Greek Legacy Classical Origins of the Modern World

Perhaps the most important legacy of the Greeks is their foundational injunction to "know thyself." The Greeks conceived a deeply introspective and humanistic perspective on human life and the human dilemma. Greek literature generated a philosophy of perfectionism. Its constant theme is the impulse to set things right, to restore balance and proportion, to return to one's natural and proper state.

At the end of his illustrious life, Leonard da Vinci complained that in all of his efforts he had failed to achieve "that one thing necessary": the symmetria prisca of the ancient Greek world of art and architecture. What was this "pure symmetry," and what was its source?

Plato's Academy was the school that first established the essential character of scholarly inquiry. Socrates and his students, Plato among them, were not content with perfecting clever argumentative devices, nor did they rely on any "sacred text" whose deeper meaning summoned the assembly. Rather, it was the examined life that provided the subject matter for those who committed themselves to following the light of reason.

Although earlier civilizations had made considerable advances in technology, it was chiefly Greek scientists and thinkers from the late 6th century B.C. who established the foundation of scientific inquiry. Aristotle, in particular, moved toward an objectification of the natural world, rendering it fit for a disinterested inquiry into the nature of things.

Ancient Greek medicine featured two dominant and competing schools of thought: the Empiricists (including leading members of the Hippocratic school) who tied treatment to findings, and the Theorists, who based remedies on a "hypothetical-deductive" mode of reasoning. Ultimately, it was the Hippocratics who prefigured modern medical science in giving medicine a more naturalistic and practical orientation.

The Shield of Achilles offers Homer's rendition of the means by which disputes were settled in the pre-Classical (Mycenaean) world of the Greek people. Two centuries later, the Athenian magistrate Solon was sought as the ideal lawgiver because his judgment was regarded as "straight" by a people already exercising the power and duties of self-government. The jury system, the end of phratric (clan) justice, and the discovery of human rights are but three of the great contributions of the ancient Greek world to the rule of law.

The ancient Greeks invented both the state—the polis—and statecraft. Indeed, contemporary notions of freedom, self-government, virtuous leadership, and a decent and flourishing civic life have their origins in the Athens of Pericles, Plato, and Aristotle. These men shaped the problems and possibilities of governance into a political science—the terms of which have been remarkably well preserved from their original understanding in ancient Athens.

Although the ancient Greek world had no official religion, the polis was never entirely secular. A diffuse but unmistakably religious cast of mind is evident in ancient Greek life and literary works.

From the time of Homer, Greek thought focused on character (the vanity of Helen and the anger of Achilles, for example) and the fact that character is destiny. Later, Plato and Aristotle both examined human personality in depth, and their ideas laid the foundations for later psychological theories and the broad framework that continues to influence research and theory.

What are the grounds on which actions are classified as good or evil, right or wrong? In addressing such questions the ancient Greek philosophers not only founded the subject of moral philosophy, but provided the conceptual resources that today remain central to moral discourse.

The strong sense of individual identity assumed by the ancient Greeks was grounded in civic life. One's loyalty was to the polis. The most tragic figure in Homer is the "stateless" man—one without a civic grounding, a civic identity.

A persistent theme is found in Greek art and architecture, in Greek drama and moral philosophy, in Greek games and festivals, and in Greek religion: perfection. The perfectionist ideal was applied to body and mind, to art and science, to life in both its personal and civic dimensions. Perfection was at the foundation of the classical achievement and, to some extent, was also the cause of the collapse of that extraordinary civilization.