Democracy Today.indb - Universidade do Minho

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