The Athenian Political Experience (ca. 469-338 BC): Historical Background
Forerunners to the Athenian Enlightenment:
 6500 BC – Start of Agricultural Revolution in the Middle East
 Middle Eastern pre-eminence from ca 3000 BC - ca 500 BC; Writing appears by
3100 BC by Sumerians in the fertile Tigris-Euphrates Valley
 Between 1000 BC and 500 BC, three peripheral civilizations were developing
around the Cosmopolitan Middle East (including Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Asia
Minor): The Chinese, Indian, and Greek (European) civilizations
 Middle Eastern domination under Persia comes to an end circa 500 BC. Each
peripheral civilization (Greece, as well as Confucian China and Buddhist India)
were developing their notable cultural characteristics by 500.
Of the three peripheral civilizations, Greeks develop a unique synthesis between the
natural, supernatural, and political world.
 Began to differentiate science/material causation from myth and religious explanation
 The Greeks, through contact with Egypt and Mesopotamia, reappropriated the
Egyptian political model of a God-King or Pharaoh working in concert with a
religious bureaucracy.
 Sixth century Ionian Greeks broke from this and applied discernable laws of the
universe and applied them to the laws governing their life in the polis.
 Began to differentiate between politics (the controllable affairs of people) and the
metaphysical realm (religion/philosophy)
 Unlike the Persians, who would worship living people who were Pharaohs or
Kings, the Greeks worshipped no living man or woman. A Revolutionary
change: The Greeks only worshipped their Gods, who resided in a metaphysical
realm.
 This important shift can be seen in Protagoras’s humanist claim that “Man is the
measure of all things.”
 Greeks prized change, flux, political debate, instability, and the discernable
motives of men’s actions (politics, culture, economics)
 Whereas Mesopotamians valorized supernatural intervention and monumental
events, and the Egyptians valorized continuities and institutional stability
By 490, Greece is forced into war with the Persians, as the Persians try to control Greek
speaking poleis in Western Asia Minor.
490 BC to 479 BC - The Persian Wars. Monumental importance for Greece and World
History. The Spartan fleet was strongest but the Athenian fleet provided the decisive
strategic difference.
In 478, Athens becomes the seat of an empire known as the Delian League (478-404 and
378-338).
Simultaneously, the Spartans establish the Peloponnesian League.
Hellas, or the ancient Greece of the 5th and part of the 4th century, was effectively a
confederacy of diverse city-states, falling either under the political influence of the
Athenians or the Spartans.
Maps of mid Fifth Century Greece:
http://www.bigissueground.com/history/ash-athenianempire.shtml
http://plato-dialogues.org/tools/gk_wrld.htm
The Athenian empire is finally brought down in 404 BC by the Spartans in the
Peloponnesian War.
A weakened Athenian confederacy is re-established from 378 until Philip of Macedon
conquers all of Greece in 338.
461 BC – 429 BC Age of Pericles
 Golden Age of Athenian Democracy: A robust period of direct democracy.
Plato’s analyses and criticisms of democracy in The Republic were very likely
ideas that began to gain currency at this time.
 This was not prolific time for written philosophy (The Republic is published ca.
380 BC)
 Period of great dramaturgical proliferation. Many of the plays that competed for
prizes at Dionysion festivals during this time are preserved
 Traditionally viewed as the beginning of European & Western civilization
 Also viewed as the beginning of a tradition of western political philosophy,
distinct from a poetic tradition, musical tradition, or artistic tradition
 This Athenian Enlightenment was a late, peripheral, but very important period of
human history
 Unique conceptions of justice, freedom, and membership flourish in the Athenian
polis at this time
Novelty of the Athenian Political Experience (Athens was a model for hundreds of
poleis in 5th Century BC)
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Majoritarian jury system
All adult male citizens entitled to attend the Assembly (Ecclesia) after age 20
Two most important institutions of government: The Council of 500 and the
Courts, comprised of very large juries
Enter into citizenship through one’s deme (local ward)
Pericles famous funeral oration at the start of the Peloponnesian War is a
description of and tribute to Athenian democracy. Athens had become Hellas’s
indisputed center for art, literature, & architecture under Pericles.
Unique understanding of Citizenship and Ancient Liberty (see below)
Recognition of importance of human beings as autonomous agents who must
struggle to make virtuous choices with insufficient information
431-404 The Peloponnesian War – War between Athenian Empire and Spartan
Empire. Towards the end of the war, Athens begins its decline. In 404 the Spartans
take down the walls around the city (of Athens).
399 – Socrates tried and convicted of impiety to the gods and corruption of the
youth.
The foundational texts of political philosophy, including Plato’s dialogues, were written
after Athens’ decline and after the death of Plato’s teacher, Socrates
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Socrates and the sophists importantly precipitated a crisis in Greek religion: Humanism
Each polis had its civic gods and civic laws. Morality, Justice, the Soul and its nature
were not addressed by the laws or by religion.
Important questions arise from this new humanistic inquiry:
Does one obey Civil Law or One’s Conscious
How does one manage ones conflicts over Public vs Private Duty
The Individual vs State
Sophocles’ Oedipus the King and Antigone clearly reflect:
(i) the increasing questioning of religion,
(ii) the realization of the importance of the individual and his conscience
(iii) the new preoccupation with morality: How the individual is to manage conflicting
responsibilities and duties? How can one best live a Good, Virtuous Life?
A common Greek civilization: Through shared language, myth, customs, and Gods
All poleis viewed themselves as part of a larger cultural or civilizational community of
Hellas (Greece).
Yet, each poleis was quite different from one another: Each poleis worshipped the gods
differently, had different types of government, different names for each month.
Persian invasions of 6th C and the Persian War of the early 5th century helped to
overcome this narrow localism in the poleis through this Hellene nationalism.
The Persian War helped the squabbling Greek poleis to join together in a common cause
and community: Against the foreign barbarians (so named since it was said that they
spoke “barbar”)
At the end of the Persian War in 479, Themistocles, the Athenian commander of the fleet
in the victory at Salamis in 480, declared “It is not we [Athenians] who defeated Persia,
but we as a civilization of Hellas.”
Types of government found in Greek poleis in 5th Century:
- Tyranny: Dictatorship
- Aristocracy: Rule of the Best
- Oligarchy: Rule of the Wealthy Few
- Democracy: Rule of the common people (In reality, only native born men over age 20)
- Some mixture of Aristocracy and Democracy, as in Periclean Athens from 461-429
and after Pericles death until the early 400s, just before Socrates was put to death in 399.
- Monarchy was not one of the governments in 5th & 4th Century Greece. Although
Socrates & Plato’s Republic is a blueprint for a Monarchical Utopia under a
Philosopher-King.
According to Pericles,
When a citizen is in any way distinguished, he is preferred for the public service,
not a matter of privilege, but as a reward of merit. Neither is poverty a bar, but a
man may benefit his country whatever be the obscurity of his position.
The above statement evinces (demonstrates) Periclean Athens’ endorsement of meritocracy
and democracy.
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Ancient Liberty: The New Athenian Conception of Citizenship (in the 5th Century)
Citizenship in Periclean Athens was understood as an activity: Willing participation in
public life.
The harmony of public life was the overriding concern of the ancient Greeks.
In the Funeral Oration, Pericles argues that in mid fifth century Athens,
An Athenian does not neglect the state because he takes care of his own
household; and even those of us who are engaged in business have a very
fair idea of politics. We alone regard a man who takes no interest in public
affairs, not as harmless, but as a useless character; and if few of us are
originators, all of us are sound judges of policy.
Their ancient liberty was Quite Uunlike our modern conception of liberty.
Modern liberal citizenship provides individuals with a set of legal rights that assures us
our private liberties, and that calls for us to meet certain individual obligations. For the
Athenians, the city was viewed a “mode of life” – a public practice -- rather than as a
legal structure or set of institutions.
In 1816, French novelist and political philosopher Benjamin Constant famously
distinguished between the “liberty of the moderns and the liberty of the ancients.”
I Positive Liberty – Ancient Liberty – The Athenian had obligations, but the
obligations were not demanded by the city-state. The Athenian saw these obligations to
the city as freedom itself. Performing public obligations and duties to the state was the
only way to develop one’s capacities and potential as a human being.
Positive liberty is the freedom to participate in the public life of the city.
II Negative Liberty – Modern Liberty – We moderns tend to view what we do outside
of the sphere of government and public (civic) life as the chief way to develop our
capacities and potential.
In 1816, Benjamin Constant argued that we moderns tend to strongly value negative
liberty, or freedom from government intervention.
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The importance of Wisdom, Learning, & Education (Paideia)
Paideia – The training of the physical and mental faculties in such a way as to produce a
broad enlightened mature outlook harmoniously combined with maximum cultural
development.
For Hellene culture, the development of wisdom through paideia was an essential path to
eudaimonia (human well-being and happiness).
Pericles declared Athens the “school of Hellas.” The Athenian political philosophy was
built on discussion, debate, and the contributions of citizens in a free state, according to
one’s ability and merit.
Socrates was the first to emphasize the importance of intellectual understanding and
wisdom.
We must distinguish between:
Knowledge: The accumulation of facts and information
and
Sophia - Wisdom – A way of thinking that stands behind the knowledge one has.
Wisdom structures and informs information and knowledge.
and
Arete – Virtue or Excellence
All are viewed as available to any person.
Sophists – Traveling teachers who sailed around the poleis, selling instruction in rhetoric
and virtue.
Sophists were not responsible for the Athenian Enlightenment, and were often denigrated
by Socrates/Plato. But they helped develop a culture of public discussion and argument
that was essential for the development of democracy and humanism in the polis.
Sophists’ services were in great demand: Rhetorical skills were seen as essential for
skilled oratory in the Assembly, and for life in a democracy, a political culture that relies
on convincing people, not dominating people.
Platonic Dialogues often feature Socrates in the process of refuting the claims and
arguments of various Sophists.
Socrates – A kind of Sophist himself, who never charged for his teachings and resisted
the name.
Socrates believed that virtue could be learned by people, but differed crucially from the
Sophists on how virtue could be acquired.
Thrasymachus – A Sophist who believed that “Justice is always the interest of the
strongest.” He acts as the initial foil in Book I of Plato’s Republic for Socrates’
disquisition on Justice and the Just State.
After 469 BC, citizenship – that is, the active participation of all citizens in the political
debates of the city-state – was viewed as the supreme creative art.
Public participation in the city-state was synonymous with citizenship.
Like a sculptor, each citizen molded a fully rounded society to his preconceived notion of
what that society ought to be.
The noble experiment of ancient Greece ended in the middle of the 4th century BC as the
Macedonian armies from the north overran and conquered both the Athenian and Spartan
poleis (Hellas’s 2 most important city-states).
Art of citizenship in the Athenian polis
 Valued their polis-life or agora-life more than they valued stable
governmental institutions
 They were (far) more interested in political discussion and moral inquiry
over how to live well than in “government” and the constitutional checks
of institutions. (Socrates & Plato excepted, in my view.) In this regard,
the ancient Greeks were much more similar to the modern French after
1789 or Italians after 1870 than they were similar to the U.S. after 1788.
 Very similar to the perennial French culture of periodic democratic debate
(e.g. over 3 million people spontaneously manifesting in Place de la
Nation Sunday). Except that unlike the ancient Greeks, the French since
1792 fetishize their powerful state & dysfunctional institutions, and their
anachronistic version of liberalism. If the state magically got the eff out of
the way of civil society, France might reinvent itself. However, totally
inconceivable.
Timeline of Classical Greece:
http://eawc.evansville.edu/chronology/grpage.htm