The Classical World and its current relevance

Humanity progresses. Today only burn my books; Centuries ago they would have burned me.”

Sigmund Freud.

The history books are fascinating, but The Classic World of Robin Lane Fox is particularly compelling. He describes for us about a thousand years of human development, from the 8th century BC with Homer, to the dawn of the Christian era with the Emperor Hadrian.

The Classical World marked our thought: many “modern” ideas that some contemporary authors presume as their own, were actually thought of in a certain way by a classical author more than two thousand years ago.

For example, the concept of the Element developed by Ken Robinson in our times, was conceived in an archaic version by Aristotle and called eudaimonia. My friend Nassim Taleb, a researcher and essayist, frequently quotes and praises the classic authors in his books and reminds us of the validity of his ideas.

Without a doubt, the evolution of the human being is admirable, however, the transition towards a civilized society has not been linear. In many cases, great advances are followed by strong setbacks —we perceive the same thing in our Latin America.

For example, to classical Greece we owe invaluable contributions to humanity. After governments headed by aristocrats and tyrants around the 6th century BC, Cleisthenes proposed that sovereign power rest with a broad group of citizens, marking the first time in history that democracy was considered a form of government. The ancient Greeks were also great students of philosophy: just think of names like Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, whose ideas have marked us. Other lesser-known philosophers who left their mark on our thinking are Thales of Miletus, Parmenides, and Heraclitus. Pythagoras was a great philosopher and mathematician.

In fact, the Greeks began to explain the universe without appealing to gods or myths, simply to reason. To them we also owe great advances in mathematics, medicine and history. And in the arts—from literature and music to dance and theater—they were outstanding. Aristophanes’ comedies continue to entertain us because their themes are still valid.

These advances, however, coexisted with situations of great social insensitivity such as the presence of around 100,000 slaves in Athens alone, in the fifth century BC, the null participation of women in politics and their limitation in fundamental aspects of the life like education. Subsequently, authoritarian regimes such as Philip of Macedonia and his son, Alexander the Great, returned to Greece, which, although they generated great military advances, marked severe democratic setbacks.

Many years later, in Rome, the ups and downs in its development were very marked. To Rome we owe thousand-year-old contributions to law and architecture, considerable improvements to urban services and great hydraulic and communication works that we can admire to date —some aqueducts survive and many ancient Roman roads are preserved throughout Europe. In Latin America, the Roman law model is still in force, although perhaps it is time to evolve. For nearly four centuries, the Romans created a flexible form of government that prevented excessive concentration of political power based on the coexistence of two annually elected consuls. After Augustus, however, political decisions were concentrated in the hands of an emperor who imposed the most arbitrary actions without any opposition.

In the 21st century, on his way to more civilized forms of coexistence, man continues to take two steps forward and one step back. But if the classics teach us anything, it is that we should never lose confidence in progress, especially in our Latin America, because it is convenient for the tyrant that people abandon the liberal and democratic dream.

Currently, we still see how people from various countries fight fiercely in the streets and squares for their freedoms. However, today citizens have very powerful tools to organize ourselves: a free press, independent electronic media, smartphones, and social networks that allow us to react immediately to any threat from the autocrat, who today has less room for maneuver, but for it itself has become more cunning and repressive.

If the Greeks and Romans managed to put a stop to tyranny without independent electronic media and social networks, what can we not achieve today in favor of freedom?

I have the firm conviction that the advancement of freedom and our common well-being must be promoted with the efforts of organized civil society. The classics taught us that nothing is impossible: change is in our minds, so we must always fight for a cultural change that propels us into the future.

*The author is president and founder of Grupo Salinas.

https://www.ricardosalinas.com

@RicardoBSalinas