The following lecture was given by long-time UHP faculty member V.B. Price as part of our Fall 2001 Legacy lecture series. We are honored to publish it on these webpages for the benefit of Legacy students and faculty who were unable to attend the lecture.

Legacy Series Lecture, October 29, 2001 by V.B. Price

READING THE CLASSICS IN TIMES OF CRISIS

My talk tonight has to do with the practical use of reading ancient Greek and Roman literature at the beginning of the 21st century.

Is the UHP's Ancient Legacy requirement part of an "education you can use," or just some elitist, hopelessly antiquarian curriculum devised by old foggies to make you all into old foggies yourselves?

I hope to show you tonight that knowing about the ancient world is immensely useful in coping with, and understanding, extremely difficult times like our own.

The ancient Greeks and Romans had a deep knowledge of the tragedies of war and social upheaval, and they invented ideas that can still help us, right now, to prevail personally and culturally in our time of national crisis. You might ask: Do ideas really matter when it comes to horrors like Sept 11, 2001? You bet they do.

Not to put too fine a point on it, the heart of American constitutional ideals – and that's what America is about, ideals based on the ideas of liberty and justice for all – were nurtured by literature and philosophy of the ancient world. Carl J. Richard in his book "The Founders and the Classics: Greece, Rome, and the American Enlightenment," makes it clear that much of the classical canon, from Homer to Virgil and Plato to Zeno, was staple reading for most of the authors of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.

Historian Henry Steele Commanger contends that "intellectually, the founding fathers knew the ancient world better perhaps than they knew the European or even the British world, better, in all likelihood, than they knew the American [world] outside their own section." Homer, you'll be glad to know, was Thomas Jefferson's favorite ancient author.

Carl Richard further observes that Stoic theory of natural law and the optimistic view of human nature from which it derived gave birth to the modern doctrines of natural and inalienable rights and social progress which undergird our way of life.

He continues, "since of one of the chief elements of classical virtue was an independent cast of mind . . . the founders knew that intellectual independence had been a defining characteristic of their Greek and Roman heroes, who had revolutionary theories of popular sovereignty, natural law, mixed government, and who had defended them against the rampant absolutism of the ancient world."

So, I hope to show you tonight some of the ways – and by no means all – that ancient authors and philosophical movements have powerful lessons for us, personally, in how to cope with tragedy, terror, and other "unpleasantries," as well as equally forceful methods to help us fortify ourselves to participate in a still free, though ever constricting and ever more important, open society like our own. And that, indeed, mental and spiritual health are intertwined in our country with political health – the maintenance of tolerance, freedom of expression, and the free marketplace of ideas, in which it is assumed that the truth will always win, if given a fair chance.

What are the key practical concepts that can be distilled from even a cursory reading of ancient tests? Here are four obvious ones: The first concept has to do with the essential and liberating mental and moral activity of asking questions. In questioning, you are opening yourself up to new knowledge by the healthy admission of your own ignorance along with the self-respect it takes to follow your own curiosity no matter what. This is a lesson we can learn from Socrates.

The second concept concerns the recognition that knowledge is fundamental to understanding the world and understanding the world is fundamental to being productive in it and at peace with it. This is why education and these, dare I say, golden years of yours at the university, are so crucial to the rest of your lives. Here must be where you start to learn how to question, how to get in the habit of questioning, and how to seek information and understand or at least experience other perspectives and points of view . These are lessons we can learn from pre-Socratic philosophers and from others.

A third concept has to do with the critical difference between acceptance and resignation, between calmly acknowledging the reality of conditions and then doing something with them, versus giving in to situations that you can do nothing about, allowing them to defeat you, and demoralize you, so that you won't do anything at all. These are lessons we can learn from Stoic philosophers and others.

And the fourth concept recognizes that being able to tell differences and make distinctions is often the key to survival. Here Homer is our guide.

The material we will touch on includes a speech by modern poet T.S. Eliot given in l933, on the eve of the most murderous war in the history of humankind. We'll also hear from Heraclitus the riddler, Socrates the questioner, the Stoics and the Epicureans, and about three approaches to war – the way of Ares, the way of Athena, and the way of Achilles. And finally we'll look at some practical insights on how to endure the unendurable from Euripides in his "The Trojan Women."

Needless to say, there are countless other useful windows to our present dilemmas opened up by the texts of the ancient world. But these are all we have time for in a brief talk like this.

It's important to remember that despite the vast cultural and technological differences separating us from the ancient world over the space of 2500 years, more or less, Greeks and Romans were human beings just like us. They thought in languages that are part of the foundations of our own, and their works have been exhumed, translated, and brought back to life through various interpretations and uses in the West over the last 500 years or so. While we are dealing with alien cultures, we are dealing with them heavily filtered through our own evolving history, and recreated by the myriad interpretations we have brought to them.

So when a poet and cultural catalyst like T.S. Eliot tells the graduating class of a private high school in l933 to, in essence, know thy self, he is echoing not only Socrates and the oracle of Delphi, but the interpretations of Plato since his philosophy re-emerged from textual oblivion at beginning of the Renaissance in the late 15th century.

Listen to this classic piece of Socratic advice from Eliot which remains as potently practical as any you will ever get: "Whatever you think, be sure it is what you think; whatever you want, be sure it is what you want; whatever you feel, be sure it is what you feel." Here is Socrates speaking through a deeply conservative modern poet, admonishing young people to know themselves as free human beings, to beware of being hoodwinked into believing things they haven't thought deeply about, admonishing them to reject being sold a bill of goods and not to succumb to the blandishments of propaganda and advertising alike, and calling them to arm themselves with curiosity and self-questioning against false but convenient feelings of the mob, or against "nice" feelings you don't have but that other people want you to have.

Why should such Socratic admonitions be useful to us today? Because we live in a world in which we are always being sold something commercial or political, which if we "buy" into without reflection could, indeed, morally or materially bankrupt us. In a free society, even in a slave-state democracy like Athens which excluded women from exercising political freedoms, Socrates knew that the absolute bottomline necessity was the freedom of thought that comes from questioning, both self-questioning and questioning the assertions of those who have authority over you. This, of course, is dangerous stuff; Socrates was killed for teaching this. Still, everything we hold dear in this country's legal system – most especially the 1st Amendment to the Bill of Rights – gives us the freedom from oppression and coerced religion to think for ourselves for the good of our personal lives and the good of our democracy.

An influence on Plato and Socrates, Heraclitus of Ephesus, has another piece of practical advice for us. In the curious puzzles and riddles of his writings, Heraclitus made this unambiguous statement: People "who love wisdom should acquaint themselves with a great many particulars." This is basically an admonition against generalization, against stereotyping, against the generic, and against assuming that you know what you don't know. All the intellectual errors listed above have profoundly negative "practical" consequences. What you don't know can hurt you. Knowledge is not only power, it is the basis of wisdom, which is the instrument of freedom. Knowing what you know and knowing what you don't know are crucial to growth and maturity and pragmatic decision-making. That's why questioning is basic to intellectual and spiritual development. And what is a particular?

Well, right now it would be particularly useful for you and everyone else in this country, myself included, to own up to their knowledge and ignorance of the U.S. Constitution, a document which really has its precedents in 5th century BC Athens, in spirit, if not particulars. Our Constitution is what everything we value in this country is based on. Not to know, almost by heart, the particulars of at least the first ten Amendments to the Constitution and pretend you're patriotic is dangerous to all of us. The first ten Amendments, known as the Bill of Rights, were ratified by the states effective December 15, 1791, 210 years ago – in my mind, one of the great moments in human history.

Let's take the particulars of the 1st Amendment, particulars that Socrates would have admired: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise there of; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for redress of grievances."

The particulars of the 4th amendment read "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."

And then there's the 14th amendment ratified after the civil war in 1868, which reads in part, "No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States, nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any persons within its jurisdiction equal protection of the laws."

As Heraclitus said, if you love wisdom you will acquaint yourself with great many particulars. If you don't know why these three amendments might be pertinent to the debates and proposed surveillance laws following Sept 11, then you haven't been paying attention to the particulars of perhaps the most important historic moment of your life time. And if you don't know particulars, you don't know what questions to ask, you don't really know what you're ignorant about, and you cannot hope to make wise personal decisions or decisions as citizens in this democracy.

Information, the realm of particulars, is the key to many freedoms, including the freedom from irrational fear. Take for instance, the difference in WWII between the early bombing of London and the early bombing of Berlin in 1940. In the first stages of the German air raids, known as the blitz, on London, raids which could kill 3,000 or more people nightly, the British press, and government officials, kept the public deeply informed on virtually every development except those necessary for strategic surprises. As a result, the blitz didn't demoralize the British, it inspired them to vast acts of bravery. In Berlin, however, Nazi propaganda told Germans that the British couldn't possibly make retaliatory air raids because their bomber squadrons couldn't crack Nazi defenses. But many nights, five to ten British bombers would make it across the English channel and drop a few bombs on Berlin, which everyone in the city could see and hear, of course, despite what their government was telling them. When the German people realized that the Nazi propaganda machine was baldly lying to them, the long process of self-defeating, homefront demoralization began.

How can we hope to endure the unendurable, hope to bear the pressures of personal and collective tragedies like we're facing today? What can the ancient Greeks and Romans tell us about that? The ancient world, as in all times and places, was riven by conflicts and violence that were impossible to bear and yet had to be borne. The key to spiritual and psychological survival, in many practical philosophies, then, was "Imperturbability," or what one might call a calm and steady state of mind.

The Stoics achieved this calmness by active acceptance of reality, which is the polar opposite of passive resignation. Epictatus, the Roman slave who was the master of later Stoicism, wrote "Happiness and freedom begin with a clear understanding of one principle: Some things are within our control, and some things are not. It is only after you have faced up to this fundamental rule and learned to distinguish between what you can and cannot control that inner tranquility and outer effectiveness become possible. Within our control are our own opinions, aspirations, desires, and the things that repel us. . . . We always have a choice about the contents and character of our inner lives."

He went on to say, "Circumstances do not rise to meet our expectations. Events happen as they do. People behave as they are. Embrace what you actually get. Open your eyes; See things for what they really are, thereby sparing yourself the pain of false attachments and avoidable devastation. . . . When something happens, the only thing in your power is your attitude toward it, you can either accept it or resent it."

When you accept it, you can do something with it. If you resent it, you will try to do something about it. But history, even immediate history, cannot be otherwise. It is futile to decry it. Do something new with it instead; be active, turn it into something positive, if you can.

Epictatus says, "One of the signs of the dawning of moral progress is the extinguishing of blame. We see the futility of finger pointing. The more we examine our attitudes and work on ourselves, the less we are apt to be swept away by stormy emotional reactions in which we seek easy explanations for unbidden events. These simply are what they are. Other people think what they will think; it is of no concern to us. No shame. No blame."

But, "nothing truly stops you. Nothing truly holds you back. For your own will is always within your control. Your will needn't be affected by an incident unless you let it. Remember this with everything that happens to you."

Epictatus has many things to say, but we'll leave him with two more admonitions: First. "Instead of averting your eyes from the painful events of life, look at them squarely and contemplate them often. By facing the realities of death, infirmity, loss, and disappointment, you free yourself of illusions and false hopes and you avoid miserable, envious thoughts."

Lastly, Epictatus said, " Who exactly do you want to be? What kind of person do you want to be? What are your personal ideals? Whom do you admire? What are their special traits that you want to make your own? It's time to stop being vague. . . . If you have a daybook, write down who you're trying to be, so that you can refer to this self-definition. Precisely describe the demeanor you want to adopt so that you may preserve it when you are by yourself or with other people," or, I may add, in a period of crisis and uncertainty. Great personal and social tragedies cause us to reevaluate our selves, our goals, our ideas about how the world works, and our beliefs. Epictatus wants us to take that re-evaluation seriously, and look at it as one of first positive things one can do with catastrophe once you've accepted it and become calm.

The other great philosophic tradition of the late ancient world is Epicureanism. Its view of life took, as the standard of happiness, the greatest pleasure or peace that comes with the least pain or perturbation.

Epicurus, an Athenian born in 341 BC, after Athens' fall from power, gives us more advice on how to survive hard times. He wrote that the boundary of pleasure is the cessation of pain. And that "learning and pleasure advance side by side." Pleasure is, to a large degree, the absence of dreads, and that blissful absence tends to appear when you are living a just, prudent, and modest life. You can't have learning, obviously, if you can't and don't ask questions, or if your learning is blocked by propaganda and the political control of information. Far from being a hedonist, Epicurus admonishes us not to spoil what we already have by desiring what we don't have. "Test," he says, "your desires by this question: What will happen to me if that which this desire seeks is brought to fulfillment, and what if it is not?" This is a particularly apt question and test right now in American history when we all desire security and safety so badly.

And finally from Epicurus, "Any device whatever by which one frees himself from fear of others is a natural good. . . . .The just person is least disturbed; the unjust man is filled with the greatest turmoil."

When we question ourselves and our motives and feelings, and when we try to get control of our emotions and our desires and our sense of purpose and meaning, Epictatus and Epicurus are always useful.

Let me wrap up with some observations on war and leadership from Homer, and some final insights into enduring the unendurable from Euripides.

Re-reading Homer after Sept. 11, I was struck by both the Iliad and the Odyssey's qualities as manuals of war, among many other things. It seems to me now that to Homer, and those who used him to help them think, there were really three ways to wage war: The Way of Ares, The Way of Athena and Odysseus, and the way of Achilles, Hector, and the Heroes, including Heracles. And, in the long run, Homer seems to say, each of them are pragmatic only against certain kinds of enemies.

Ares is one of two gods of war in the Greek world, Athena is the other. Ares is generally hated by everyone, including the other gods, because he tends to love war for war's sake. He revels in slaughter and gore; the more human bodies the better. He is completely unrestrained. He's the god who presided over the horrors of WW I and the American Civil War and the genocide of Native American tribes. But sometimes we need Ares, when the enemy is huge and ferocious and intent on our defeat, such as Hitler was in WW II, or that big bully on the playground, when the only thing you could do if you weren't going to get beat on anymore was to just go berserk and take him down. That's what the world had to do with Hitler. Ares, though we hate him, is useful from time to time.

Athena and her protegé Odysseus, however, conduct war in a different way from the indiscriminate, megaton, Gatling Gun Ares. They are about cunning, about discriminating between combatants and civilians, about daring and ruthless efficiency, and trickery. She is the god of warriors against terrorists. When Odysseus eventually takes on the suitors, they are caught completely off guard; he's spied, he's deceived, he's bided his time; Athena has restrained him repeatedly. But when he's ready, he lets it rip. But he stops, too. Once the people he's decided have been terrorizing his household, and wife and son, are killed, he stops his war. It goes no farther. Athena, of course, is the goddess of wisdom as well, wisdom in war and in peace. Not only is she the inspiration behind Odysseus's bright idea of the Trojan Horse, she's also the champion of "holy persuasion," the only effective strategy to bring the dreaded cycles of revenge and escalation to an end.

Achilles warriors, on the other hand, fight wars where heroism is the only saving grace. Achilles, and Heracles, and even poor old Hector are the heroes of everyone who lives and survives and prevails in the heat of battle, no matter if it is a battle of weapons, or even a battle of ideas, values, and principles. The heroes are human, all too human, and they more than often don't know when to stop. They tend to be prideful and petulant. But their courage and strength often save the day. And we need their example when life requires of us that we stand up for what we believe. But there's another important to learn from them; it's about self-righteousness and excess; it always gets us in trouble, at least as much trouble as despair does; and as satisfying as the vainglory of heroic impulse might be in any given situation, it is the villain of excess that we can't control, and it always comes back to haunt us.

When Eurpides wrote "The Trojan Women," Athens was at war with Sparta. The year before, an Athenian army had committed an horrendous act of destructive arrogance and self-righteousness in the massacre of all the male inhabitants of the neutral, former Spartan colony on the Island of Melos. Many Athenians, including Euripides saw this as an unforgivable crime and one that would bring the fates down hard on the Athenian people.

As Philip Vellacott writes about Greek tragedy and "The Trojan Women," "the traditional tragic pattern showed a heroic figure in a position of greatness, an act of pride arising from weakness or excess [both of which the Stoics and Epicureans detest], a catastrophe, and death. . . . The tragic hero is the Greek army; their sin is the desecration of temples and the murder of innocents." Sound familiar?

In any case, Eurpides writes about what happens after a city like Troy has been completely demolished, the men all killed and the women sold into slavery, a catastrophe we have a hard time imagining. The lessons of Cassandra, Hecabe, and Andromache teach us about enduring the unendurable. Andromache, the wife of the slain Hector, who is about to see her young son dashed on the rocks, believes that "to be dead is the same as never to have been born, /And better far than living on in wretchedness. The dead feel nothing; even grief can cause them no pain./ But one who falls from happiness to unhappiness/Wanders bewildered in a strange and hostile world." The voice of despair, to be sure; the voice of the suicide bomber, perhaps. Andromache has nothing to lose. You never want to do that to anyone.

Cassandra, one of Hecabe's daughters, has nothing to lose either as she is to be taken off as a concubine of king Agamemnon. She endures the unendurable by calculating revenge. She tells her mother, "This famous king shall find me a more fatal bride than Helen. I shall kill him, and destroy his house in vengeance for my brothers' and my father's death." And she is indeed a catalyst for the assassination of Agamemnon by his wife Clytemnestra. But Cassandra, herself, does not survive.

It's only Hecabe who has the truly useful lesson. No one has lost more than she has, her husband the king, all their children, her crown, her city. All destroyed. And she's about to spend the rest of her life as a slave. She asks, "how must I bear my grief"? And answers herself, "bear what you must." "It's a strange thing," she says, "to meet the irresistible." "But in life there is still hope."

And if you're a Stoic, or an Epicure, you know the irresistible is beyond your control, but not beyond your attitude toward it. It can utterly demoralize you, or you can work to feel your life fill with the purpose of hope. You can shut down, or leave yourself open to what happens next and what you can do with it. From hope comes at least the possibility of meaning. Perhaps of all the lessons of the ancient world this is the most important. There is one freedom no one can take from us – the freedom to interpret what happens to us. That is, to my mind, the central usefulness of the Socratic and Stoic traditions. That fact, so beautifully re-translated by Viktor Frankl who survived Nazi Concentration camps to write "Man's Search for Meaning," is why the liberation of questioning and the hunger for learning, the ability to grasp particulars and see differences, and the mental skills and practical courage to accept reality as it is and keep on striving for what gives you meaning, are so vital to a happy and useful life.

And that's one of the reasons why the founding fathers read the classics and why we still do today.

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