I. Learning to listen to the voice of reason

When Herodotus started to use Homeric like verses to re-account historical events in a world completely flung open, so that the Greeks could travel everywhere, he did it with the purpose of outlining what was at stake when survival of man becomes a true matter of existing under the 'freedom of the divine law'. According to Aristotle, he was the true 'mythologus', the man capable of turning metaphysical beliefs into reason, while believing in things others thought to be impossible. He had a convincing voice when narrating stories as if a continuity of intuitive speculations about not only what things exist, but equally why things went wrong. Like all Greeks of those times he was a man engaged in thoughts about the whole, not in direct empirical proofs. For the Greek mind considered the intelligence of man to be very close to the laws of the universe, something which Karl Popper among other delivers of modern state ideologies would fail to realize. Moreover moved by this free spirit and therefore turning attention towards man's full responsibilities, Herodotus did not believe that the interventions of the Gods had led men to their downfall, but rather he saw this as a consequence of their own doing due to a wrong pride, and "the errors they were continually making in their search for power" (Robert Payne, Ancient Greece, p. 231). That touch of modesty was really the beginning of trying to listen to the voice of reason.

In Homer's tale, Odysseus depends very much still upon 'signs and visions', that thunder of Zeus on a cloudless day, as if miracles happen that way: not alone, but only with the help of the Gods. Then it would be possible to come out the next day on the other side of trouble. It is an imaginative way to circumvent the 'reasoning of the heart', and Odysseus had to learn it the hard way. In the end, he had to suppress all feelings of anger at the sight of the suitors fretting away in his house, for the moment had not come when to challenge them openly. The Goddess Athena gave him advice during that last phase of the trial, and yet this split between emotions and rational, equally tactical thoughts indicated a split to come in the way the Western Civilization would base its organization not only upon the 'division of labour', but also upon a division between here the emotional, private side of man, and there, in the real world, may it be work or adventure, that what counted more: a cool head untouched by emotions, or the heartbeats of life. In the end that rational thinking won, but at a high price for ever since then the separation of work and pleasure has caused a deep division between the genders, and made practical judgements based upon orientations for life even harder to be articulated, that is be heard in public. It is something the two German philosophers, Adorno and Horkheimer, wrote about alot in their 'dialectic of enlightenment', or the failure to bring reason to man. The failure was already predictable for Odysseus started a fateful sequence of separation by learning to master his emotions, to control himself and stand above the immediate wish to react, while wearing a mask of indifference, in order not to alarm the suitors ahead of the deathly hour when the challenge was to come.

Quite different is the counsel by Hesiod who would say learning to listen depends upon the ability of man to reason with himself:

That man is best who reasons himself,

Considering the future. Also good

Is he who takes another's good advice.

But he who neither thinks himself nor learns

From others, is a failure as a man.

Hesiod, Works and Days (289-322)

As if Hesiod has learned out of the Homeric verses reaccounting in a very detailed manner on how close to death Odysseus had come because he did not always listen at first to good advice, there is still a further conclusion to be drawn; indeed, prior reaching 'reason' there stands in the way very often man's refusal to learn, and, subsequently, he is unable to recognize his own failures. These then are some of the very interesting, equally crucial understandings of how man can reach his destiny in the city: reason conveyed by a human spirit interested in justice, that is honesty, and freedom, that is openness to others.

The next step in the aspiration to reach 'reason' was to gain a vision that man and the world could be ruled by means of not ruthless power, but by a delicate intelligence able to weigh pros and cons, so that not corruption, but an interest in the well-being of all would rule. In that sense, it seems most important to Robert Payne how the philosopher Anaxagoras influenced Pericles to make him dare this mission of reason, namely to fulfil "his desire to re-create Athens until it resembled the heavenly city of his imagination" (Robert Payne, Ancient Greece, p. 241).

This linkage between the imagination and reason was not at all well understood. It took time to come even to terms with the demands of reason which other than nature was not easily recognizable, nor necessarily shared by others. It took even more time to see the benefits of reason. Pericles was perhaps the first stateman to translate this reason into a political force to be reckoned with, for he added to his ability to persuade people through a kind of strange remoteness, but always in touch with the newest informations about what was going on, the dimension of political arts over and beyond the simple 'techne': the art of doing things. He knew how to relate at one and the same time to different political forces. Mistakingly this is called in modern terminology, 'the ability to manipulate', when in fact what Pericles did was to follow his visions, until he was convinced that the city state would give people a life free of death and suffering - a surely idealistic, but unrealistic aspiration as he would have to learn himself, that is after thirty years of influencing the fate of Athens when he died at the hands of the Plague.

If the reason of Pericles was a calculating one in the good sense of the word, the 'Golden Age' he ushered into Athens was the one most closely linked to voices, the humming of human beings alive and willing to protest as if everything depended upon the skills of the orators. These new measures meant security within the city, but they were moderated by mysterious rites frolicing as it were about man and although in reverence to what the Gods want, taken back by the weight of superstitution that had nothing to do with reason, and everything with a cult of life.

The main temple of reason is really the Acropolis. The many facets of life are already inside the walls and shrines even before the tragic downfall of Ancient Greece begins. No one knew exactly why this great feat of peace was destroyed by war, that is from without the borders of that great achievement. Interestingly enough, mystery surrounded the temple build in honour of the Goddess Athena. Significantly interpreted, Robert Payne understood what he was pointing at, when he quoted Pericles' statement about the Acropolis: "What I desire is that you should fix your eyes every day on the greatness of Athens as she really is, and that you should fall in love with her." (Robert Payne, Ancient Greece, p. 266). In other words, it is not sufficient to recognize greatness, for you must fall in love with it, in order to be able to live with it.

Then, the scurrilies of history beg for other answers to the question about reason. It includes the teasing, equally anecdotal quest whether or not a giften man was still capable of making love to a woman at his heigh age. Reasons to think otherwise existed far and between every island and the mainland, hence to show some vigour was as if demonstrating reasons to believe that life was going on, even at such an age. However, this linkage of reason to pleasure needs to be examined even more. Here it is where Sophocles has contributed by bringing reason into confrontation with the drama of life made up of stones, failed loves and a heart not so strong as to withstand the bearings of the tide, that is when bad news are washed ashore.

Remarks about contents of Ancient Greek drama are like flung nets by fishermen walking along the shores, yet there is one prime example, namely Aristophanes' Lysistrata which allows to illuminate upon reason as a political force to be reckoned with once used publically. In this play the women of Athens refuse all sexual favours until men have come to reason and return home from war. It is the first time that reason becomes identified solely with peace, and in linkage with the power of love, the prime mover of life, a new force to be reckoned with, once it can be formed into a political boycott of what men otherwise do, or rather fail to realize as being more important in life: to love, and not to die at the dreadful hands of war. The wonderful oath of the women is worthwhile remembering:

Let me not lie down with any man,

Even though he is swollen with passion.

I will remain at home in perfect chastity,

Beautiful in my saffron-coloured gown,

Inspiring him with the utmost desire,

Never surrendering myself voluntarily,

And if he should force his way upon me

I shall be cold as ice, unmoving.

In no way shall I comfort him.

I shall not crouch bottom-up like a lion.

If I keep this oath, may I drink the wine;

Otherwise may I be swollen with water.

Aristophanes, Lysistrata

It has to be remarked that the reason of Ancient Greece was meant to stay ashore, even though the waters bite into the cliffs. Always reason reflects an intelligible universe, and as far as the eyes can see, nets are flung to catch fish very much like the men who go along the shores to cast with their eyes glimpses at the every changing horizon. Again Greek nature becomes here a metaphysical landscape, but one allowing the differentiation between observations with the senses and intellectual wonder and thought about the universe. Everything seems possible at one and the same time. It is not an either/or, a dilemma that man can experience here. Rather the gift of the Gods is to let him live simultaneously in both mortal and immortal planes of existence. That is why Greek concepts, once exhalted with the salt of the sea, have always an abstract and a concrete meaning, so that the play upon words is like the difference of being a ripple for the man in the boat and a wave for the small fish underneath the boat. It is a reflection of an abundance of possible nourishments or food for thoughts of man never really fully alone, for there are always the Gods with him. By learning to reason with himself, he begins to understand that whatever exists in the outer world, the Gods have already prepared for him a way of getting to know this through the inner sides of the concepts. It is like knowing that there has to be existing already the knowledge on how to prepare certain fishes before going out and trying to catch them. At the same time he goes about the persuit of his survival by being not completely absorbed only in that. While casting his nets, he watches the sun going down, setting free thoughts about his finite world forever lasting as long as man will live on in this endless universe.

This is said because the opening of tragedy means things are done beyond human reason, and that the wonder of these small, equally precious things are at a risk to be forgotten in a nebulous world made up of only vague promises. Once this wonder about life on earth is forgotten, there will be no kindle of a fire to warm up the cold hands of people left alone. As if anew there has to be an enactment of war to devour reason, and therefore only such agreements upheld that people are of no value and ought to be sacrificed at the altar of arbitrary whorships of power, altars created without any understanding of what it takes to sustain life in all forms of self-sufficiency, then the political reigns of power slip out of the hands of reason. The chariots take the dead across the endless plain of nothingness, white and black horses pulling without someone there to steer them in any, never mind in the right direction of the earth:

No one knows what it is like to sing a song far away from home,

orchard trees no longer there to be seen, only hear-say begins to talk

as if a water spoon, a river flooding the banks in the months of the rain.

The moment reasons are not known why it was impossible to come together and to form an active community, then this fact combined with the failure to recognize who that strange person is, touches upon the need to draw first of all some clear conclusions. Reasoning would be an inadequate description of such a process, but it marks the beginning of philosophy: the thinking of what different words mean when linked to certain actions.

Socrates would draw out these subtle differences in meaning by asking questions while acting like a 'gag fly' as he would describe himself to keep reminding how important it is for man to continue questioning that, what he claims to know.

From Socrates to Aristotle via Plato, the Sophists and Rhetorical Schools included, philosophy becomes a practical field of engagement of thoughts testing meanings and argumentation styles, including the ability to interrupt even when Socrates was defending his life in front of the Polis. That makes the 'spoken language', and here appears the real difference to the written one as brought forth especially by Homer, into a testing ground which character can stand up to all of this confusion and still sustain a light humour by which wisdom, not revenge (as is the case in the Islam or in Hegel's concept of law in which the forces of revenge are merely superseded) prevails.

Aristotle describes it as the shaping of a character in order to stand up to the needs of a true community, that is one open to strangers and yet able to judge and to recognize greatness. It follows that any Polis has a need of a good constitution to regulate the coming together of men. There should be no indifference for not all should get together with everyone, since that would be an explosive mixture, so then reason is according to the 'categories' the way to order the measures and to follow that, what logic says through language spoken by all men of reason.

Since then sounds intermingle with winds, but then, after all of these developments of Ancient Greece through the ages, there comes a confound feeling of loss. The Athenians towards the end of Pericles are no longer at ease, although still independent, but uncertain, for when intermingling with others, much more lonely since their suffering under the rivalry with Sparta did not cease, and their woes are but to begin with a war that never ends. The reason for that was given by the great historian Thucydides who would record out of the distance, with a detached observing eye freed from any emotions, that is compassion for man: "And when a common person stood up prior to Athens entering the war with Sparta, no one recognized him as being someone who had something important to say, for no one cared anymore to listen and to hear through him that voice of reason so difficult to find and to abide by, but he said: 'if you enter that war, you will loose everything'."

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I. Learning to listen to the voice of reason