AR&IO: The Religion of Democracy in Athens.

if you have any kind of education at all
even if you are a high school dropout you have your primary school driver probably at some point you had a conversation with a teacher a professor a parent or grandparent that went like this yeah yeah yeah but they had democracy in ancient Athens in ancient Rome oh but that doesn't count because they had slavery conversations of this kind at very various degrees of Airy addition and seriousness you even see informal Communist Party literature I'm not talking about the meaning of democracy in different periods of history to what extent the lessons of democracy as exhibited in ancient Athens ancient Sparta ancient Rome you name it can and cannot be applied to the modern world today well it's in Europe Asia or what have you the contrast between slavery and the lack of slavery is really not nearly as challenging as dealing with the contrast between polytheism and atheism that's very very hard to deal with the extent to which the religious mentality and the role of religion in daily life in forming people's attitudes their sense of public engagement and responsibility put it this way it's not too terribly disturbing to me at all if someone were to suggest that the model of democracy presented to us by Athens had limited applicability to our Saturday because of slavery slavery was of tremendous economic significance in understanding ancient Athens but that that really does not cut very deep to me but if someone makes the argument that the attitudes responsibilities social roles even education and so on of people in Athens were so profoundly shaped by religion that the example for or worse of Athens and how it functioned any of those ancient city-states for just Athens to name one that that example really we can't learn anything from that applies to our society unfortunately that cuts very deep indeed and the more you know the more disturbing that possibility becomes part of the problem is that so much of what we know comes from graciously sceptical sources somebody like Aristotle somebody like foo Siddha T's these authors even Herodotus Herodotus is more appreciative of religion than the other two authors a name but all of these people were really very skeptical kind of cultural outsiders with in Athens and the he at the very least they do not praise the role that religion had in their society and to some extent they even want to minimize it and sweep it under the rug in giving an overly rational and even I could say social scientific account of their society and how it works social scientific in the sense of the social sciences this week as we have today now the antidote to this comes in the legacy of Numa Denis Foose tell Duke Coolidge I have absolutely no notes for this video except the full correct name of this new Medini who still do cologne which is without doubt in the top 10 list of the most important authors in the history of the modern Western reappraisal of the significance of ancient Greece in Rome his book was unbelievably influential for a period of more than 50 years let's say and now it is starting to be it has started to be forgotten partly because anthropology as a discipline moved away from those questions and partly because the classics the study of Latin and Greek themselves have just kind of wilted in there and their importance of their or their now new Metheny who still do Cologne his work on the importance of religion in Greece in Rome he very much presumes that his reader is as conversant with the primary sources as I am or even more so I read this book simultaneously with my rereading of lucidity and Thucydides is I would say is most important source interestingly many many many of the anecdotes come primarily from through Siddha tease to some extent from Plutarch but he will present to you a completely one-sided version of an event in Thucydides where there's a more nuanced telling of the story in the primary source and I had this very fresh in my mind it's what was really aware of the extent to which Numa is dramatizing the ancient sources he's pulling from so there's a really interesting twist in the plot in the description of the war between Sparta and Athens written by Thucydides where there's an army of Athenians who end up marooned on an island and they have to escape for their lives keeping this brief people and you know they say oK we've lost this battle we've more we've lost this part of the war if it a series of defeats we gotta get in the boats and we got to escape and go home or go somewhere get away from this battlefield and then there is an eclipse and as the story is told by Numa Numa Dini first elder collage his version events he describes this whole situation entirely in terms of the Athenians being people terrified by superstition totally preoccupied with a supernatural view of the world and that they decide that they have to remain on this Beach they can't get in the boats and escape for a magical number of days I believe it's three times nine days they decide that after stay for 27 days there's a number in order to satisfy the significance of this prophecy that the gods are to satisfy with them that this this you know this lunar eclipse has some tremendous significance and all of them all of them either die or are enslaved as a result the results are absolutely disastrous that really was their last chance to escape with their lives this is many thousands of soldiers fully armed and fully equipped they could have also continued to play a strategic role in the war and instead they're completely wiped out because of their superstitious response to this Eclipse now that's one lesson to take from that story and he relates some a debate that leads up to this disaster a debate in Athens in completely supernatural terms he insists that the question of whether or not they should invade this island and whether or not this this battle should happen he presents it entirely in terms of different soothsayers different supernatural interpreters of science debating what the gods do and don't want in these public forms and he's really making a very hard case he's saying what we think of as democracy it's not democracy at all now obviously it's not secular democracy but he's going much harder and much further than that saying nope modern people are imposing modern secular notions on this roads but even sticking with this same anecdote of these defeated soldiers on the beach there were other lessons you can draw from this their commander the man in charge he wants he wants to escape he wants to flee and it's the men they vote for it that they want to stay now their reasons for staying are linked to supernatural it's supernatural interpretation of this eclipse of something that happens this is true however in what other culture in the history of the world do the men in the army do the lower ranks make that decision as does the majority rule even in those circumstances the the beginning of the war as a whole and this particular expedition the fact that it was debated and voted on that's already of tremendous significance and even this particular example again I could give details but I think it's kind of productive one of the sides in the debate is LPB a days who have discussed in their videos should probably do a book review there's a new biography of LPP at ease that's been written in English should be interesting to know more of this okey B Hadees was basically chased out of Athens for being an atheist and a heretic alkie be a tease was a student of Socrates who was himself executed ultimately for being a some kind of free thinker an heretic and so on if there's one person we know does not believe in the conventional religious rites and superstitions of Athens it must be I'll give you a tease and alchemy oddities apparently came into this debate and he says oh well you guys have your soothsayers you have your interpreters your augers your interpreter sense but I brought my own it's very wealthy see how in order to have the other side of the debate that you know it was arranged for some other people to interpret the portents in a different way so you know even even knowing in nuuma the author he's cherry-picking examples that will favor his case but even when you look at those examples these books extreme examples there's there were other morals to be to be drawn to this story there was something really special about a society where these things got interpreted debated and voted on by a plurality of voices that did not happen in Catholic Europe in the Dark Ages that did not happen and it still does not happen in Saudi Arabia today or any Muslim society or say okay well the majority is going to vote on this let's bring together all the citizens and you people interpret the will of the gods plural or gods singular and this way and these people and obviously also in these situations in terms of war they did also discuss strategy and tactics and even economics the money behind the the war effort and so and so forth but what Numa is doing here as they say he's really trying to provide an antidote to a problem that is in part in in the ancient texts that we rely on and it's in part in our eyes as a readers so just very briefly I already mentioned this somebody like Thucydides is already such an unusual such an extraordinary intellectual secular thinker iconoclast from his own society same for Aristotle Aristotle was almost killed in Athens - long story and discuss that if it he had to flee in the end the end he had to flee for his life so that he didn't end up dead like Socrates the types of voices that we that we care about because there were other voices you could read some other sources from ancient Athens the types of voices that we really respect and value that came out of the society are not representative of the typical religious and superstitious values of that society not even Herodotus who's more appreciative of popular religion but it's very easy I remember this when I was younger it's very easy for a modern reader to just skip over the mentions of religious aspects of daily life in Athens or the role of religion in even these public forms these democratic forms it's easy to skip over them the same way that when you reach Shakespeare you may just ignore figures of speech and Shakespeare you know you have God's blood said it's unbelievably evocative curse word that comes up and you have these them we have these you know religious turns of phrase that reflect even even that even just swearing chuckle and you know old this religious old is in religious you know religious values and religious statements in Shakespeare and we kind of don't let that slow down or change or appreciation of Romeo and Juliet Hamlet or any of these other major plays we just kind of get into the mind of skipping over their religious content that comes up actually with Hamlet specifically that really can be a problem the plot of Hamlet Theory fundamentally doesn't make sense if you don't understand just how now I would say not just to Christian but even Catholic a lot of the characters in that are and that's problem because this time Catholicism is a minority religion in England but anyway whether it's specifically Catholic or broadly Christian maybe that's more than one interpretation to play and more than one interpretation of Shakespeare is no authority by the way but anyway you do after you do have to appreciate the Rover glitch in this place to really understand them but is very easy to skip over the mention of people making ODEs in front of the hearth fire of them personifying and truly believing that the fire is watching them that the fires alive and has a mind and knows their sins and imperfections they have to apologize to the fire stuff like that comes up in ancient Greek literature all the time it's really there's gloss over it you may not even be aware of the extent to which you're just skipping over egregiously impossible to imagine levels of superstition views of the world that again today we can't relate to at all and numa really draws attention to that and and says look this is a society yes hundreds of examples we're in the middle of a war men would leave the battlefield and go home because they had to perform some ritual in front of a Fire's ago sorry this is the day when my clan we have to go but you know no you know there's just a higher priority and where this has come up repeatedly especially with the Spartans the Spartans would stand there and die they'd have arrows and javelins being thrown at them and they wouldn't defend themselves until a religious ceremony was completed and they wouldn't begin the march at the start of the war until the moon it's right phase and their religious ceremony was completed like the levels of superstition I mean war is the most extreme example because there's fear for your life like you don't have to be skeptical to say hey they're already shooting arrows at us they're already throwing javelins at us we got out right back and you know no you wait until this chicken sacrifice is done and they've interpreted the liver the liver and kidneys of the chicken you know like that's what was about it's almost all sort of fixed this okay so it's a really powerful book it's a really important book and I don't think this is the last YouTube video maycon I think I have to make at least one more easy video discussing it the problem is the book can only be read by someone who is at least in my level of familiarity with the primary sources because the book is lying to you constantly and that reflects a very different culture of what it means to be a historian I had a colleague in Sanskrit so history of India but especially his PhD was in Sanskrit and I remember I was taking issue with him and taking issues with so I said look you know this is kind of telling 30% of the truth and concealing 30% and lying about 30% you know like how can you and I remember he said back to me said well the author is making his case was that it was acceptable to have a really high level of duplicity in quote-unquote making your case for the reader like as if you're a lawyer presenting a core case where the lawyers job isn't to tell the truth the lawyer is to either defend his client or a thor's on the other side to make the client sound as as as bad as possible well I don't accept that now I just say to me it's it's utterly utterly unacceptable and it's a real shame because who today would make the argument that that numa makes his fundamental argument is that these societies were much more alien from ours than we imagined and not because of slavery not because it's nice simply that because of the complex role religion played in the formation of the family formation of tribes the tribal structure within the community in the formation of the city itself in politics and that democracy as we conceived of it he says is not even really applicable so I'm gonna read you a short quotation here and this shows just how how far he he takes it says quote it is a singular error therefore among all human errors to believe that in the ancient cities men enjoyed Liberty they had not even the idea of it they did not believe that there could exist any rights as against the city and its gods we shall see further on that the government changed form several times he mean I went through it went through revolutions the revolutions changing the government while the nature of the state remained nearly the same and its omnipotence was little diminished the government was called by turns monarchy aristocracy democracy but none of these revolutions gave man true Liberty individual liberty to have political rights to vote to name magistrates to have the privilege of being Archon this was called Liberty but man was nevertheless enslaved to the States the ancients especially the Greeks always exaggerated the important the importance and above all the rights of society and this was due to the sacred and religious character with which their society was closed so of shorten it only only briefly he is making the case that this society was not democratic at all and he's wrong it's a really important argument it's really stimulating I think it's a really worthwhile if you've already done enough reading to appreciate it to be challenged with the jarring recognition like for me most of the sources he's quoting I've already read like the stuffy scouring from whatever whether it's do cities or Plutarch or Aristotle whether he's quoting it or paraphrasing and it's like oh yeah I remember that but like well I was much younger when I read many of these sources I never took the step in my mind's eye to really think what it would be like to believe that the dead are still alive and present in the soil in the city you're living in and that they are literally attending the debates in Parliament this is not really problem but in your democracy that they are literally present witnessing that judging that that their vote is in a sense being counted through these religious racial that changes your idea of democracy when the dead ancestors and gods very different idea of gods when those people are really felt as a palpable presence mino' the animal sacrifice is unbelievably gory unbelievably wasteful it's it's genuinely horrifying but what's more horrifying to understand is that these people lived lives in a state of constant fear of dread they were truly afraid of supernatural punishment and this inspired them also to superhuman levels of bravery and self-destruction it inspired them to in the middle of the night climb over the city wall into the enemy's city go inside their temple and steal the statue of their God and then come back to their own City and say now we'll win the war because we've got their gun because their God is on our side now this may seem like a prank you know a frat boy would play this may seem like a joke what numa is challenging us with is to say no it's no joke really take the time to think about how different the world would look and our different democracy would be and how different all these concepts would be if you really were a person who with zero irony understood yourself that way understood your role in society that way and when I was 19 years old I was not capable of you know of using my imagination that I said I say all the time sympathy is an analytical tool but to sympathize with the religious mentality of someone in that polytheistic society their fears their dreads their bravery like even in English I mean it's a weak concept now the idea of the Civil Service you know what we're talking about with the tremendous level of devotion and passion for democracy for the demos for serving the city in Athens obviously in large part is literally a cult of ancestor worship they're not even serving their fellow man in terms the other people who happen to be alive and they say that all the time in their speeches and again we kind of skip over it just like religious pleasantries and Shakespeare all the time they sing we're gathered here for all right the spirits of our ancestors that these kinds of things are woven into the fabric of these speeches and you know they literally sacrificed animals and had augury and interpreted the movements of the birds and the heavens before starting these speeches and then the speeches they're referring to these these ghosts as very much present in the ongoing discourse that you know that civic virtue was religious virtue and then the concept of what's civic and what's religious and personal responsibility democracy it's it's profoundly shaped by those those very alien assumptions so guys knew me NUMA Denis Feustel de cologne I don't think any of us would feel intimidated in trying to reproduce the virtues of ancient Greek democracy in our times because we lack slavery that would be laugh-out-loud funny let's just say you have a department in university say hey guys you know what I'm tired of this department being run as a dictatorship most university departments are most offices are let's say you have a paper company we receive what this office we manufacture greeting cards at a paper I'm tired of this being a dictatorship where this one guys have judged let's reorganize it on the principles of ancient Greek democracy on that scale you can do it you could get out Aristotle you could look it up and say okay let's let's get organized guys nobody would say the problem is we don't have slaves nobody would see that as an obstacle and yet I think what Numa is drawing our attention to is there is a very real sense in what we can never have what we can never harness is exactly this passion this passion for the city that was in large part this untranslatable utterly superstitious worldview that was that was harnessed by democracy and yet also in a perverse sense held democracy in its thrall