Table of contents hide 1 What does civilization compose? 2 The Art for Greek Civilization 3 Greek Civilization and Politics 4 Greek Civilization and Philosophy
In order for a civilization to be such, citizens must have been concretized - which, before being concreted, are either a people or an elementary social group - in certain aspects that are vital for culture in general. Civilization and culture are closely involved, the first being the theoretical-practical union and its interrelation, the second as the result of the first. For example: Lud van Beethoven's third symphony is composed of political, social, philosophical and sentimental aspects (whose theme is Napoleon Bonaparte), permeating romantic German civilization; Today is human cultural climax. Of the Greek civilization we will say the same.
What makes up civilization?
The foundational model of this question was primordially and excellently in the Greeks themselves: to speak of their civilization, is to speak of civil and civic par excellence, clearly excluding their small accidental and dispensable features. Politics, philosophy and art, were their common practical aspects, their tasks consisted of at least exercising in one of them.
If a civilization is the theoretical-practical union and its interrelation; we already see philosopher politicians (example of which is Pericles ), artist philosophers (such as Socrates and his art as a midwife or majesty ) and political artists (the architect and accusative Hipaso of Metaponto, who through the demonstration of immeasurability would prove the imperfection, and as such, that a government centered on the people - we could - was possible).
Even more, the culture is composed of politics, philosophy and art, but the Greeks surpassed it, that is, the Greek civilization exerted the highest degree of politics, philosophy and art, making the culture something attainable and open in its own way of exercising Although the Greeks reached and surpassed the culture, it failed to subsume the non-Greek or barbarian (in the Pan - Hellenic project of Alexander the Great ), leaving democracy as a precept to the other cultures to come.
The Art for Greek Civilization
Art must be distinguished by fine arts and handicrafts . Music, poetry, sculpture, painting, architecture, would make up the fine arts. Pottery, metallurgy, carpentry, among others, would make up the crafts. The art for the Greek civilization was of the utmost importance, so much so that their gods exercised them - in their two aspects-: Dionysus as a winemaker, Athena as a weaver, Diana as a hunter, Apollo as a musician, Hephaestus as a metallurgist, & c.
However, without applying ourselves to making this complex distinction in its civic aspects, as in art, the Greek has a figure of essential mixing, a whole with everything, rather than the bureaucratization of its praxis; and this is possible thanks to its Idea of Beauty, which does not imply order, strictly speaking, but proportion or fairness . The Organoleptic Beauty permeated every Hellenic corner, both in its representation - a perfume, a young man, the Parthen n- and in its concept the High Beauty as included in the High Good, the musical essence that is essence n Africa, the anatomical attraction justified by geometry. In short, art for Greek civilization is preached in beauty.
Greek Civilization and Politics
Within the Greek civilization, the political order of the Greek was not personalistic, since it was organically plural. Hence its ethos (character) does not directly mean individual character, but plural custom, whose principles resided in the figure of City-State (polis). This ethos was assumed in the forms of government ( monarchy, aristocracy, timocracy, oligarchy, democracy and tyranny ). The individual form of the tyranny even served the interests of the polis (in Greece it was impossible for a Nero to exist).
On the other hand, within the Greek civilization, the political exercise excluded women, young people and foreigners ( metecos ). Virtue and freedom were the leading concepts of any ruler or rulers, in the monarchy and aristocracy emphasis was placed on virtue - assuming the monarch or aristocrats full virtue - and on democracy and timocracy, freedom. Likewise, each City-State founded it and protected, in popular opinion, a certain god. In Athens it was Athena, in the mythical Atlantis it was Poseidon.
Its most important political aspects were embodied by Athens and Lacedemonia (Sparta) : the first exercised a rational life, the second exercised a life centered on the irascible domain, evidenced in the perfection of combat and self-control ; lives that in themselves are antagonistic (disabling the real Greek union) but biconditional (the beauty and good of reason were specified in the imperturbability and mastery of anger). In this sense, for the West, the Greeks are the cradle of the ideas of justice, democracy, aristocracy and the exercise of the virtues to govern (both as well as to others) .
Greek Civilization and Philosophy
If the Greek in art is beauty, in politics virtue and freedom, in philosophy close this table with the investigation about the natural, its conditions and its limits: natural or physical philosophy, epistemology and metaphysics. Thus, they have from minor philosophers, such as Empédocles, Anaxagoras or Espeusipo, to those who built a whole noetic world that endures as the basis of our days, being such Aristotle, Plato, Socrates, Democritus, & c.
The thinker of Greek civilization in general, was deep and dark, because that was the content of his thinking, since he questioned - criticized, investigated - the supposed order of the existing. And his work was doubly abysmal because he had no models that had opened a gap to possible research, an example of which was Plato, who had to invent words (neologisms) to signify the essences of his thinking.
And not only was the philosopher a mere thinker or aspiring sage within Greek civilization, but he fulfilled a repertoire of pure and practical knowledge consisting of mathematics, poetry, combat, gymnastics, music, or dance. including in his repertoire a particular exercise of virtue and freedom, an example of which are cynics, stoics, academics, among others.
Author: Kevin Samir Parra Rueda, editor in the big family of hermandadblanca.org
