Democracy Today.indb - Universidade do Minho
Democracy Today.indb - Universidade do Minho
Democracy Today.indb - Universidade do Minho
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But we must specially stress: there is tension among the large<br />
range of cultural manifestations of Philosophy as new perspective<br />
themselves: Science, Lyric Poetry, Tragedy, History, Rhetoric, Ethics,<br />
Politics etc. They all face the new need for foundation, but it is particularly<br />
important to observe how they fight! Among the pre-socratics - the<br />
first scientists to represent the new perspective - there were not two<br />
concordant theories to describe the archai of physis.<br />
The examples multiply. Comedians argue against Politicians (see<br />
Aristophanes in Horsemen) and against Philosophers (see Aristophanes<br />
in Clouds); Scientists argue against Scientists (see Heraclito in Frag.<br />
81 [5], and so many other examples [6]); Philosophers argue against<br />
Tragedy and Comedy (see Plato in Republic, Book 3), Politicians and<br />
Rectors argue against Philosophers (Plato in Apology to Socrates),<br />
Philosophers argue against Rhetoric (see the whole platonic work!).<br />
Regardless their participation in the same broad perspective we call<br />
16<br />
DEMOCRACY TODAY<br />
interests. But humor wouldn’t be the only nor the worse reaction to Philosophy. Athenians<br />
convicted Philosophers as Socrates and Protagoras to death.<br />
In the other hand, Philosophy’s criticism against mythological world is not charming. Let<br />
us recall these two fragments of Xenophanes (from Diels & Kranz, Fragmenta):<br />
(11.) SEXT. adv. math. IX 193<br />
panta theois’ anethêkan Homêros th’ Hêsio<strong>do</strong>s te,<br />
hossa par’ anthrôpoisin oneidea kai psogos estin,<br />
kleptein moicheuein te kai allêlous apateuein.<br />
(15.) CLEM. Str. v 110 [II 400, 1 St.] nach B 14<br />
all‘ ei cheiras echon boes êe leontes<br />
ê grapsai cheiressi kai erga telein haper andres,<br />
hippoi men th’ hippoisi boes de te bousin homoias<br />
kai theôn ideas egraphon kai sômat’ epoioun<br />
toiauth’ hoion per k’autoi demas eichon .<br />
I’m sorry for my careless translation:<br />
Fragment 11.: Homer and Hesiod have attributed everything to Gods, everything which<br />
deserves rejection and disapproval, robbery, adulterous, and mutual fraud.<br />
Fragment 15.: If bulls, horses and lions had hands and could use them to draw and to<br />
create as human beings can, horses similar to horses, bulls similar <strong>do</strong> bulls, they would<br />
draw the shape of gods and their bodies just as they own have.<br />
5<br />
Frag. 81.: “ ancestral of the charlatans (Pythagoras)”.<br />
6<br />
Remember the Aristotelian reference to Plato in Nicomachean Ethics (first Book) according<br />
to which it is more pious to stand with truth rather than with friends.