Democracy Today.indb - Universidade do Minho

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