Od homeryckich ideałów do demokracji ateńskiej. Antyczne źródła tożsamości europejskiej

Abstract

On March 16, 2022, a lecture in the series “Lectures of the Masters”, organized at the Faculty of Philology of the University of Bialystok, was delivered by Kazimierz Korus – a classical philologist, Professor Emeritus of the Jagiellonian University; active member of the Polish Academy of Arts and Sciences, Director of Department I. Philological Department of the PAU since 2022, member of the Committee for the Study of Antique Culture of the Polish Academy of Sciences for 2018–2022. The topic of the lecture was “Love as a Value. The Ancient Sources of European Idea­lism.” For publication, Professor Korus proposed a revised and expanded version of the lecture, which we publish in this volume. The work is divided into two distinct parts. In the first, the author shows how gradually (from Homer to Cleisthenes, i.e., 300 years!) the Athenians matured into recognizing democracy with its inalienable equivalents freedom and equality as the highest value of social life, and in the second, what values they already connoted with mature democracy. From Homer to Cleisthenes. Since the 9th century BC, we can follow how the recognition of freedom as an inalienable value in Homeric poems turned into showing the extraordinary values of its hyponym peace. The condition for educating Athenians towards freedom and equality was the recognition and acceptance of the Homeric heroes’ examples of behaviour as socially important values (paradéigmata: Plato, The State 606 e); of these, we should mention shame (aidos) against conduct contrary to the law of manners, to customs brought from home, respect for oneself and another free and noble man (time), a sense of righteousness, a sense of what is just, just (dikaion). Daughter of Zeus Dike, by the will of the gods, guarded these values of social life, living in peace, and the entire legal order. It was justice (dikaiosyne), thus understood, that commanded to admit guilt, ask for forgiveness, and forgive the asker. The Greeks grew up to recognize equality as a value gradually. A clear social signal was the establishment of the Olympic Games in 776 (the date is disputed) [if I do not write otherwise, all dates are before Christ], which ensured the participation of free-born Greeks. The social awareness of this equality was cemented by two factors: a unique Panhellenic peace, proclaimed by heralds, called the ekecheiria, and the widespread knowledge of the competition rules, setting equal criteria for all participants for evaluation and punishment. At the same time, the compulsory nudity of the contestants made them equal, as it were, symbolically. Centuries VII and VI bring the recognition of freedom of the land (eleutheria tes patridos) as the highest value to social life. Fighting in its defence became an experience spread throughout Greece through the poetry of Kallinos and Tyrtaios. The readiness to fight in defense of the homeland (peri patridi), i.e. in protection of the community (land and loved ones), is accompanied by the highest social recognition. Its equivalents become undeniable values. And so the connotative qualities of fighting in defense of the land become courage and shame. Also associated with the struggle were fame and honor. The lyric commonly known among the Greeks brings novel additions: justice, whose personification is both in Homer and in Hesiod dike. It gains in Archilochus’ considerations a new criterion for the objective treatment of people - the rhythm of nature (rhytmos tes ­physeos). Sappho sees love as embracing and changing the world. It is love combining beauty and good (kalos kai agathos) and righteousness (dikaion). Xenophanes of Colophon and Parmenides recognized truth (aletheia), or rather striving for it, as a value that requires effort, but is important in social relations. The beginning of the 6th century brings new hyponyms for freedom and equality. Solon establishes new laws in which civil liberty is guaranteed by seisachtheia, and equality against the law, for the time being only partial according to the judgment of the legislator. It is expressed by the law allowing each citizen to react to the perceived injustice of another, not necessarily bound by kinship or a relationship of hospitality (ho boulomenos). Solon called his reforms lawfulness (eunomia): “for as much as is necessary I have granted authority to the people, neither taking honour and dignity (time) from them nor giving them too much (5,7)… my heart bids me instruct the citizens of Athens about this, as to the city most misery is brought by Lawlessness, where lawfulness (­eunomia), on the other hand, there everything is sufficient and honest”. The right to equality in access to culture derives from the time of Peisi­stratos and his reforms favouring justice. The Great Dionysia, established by him, required the annual education of participants in a choir singing dithyrambs, which was paid for by a tax called choregia. Anyone who met the musical and mental criteria could participate with the choir teacher. This teaching was called education in the choir circle (en kyklo choru paideia), and the term en kýklo paideuómenos meant social recognition. In turn, the term en kýklo paidéia (‘education in a circle’) became a common value in the Roman and later European traditions, for this was the name given to encyclopaedic secondary education. In the time of the Peisistratos and later, it became a hyponym for equality. In the first part of the work, the author tried to show how freedom and desire for equality gradually determined the social consciousness of the Greeks and how it became the basis of their completely original new democratic system. Athenian Democracy. in the second part, he showed how Cleisthenes’ reforms brought about the new system. Its definition was given by Thucydides in a speech by Pericles (37.1): “This system is called democracy (demokratía) because it is based on the majority of citizens, not a mino­rity”. Then he tried to reconstruct the axiology of the term democracy in the texts of the authors of the classical era. Its value in the eyes of the 5th and 4th century Athenians, in accordance with the tradition presented in the first part of the work, was associated with freedom (he eleutheria) and equality (to ison), understood in four aspects: speeching of state interest (isegoria), right to open speech (parresia) and equality in access to offices (isotimia). To these essential values should be added the following detailed list: democracy is the adoption of the models of behavior of the heroes of Homer (paradeigmata), the knowledge of which in average Greeks was delicious, and a kind of natural, social recognition of every citi­zen (polites) as value (aksiosis, time), which was already reflected in the law of Solon: no one will be deprived of liberty because of debts. ­democracy, then, is the protection of each individual against the loss of worship and freedom. democracy is the creation of conditions for the comprehensive development of every citizen; it is the observance of laws, especially the unwritten moral ones; it is the mutual tolerance of citizens; it is the state’s concern for their rest. democracy is serving the state and multiplying its good. The verb politéuomai had the connotation: I am a citizen because I take an active part in the life of my country (polis). Polis is identified with the noun polítes, and the way of thinking of the Athenians is this: if I do everything that comes with my profession, or my service and opportunity to make the state happy, I will be happy too. democracy is the prosperity and power of my state (polis), which makes my city open to those who want to study and learn about Athenian customs. The author tried to reconstruct the world of axiological associations of idealized democracy as the mature fruit of freedom, both when it was born and flourished in the 5th century and then when it was falling into decline in the 4th century and also when the Athenians lost their freedom to Philip of Macedon (338). And so this image passed into the dreams and imaginations of all generations of Europeans, mainly when they felt enslaved by the imposed system.