Formation of Geographic Environment and Temperament
Reviewing the geographical and historical， social， and economic background from which Hellas’ thoughts came can be a premise for understanding the process of thinking about the formation of the Hellas people.
William Keith Chambers Guthrie, widely known as an ancient Greek philosophy historian, pointed out that the thoughts of philosophers were influenced by the temperament， experience， and philosophy ahead.
The ideas of Hellas philosophers were also driven by the environmental factors that they encountered, the long-term effects of life created by their experiences
It can be seen as mixed spirits.
Where does the passion for the world order, clarity, and intelligence that stands out in Greek thinking come from?
Their views and bright colors that show the outline of an object against other objects, buildings, and paintings are excluded， All of these may be products created by the unique environmental condition of Hellas.
On a summer day, the intense sunlight in the cloudless atmosphere， the sunlight in the Mediterranean is clearer, more transparent, and， stronger than in any other country even in winter.
In the light, the Hellas intuitively saw the “beings” of the world. They were surrounded by the sea， sun， sky， and physics. They are water， fire， air， and soil.
So the Hellas postulated them as elements of the arches that make up all things. It is a generally acceptable argument that the environmental conditions surrounding a nation define its substrate formation and ideological conditions.
Take, for example, the German environment, where there are many elements of ideological thinking. Unlike the viewing culture of the Mediterranean region, where the bright land and the sea are connected, It is a listening culture to dominate Germans who do not have many sunny days. So they might have created great musicians. France, which has a brighter stance than Germany, has created a viewing culture.
Yellow sunflowers scattered in large fields in southern France bordering the Mediterranean Sea， emit intense light that paralyzes our view. The impression left to us when we saw the yellow color is bound to remain in our memory for a long time.
So impressionist painters may have painted in harmony with soft yet intense colors and light. On the other hand, Italy, which has a natural environment of the Mediterranean, has created a culture of shouting.
The Italians, who live in an environment surrounded by the sea on three sides, expressed the richness of their hearts every time they went out to the beach through poetry and songs.
In addition, it should be borne in mind that their culture and civilization sprouted in the midst of the Greeks’ efforts to go outward. The environmental conditions they faced shaped their economic and religious thinking and were closely related to many other historical facts.
At the same time, it should be kept in mind that their culture and civilization sprouted in the efforts of the Hellas people heading outside. The environmental conditions they face have defined their economic， and religious thinking， and are closely related to many other historical facts.
From Empirical to Theoretical
The efforts of the Greeks in theoretical inquiry can stand out more clearly than the process of mental development in any other culture. Perhaps the Greeks were the first to turn their attention from the practical and empirical to the pure and theoretical.
Already in Homer, practical behavior and theoretical contemplation were at odds with each other meaningfully. In other words, the heroes the poet sings about are active people， The poet himself is returning his unique creative activities “living there in any case and looking at everything， and thus giving it back to the Mousai goddesses who are said to know everything.
The knowledge being said here is based on the act of boldly turning the eyes into outer space, not on self-conception. In addition, this knowledge is not an insight from personal concerns, but rather a cognitive attitude that directly looks at the target world.
After all, this knowledge is objectively visible, and it can really be accurately described in the sense of ‘existence’; this clear observation of the external world is a prominent feature of the early Hellasians.
From this delight in Theoria arose the science of early Greece, and from practical guides for navigation the first works of geography and ethnology. Also, from these writings and mythological genealogy, historical accounts developed, and elementalism and many other theories arose from practical medicine. This development from practice to theory is a distinctive feature of the formative phase of Hellenic science.
So far, we have mainly discussed the essential characteristics of Hellasian thinking, and based on this, let’s describe the various perspectives that find the origins of Hellasian thinking. Scholars studying Western classics reveal different perspectives on the origin of the Hellas cause by emphasizing one more methodological characteristic according to their leading interests.
The first is the most generally accepted position, a method of finding the origin of Hellenic thinking by revealing the structure and essence of mythical thinking that precedes rational thinking.
The second is an attitude that does not recognize its originality in exploring the origin of Hellenic Thinking， which emphasizes the Orient’s strong spirit.
The third is an attitude that identifies the development process of the Hellenic spirit as the development process of Hellas’ literature and focuses on how Hellas’ unique thinking has gone through.
Finally, I am in a position to explain the development of Greek thinking from their understanding of god.
It cannot be said that the above methods of finding the origin of Hellas’ thinking are mutually exclusive. In some cases, different positions may overlap with each other. Now let’s expand and explain some of the above methodological perspectives.
From Mythology To Philosophy
What has previously been regarded as the most representative method is a way to find the origin of Hellenic reasoning by understanding the essence of the myth through various stories inherent in the myth as mentioned above.
The scholars who take this interpretation approach are Conford. Most of them are ancient philosophy historians, including. They also view mythical thoughts as pre-logical thinking， inquisitive thoughts, false theories, primitive science, and linguistic diseases, or primitive human sexual instincts like Freud， that is, as a psychological phenomenon based on libido.
However, contrary to this, some scholars actively define the meaning of the myth， myth as the ‘first teacher of mankind’, an objectification of human social experience, and a thinking attitude to objectify and understand the world.
Intellectual Revolution in Hellas
However, a group of scholars who discuss the origin of the Hellas reasons admits that the Hellas way of thinking was influenced by social and religious attitudes, but tries to highlight the characteristics of “logos thinking.”
In fact, Hellas’ intellectual revolution, which took place in Ionia in the 6th century B.C., emerged so suddenly， so fundamentally that it was thought to be inexplicable in terms of historical causality. We can only call it the miracle of Hellas.
As Jean-Pierre Vernant puts it, “Just as the scales of the horse fall from the eyes of a blind person so suddenly， on the soil of Ionia， Logos were freed from mythology.”
Once exposed to everything, the light of reason never stopped driving the progress of the human mind.
“Along with the early Ionic philosophers, something new has emerged in this world that we call science， and they were the first to dictate the path that Europe has followed since then,” says John Burnet. Burnet says, “Along with Thales and his followers, something new has entered the world,” and acknowledges that the basis of the ‘neer science’ formed by the growth of this new one is found in Hesiod’s 『theogony』.
But he maintains the position that “philosophy is not a myth.” In many ways, he says, “It is completely wrong to seek to find the origin of Ionic studies among any mythical concept.”
The Root of Rational Thinking Is a Myth
We took Durkheim‘s sociological theory and developed a mythic interpretation. Cornford disagrees with Barnett’s theory, arguing that something like the “Miracle of Hellas’ Thinking” could not happen suddenly.
While acknowledging in his book that the cosmology of Anaximander and the cosmology of Homer and Hesiod have a “homogenous and same basic structure,” there is basically no entry from mythos to logos. They argued that there were some differences.
The obvious difference between the two is that Anaximander removed supernatural elements with boldness and completeness. In other words, Anaxsimander is the removal of all supernatural or mythical traits or elements.
Cornford interprets that nature arranged in the place of the Olympus gods was a symbol of the primitive world order, philosophy took it over and discarded its religious and magical elements. At this point, humans have taken a step closer “in return for the shining of reason.” This is where a “new” idea was conceived rather than a “continuous” one.
As such, Cornford is in a position to emphasize the mythical origin of philosophy by identifying philosophy as a “transformed myth.” So humans explore the Physis, the order behind the mutable, that is, the Logos. We started to explore Logos.
Meanwhile, Snell understands mythical thinking as more tangible than Nestle understands. He interprets, “In addition to the myths seen in Homerian examples, myths are generally in the middle between the early magical interpretation of the world and the problem and uncertainty of the empirical-historical meaning that follows.”
In contrast, Guthrie sees these two thoughts as irreconcilable by describing philosophical thinking around 600 B.C. as a transition “from a reasonable point of view in terms of creating myths about the world.” From his Enlightenment point of view, The standard of rational thinking is a philosopher named Thales.
According to him, “, Thales peeled off the myth, as far as we can speak, the person who gave what could be thought of as a purely reasonable explanation for the origin and nature of the universe.”
In confirming the status of Thales in the book 『Pre Socratic Philosophers』, they affirm that ” Thales has clearly given up the mythical form, Thales is the first philosopher even though he is still naive.”
Guthrie’s interpretation is not to say that reason has replaced all myths. Guthrie also admits that “mythic thinking is not completely extinguished.”
Kirk-Raven-Schofield contrasts the philosophers of Hesiod and Miletus with the expression ‘mainly mythical and mainly rational’.
We can find a scientific and reasonable mindset of understanding the world even in ‘natural philosophers Pre-Socrates’ that can be placed between these two.
From Mythic Thinking to Rational Thinking
Snell acknowledges that the use of the term ‘reasonable thinking in mythical thinking‘ can be better understood from a historical point of view. It is also admitted that this expression provides a means to explain the differences between the two mindsets while crossing each other.
This expression is used not only in philosophy but also in medicine, as a homogeneous expression such as in the birth of medicine to scientific status, starting with Hippocrates.
On the one hand, We cannot always clearly distinguish between these two accidents. The development of philosophy, the development of medicine, the development of history, and geography, can be questioned whether the process of the development of natural science can always be included in the term “from mythic thinking to rational thinking” from the same perspective.
Can you talk about the development of these two processes of thinking in a place like the Agora where everyday politics and life take place, or on an altar where religious rituals take place?
Can these two thoughts be strictly distinguished in the process of changing economic factors such as the invention of money and the political behavior of the police? Can the process of accepting letters from oral literature be distinguished by the types of these two thoughts? Perhaps not all of these questions can be solved by dualistic methods, such as mythic thinking and philosophical thinking that we outlined earlier.
In this respect, we must make an effort to understand the reality of mythical thinking in terms of rational thinking. Only then will we be able to fully understand the development process of the human mind.
According to Cornford, who criticized Burnet’s interpretation, the earliest philosophy is more closely related to the mythical composition system than to the scientific theory.
In other words, Ionia’s “natural philosophy” has nothing in common with what we today call “science” in its way of thinking, nor is it aware of anything to do with experience.
Furthermore, philosophy at the time was not a product of simple and voluntary reflection of the reason for nature. Philosophy transformed the concept of the world achieved by religion into a secularized form with a more abstract vocabulary.
The theory of space genesis also simply occupied and expanded the main themes of the creation myth. Cosmogenesis has answered the same kind of questions as philosophical questions but has not explored the laws of nature as science does.
Like mythology, the theory of space genesis tried to explain how the order was established, and how it was possible for the cosmos to emerge from chaos.
Miletus took conceptual devices and descriptive schematics to understand the creation of the universe, as well as images of the universe from the creation myth， For example, behind the elements of Physis(Physics), water, fire, air, and soil, the old gods in the myth were being revealed.
When it comes to the creation of nature, the elements are being stripped of their individualized divinity, they were still active, living forces. They were also still felt to be thoroughly divine.
When Physics is working, elements are colored by wisdom and justice, which are the attributes of Zeus The Homeric world was set in order by the assignment of territory and function between the main gods.
In other words, the land where the brilliant light of the sky was allocated to Zeus, the blurry shadows to Hades, the elements of water to Poseidon, and the three above were distributed to Gaia, along with other creatures from which humans had to die.
As such, the Ionic cosmos was divided into time and season between the various conflicting, balanced, and mixed elements. This is by no means an obscure analogy.
Cornford’s analysis shows a close response between Hesidos’ 『Theogony』 and Anaximander’s philosophy. While the former is talking about divine creation, it is correct that the latter describes the physical process by refusing to use the ambiguity of words such as ‘Genesis’, which means birth as well as origin.
As long as many of these meanings are still mixed, it is possible to explain the phenomenon by describing the creation in terms of sexual cohesion, directing the father and mother, and creating a genealogy.
No matter how important the differences between natural philosophers and theologists are, their general thinking structure remains the same.
The two presuppose a primitive state that has yet to reveal its appearance in its infancy The chaos of Hesidos is Nyx, Erebos, and Tartaros, which are attributed to the acts of Orpheus and Muses， Epimenides in，『Theogony』, respectively.
In the case of Anaximander, it is Apeiron. By incremental separation and segmentation, from this primitive unified body called Apeiron, darkness and light, and heat
A pair of substitutes appeared, such as coldness, dryness, humidity, concentration, and sparseness, highness, and lowness.
These substitutes were able to create different categories of the world. These macrophages created through separation could also be combined and mixed to produce phenomena such as the birth and death of all living things.
