Greek culture, Roman culture and the roots of Europe(2)

Greek culture

As we all know, ―Europe‖ first was a Phoenician princess who was kidnapped by Zeus in the disguise of a bull. But ―Europe‖ for the ancient Greeks also became all countries to the West and to the North of Greece, just like all countries to the East were named ―Asia‖.

So, whatever geopolitical developments the continent has gone through in the last 2500 years, Europe owes its very name to the Greeks. That is already an important reason to celebrate our Greek legacy. But more important is that so much of what we would today call European Civilization, European Culture and European Heritage has its roots in ancient Greece.

The concept ―Europe‖ has been hijacked during many periods of history – for a very long time by the Catholic Church (―Europe‖ = Christianity with Rome at the centre), later even by persons like Napoleon and Hitler. But Europe as an Idea of Democracy and Human Rights was revived in the Enlightenment and now, after the terrors of World Wars and the fall of 20th Century dictatorships, represents the ideological basis for the European Union. To many citizens it may not be very attractive to have a bureaucracy in Brussels as the carrier of these strong and noble values but if we wish Democracy, we will have to accept a certain amount of bureaucratic structures implementing democratic decisions.

The tradition of philosophy in Ancient Greece accompanied its literary development. Greek learning had a profound influence on Western and Middle Eastern civilizations. The works of Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and other Greek philosophers profoundly influenced Classical thought, the Islamic Golden Age, and the Renaissance.

Most western philosophical traditions began in ancient Greece in the 6th century BC.The first philosophers are called "Presocratics" which designates that they came before Socrates. The Presocratics were from the western or the eastern colonies of Greece and only fragments of the original writings of the presocratics survive, in some cases merely a single sentence.

A new period of philosophy started with Socrates. Like the Sophists, he rejected entirely the physical speculations in which his predecessors had indulged, and made the thoughts and opinions of people his starting-point. Aspects of Socrates were first united from Plato, who also combined with them many of the principles established by earlier philosophers, and developed the whole of this material into the unity of a comprehensive system.

Aristotle of Stagira, the most important disciple of Plato, shared with his teacher the title of the greatest philosopher of antiquity but while Plato had sought to elucidate and explain things from the supra-sensual standpoint of the forms, his pupil preferred to start from the facts given us by experience. Except from these three most significant Greek philosophers other known schools of Greek philosophy from other founders during ancient times were Stoicism, Epicureanism, Skepticism and