue of the ancient Greeks.

The end of reason is the truth and truth is a noun in the language of virtue.

The Death of Socrates Taken from...

Socrates opposed the Sophists, arguing that there are absolute, transcultural standards of right and wrong, good and bad. He argued (as in the first passage below) that once we recognize what is truly good, we will act in accord with that knowledge--hence his claim that "the virtues are a kind of knowledge." He also firmly believed (as shown in the second passage) that the cosmos is grounded in goodness, hence that a good person cannot suffer unduly and that death is not something to be feared. Plato recounts the last hours of Socrates' life in a moving dialogue. This is the end of his final speech, just after he had been condemned to death by the citizens of Athens, his home town. The method of execution was that the condemned should drink a cup of hemlock, a not uncommon mode of execution.

What reasons does Socrates give for not fearing death? Why is Socrates so little concerned with how his body is to be buried?
Now as you see there has come upon me that which may be thought, and is generally believed to be, the last and worst evil. But the oracle made no sign of opposition . . . I regard this as a proof that what has happened to me is a good, and that those of use who think that death is an evil are in error . . . . Let us reflect in another way, and we shall see that there is great reason to hope that death is a good, for one of two things:--either death is a state of nothingness and utter unconsciousness, or, as men say, there is a change and migration of the soul from this world to another. Now if you suppose that there is no consciousness, but a sleep like the sleep of him who is undisturbed even by the sight of dreams, death will be an unspeakable gain. . . . Now if death is like this, I say that to die is gain; for eternity is then only a single night. But if death is a journey to another place, and there, as men say, all the dead are, what good, O my friends and judges, can be greater than this? . . . What would not a man give if he might converse with Orpheus and Musaeus and Hesiod and Homer? Nay, if this be true, let me die again and again. . . . Above all, I shall be able to continue my search into true and false knowledge; as in this world, so also in that; I shall find out who is wise, and who pretends to be wise, and is not. . . . The hour of departure has arrived, and we go our ways--I to die, and you to live. Which is better God only knows.