Democracy Today.indb - Universidade do Minho

cultural conception of it, very close to that one suggested by Edmund
Husserl in Viena, 1935, in his conference on the crisis of European
humanity and the Philosophy: Philosophy as a new spiritual attitude,
remarked by the infinitude of truth as a task. This means a whole
perspective from which one sees the world, from which no knowledge
can be considered definitive. In stead of this, every thing we know is
precarious: truth becomes an idea, and this means that it is always to
be reached.
Husserl’s perspective is coherent with the last and most convincing
version for “from mythos to logos” description of Philosophy’s birth,
which shows how the new mentality comes with an arising brand
new technology: the alphabetic written. According to this theory,
literacy allows recording modification processes in community and
in nature, and so comparing the way things are in the present and
were in the past. Philosophy shows up, then, with/how/from a kind
of historical perspective that allows the criticism that would remark
the rising culture.
In the world founded in Philosophy, human beings must permanently
rebuild the foundations of the world view. The narrative foundation
of Myth, within which gods used to play so important role, has
been broken. Life is not safe and stable anymore. Its unity must always
be reached, because its foundations are permanently in discussion. As
now any conquer in the context of knowledge is provisory, the task to
establish the world basis is permanent. In this horizon human beings
must now understand themselves.
With Philosophy Greeks also discovered that human beings are
self-made, as persons and as communities. This can be a description
of the birth of Ethics and Politics, both representing the discovery of
self-construction human power. Human beings assume an important
part of god’s job.
In the lack of the narrative-traditional foundations, the task to say
what the world is became a struggle. Polemos remarks the relationship
between Philosophy and Myth. [4]
15
POLITICS AND EQUALITY
IN GREEK INVENTION
OF DEMOCRACY
Nuno M. M. S. Coelho
4
Diogenes Laertius tells the story about the fall of Tales in a hole while searching the
sky - the slave woman laughed at him: you can’t even mind your step! Laughing would
be a weapon against Philosophy since its beginning. And it still is; I’m sure every one
among the presents has been at least once mocked for his/her a little bit incomprehensible