Democracy Today.indb - Universidade do Minho
Democracy Today.indb - Universidade do Minho
Democracy Today.indb - Universidade do Minho
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here Philosophy! Philosophy is polemos, everything is always under<br />
discussion.<br />
Struggling would be stressed in the fifth Century, with the sophists.<br />
The antilogic perspective (according to which there’s always an<br />
argument to oppose to any argument [7] ) would be assumed as rhetoric,<br />
epistemological and even as an ontological perspective. Protagoras is<br />
the main reference for Antilogic theory, as he is considered the father<br />
of this discovery. But this becomes a widely disseminated perspective,<br />
used even in education strategies. From this field, two important <strong>do</strong>cuments<br />
of the 5th Century last to show how learning to think successfully<br />
was acquiring expertise in handling with antilogical challenges: the<br />
Dissoi Logoi (whose Author is unknown) and the Tetralogies, written<br />
by Antiphon.<br />
Everything, every statement, values just as a throw in the endless<br />
game of stating.<br />
What comes to support the world, in the place of the narrative<br />
magical explanation - is discussion. Discussion about what nature is,<br />
as about the gods, society and human being.<br />
Antilogical perspective is quite compatible to the 5th century<br />
Athenian <strong>Democracy</strong>. Everybody’s right to stating in Assembly (isegoria),<br />
expressing one’s own point of view, is supported by a conception<br />
according to which any perspective is in some way valuable. In<br />
<strong>Democracy</strong>, citizens are equal in the right to participating in the struggle<br />
for the world (for the polis and for the human being, which were<br />
always implied in the constant discussion on laws and education). This<br />
polemos rests in the root of the Greek understanding of Polis, as the<br />
coexistence of different people under the law. According to Aristotle,<br />
in Politics, difference among citizens is the basis of Polis considered<br />
as a system of exchanges.<br />
In this view, we can see how difference in constitutive of political<br />
experience.<br />
Ethics also shows how nothing is so far from Classic Greece than<br />
some contemporary descriptions of Polis as an uniformed way of life.<br />
Let’s recall Aristotle again. Nicomachean Ethics, in stead of being an<br />
17<br />
POLITICS AND EQUALITY<br />
IN GREEK INVENTION<br />
OF DEMOCRACY<br />
Nuno M. M. S. Coelho<br />
7<br />
According to Diogenes Laertius (Lifes, IX, 50. Diels & Rranz 80 A 1), Protagoras stated<br />
that “on any thing there are two possible and contrary speeches”.