A Testament
As to my studies, a brief account follows: Let us go from West to East, from thoughtfulness to mindfulness.
West is West
As Kipling noted and may have wondered at: Dividing all known cultures and civilizations into two groups along East/West lines seems simplistic, but the totality of all civilizations past and present does not form a monolithic whole and whatever the main “something” is that divides them, some dialectic is implied.
In the West, the dialectic is clear: "The deepest, the only theme of Western history, compared to which all others are of subordinate importance is the conflict of skepticism and faith." Some, like Goethe, held to faith or were held by it; others, like Voltaire, were untroubled by matters of faith and came down squarely on the side of skeptical inquiry—content to cultivate their this-worldly gardens.
The beginning point of the West's experiment in high civilization was with Thales, (624–546 BCE), first philosopher (lover of wisdom), first of the Greek pre-Socratics. Surrounded by a vast sea of superstitious believers, the pre-Socratics sought to tell a naturalistic, this-worldly story of human existence that was neither demon nor god haunted. They rejected the believing mind in favor of the inquiring mind that thrives on doubt, free thought, and inquiry. They got the details wrong, but they correctly suspected that Homer had told lies about the gods, and began to look plainly at that which was in front of their faces.
They started to think critically. They wanted to know: what should we think of this and that?
Of course most Greeks remained true believers, and the pre-Socratics, no fools, had to take care of what they publicly said. Towards the end, Protagoras (490-420 BCE), who lived just prior to Socrates (469–399 BCE) and so was still numbered among the pre-Socratics, wrote his “On the Gods” treatise. He thought he could get away with arguing a case for agnosticism, and so, by avoiding outright atheism, he hoped to be allowed to live. But his books were burned, predictably, and he was forced to flee Athens. His ship encountered a storm and all aboard perished. The mass of believers, predictably, celebrated the putative revenge of the gods.
Socrates later had to drink the hemlock and Aristotle (384–322 BCE), afraid of being charged with impiety (no doubt for good reason) fled Athens a year before his death. But some playwrights, like Euripides (480–406 BCE), were able to get by with thinly disguised unbelief, and by the 2nd century BCE, Carneades (214-129 BCE) was able to be openly atheistic with respect to the gods themselves and was not only allowed to live, but was respected—hinting that some progress in civilization had occurred after Aristotle.
The ongoing tension between belief and skepticism meant free thought and inquiry remained alive, contributing much to the glory that was Greece (and Alexandria). Today, atheism with respect to the Greek gods is nearly universal, but alas others, among them the one true god, seem to have taken their place and the inquiry/belief dialectic continues.
History may be told by the victors, but just being a survivor helps too. Our understanding of Greek thought is immensely distorted by what little of it survived. What was not burned outright, generations of monks washed and scraped to create blank parchment upon which their true dogma could be imprinted. Of many Greek authors not a single page survives of their voluminous works (especially those who expressed skeptical, atheistic thoughts that later theists found distressing, e.g. Epicurus, 341-270 BCE, the most prolific and perhaps greatest of the Greek lovers of wisdom whose life's work, some 300+ volumes, were “lost”). Yet all the works of Plato survived. Why?
Christians trying to develop a theology that could appear intellectually respectable borrowed from his questionable pronouncements on metaphysics. Useful to the early Christians, Plato's works were favored to survive, and thus we know of Socrates, Plato's favorite teacher, because Plato wrote about him. We know of Aristotle, Plato's favorite student, because his works, but not all, were accorded some protection by association. Had the early Church understood Aristotle better, they probably would have burned his works too. Plato was not (nor even Socrates and Aristotle) the high point of Greek thought. We think the modern mind begins during the Renaissance, but the early Renaissance rediscovered what the later-day Greeks had long before discovered prior to Christendom turning them into unpersons.
In more modern times, generations of Western scholars have labored over Plato and Aristotle, and can even say with a straight face that our only choice is either to be a Platonist (believer) or an Aristotelian (a lesser believer) as if Greek philosophy had largely began and ended with them. It didn't, but too little survived for modern scholars (those of the last few hundred years, many of whom were Plato-loving Christians) to quote or droll-on about. Still, to judge Greek thought by what the Christians and Muslims allowed to survive is a disservice to the free, curious, and critical Greeks. The whole trend of Greek thought was from the doubts of the few, to ever greater disbelief/atheism/skepticism/free thought/inquiry, while along the way the Greek people themselves became comfortable with disbelief and disbelievers as their culture of belief was being transformed into a culture of inquiry.
Since we can't study Greek thought in a balanced way, the best we can do is not to overemphasize the tiny fraction of it the Faith-based have allowed us to consider. A likely story, had Greek literature survived to tell it, would be that by the 2nd century BCE Plato would have been considered quaint and curious by comparison to the advances in philosophy made after him (and so perhaps should we). Carneades, 10th head of Plato's Academy, was not a Platonist, but then the purpose of the Academy was to further inquiry and not to perpetuate Plato's thoughts. If deemed good, Plato's thoughts would have persisted, but the latter-day Greeks did not follow Plato.
What if, should the currently sought after Universal Caliphate ever be established, the only Western literature to survive apart from fragments is the complete works of St. Augustine and Thomas Aquinas who, for some reason, the imams allowed to survive? Would scholars of the forth millennium, writing voluminously about them, have a fair understanding of 21st century Western learning?
Pyrrho of Elis (365-275 BCE), while in the army of Alexander the Great, made it to India and got a taste of Indian philosophy. Back in Athens he decided that the aim of philosophy is quietude, not "truth," and distressed by the believer/disbeliever dialectic, he proposed an extreme form of epistemological skepticism: The total suspension of judgment to allow acceptance of the customs and conventions of society. This means that as nothing can be known with certainty, everything is on level ground, including acceptance of received beliefs (orthodox religion). If everyone around you is worshiping Zeus, then so should you just to promote getalongness. The effect of Pyrrhonian skepticism is, paradoxically, to promote belief. If there is no "truth" (only cultural relativism) and no privileged way of knowing, then smile and wear the cross, turban, or whatever. Pyrrho had only one student and fell into obscurity throughout most of the Hellenistic period, but today he seems to have many followers in academia.
Strato of Lampsacus (335-269 BCE) made the crucial point that reason alone was not enough. The pre-Socratics had tried reason, but reason alone had limits. Strato said: Reason? Yes! But don't neglect the evidence! It takes both reason and evidence to discover simple truths about the universe. It only took the Greeks three centuries to figure that out. Perhaps Arcesilaus (316-241 BCE), founder of Academic skepticism, born six years after Aristotle's death, is worth consideration. When he said that he knew nothing, not even his own ignorance, he left out the "with certainty." Then Carneades clarified that all possible knowledge was by its nature probabilistic. We can know things but not with absolute dogmatic certainty. We know things more or less, for the price of an effort, and the effort of learning is ongoing. We never "know" but are always in a process of learning, of listening. So by the 2nd century BCE the philosophical foundations of modern science and scholarship were laid, only later, after The Age of Faith, to be rediscovered.
In between, free thought did not fare well. Roman conquest didn't help, still, in the 1st century BCE, Alexandria, the world's first planned city, founded by the Greeks, was the largest city in the world, and remained second largest when overtaken by Rome at the height of the Roman Empire. Many books were lost when Julius Caesar, burning ships in 47 BCE in the harbor, inadvertently burned part of Alexandria's library holdings (some portion of its books numbering in the hundreds of thousands). An attack on the city by Roman Emperor Aurelian (270-275 CE) did much to further deplete the Greek learning. Still, to do the job right, it took Western religion.
The conversion of Constantine into "the Great" Christian was not the best thing to ever happen to a civilization (Roman Emperor 306-337 CE). Still, his nephew Julian the Philosopher (Roman Emperor 361-363 CE) tried to reinstate some of the glory that was Greece. In 362 Julian the Apostate issued his Edict of Religious Tolerance, which was strenuously opposed by the Christians. He sought to assist in rebuilding Pagan and Jewish temples previously destroyed by the militantly faithful. After his untimely death in battle after only three years in office, the Emperors that followed were all Christians. Perhaps the greatest "what-if" in history is what if Julian the Hellene had not died so early and had had 30 years in power instead of three? What if he had succeeded in turning Rome back to Paganism, and then to Greek free thought and inquiry?
In 391, Emperor Theodosius, persecuting Pagans unto death since 381, having made Christianity the official state religion, and issuing what should have been called his Edict of Religious Intolerance, decreed that all Pagan (all but the True Church) temples be destroyed. Unable to see any difference between a Pagan temple and a Pagan library or museum, the thought and knowledge of civilization was, insofar as possible, obliterated.
What nevertheless survived helped gradually rebuild the formally great Library of Alexandria where a few scholars also survived. Hypatia was among the last of the achievers, martyred in 415. In 642 Alexandria was captured by a Muslim army. The conquering general asked for instructions about what to do with the books in the library. The answer he received was, “if those books are in agreement with the Qur’an, we have no need of them; and if these are opposed to the Qur’an, destroy them.” It takes little imagination to guess what happened next. That any of the Greek learning (apart from theology serving Plato and his "unmoved mover" student Aristotle) survived, if only as fragments, almost seems, well, miraculous (no divine intervention implied).
The Age of Faith that followed, aka The Dark Ages, lasted about a thousand years. To know what life in the West might have been like in the 12th century go to Afghanistan, join the Taliban, and hope the fervently sought Universal Caliphate is achieved before you die so you can savor total hegemonic triumph over the infidels. The cultural hegemony of Christendom began to crack in the 12th—17th centuries as the cat of inquiry escaped and the Renaissance and Enlightenment followed thanks to the Greco émigré scholars abandoning the Byzantine remnant of the Roman Empire to the conquering Ottoman Caliphate.
Most of the modern world, including contemporary Greece, is more like the Romans of yesteryear. Later-day Greeks today (in terms of subculture) are valued as teachers, innovators, scientists, artists, poets, technologists, and assorted "knowers" so long as they know their place and don't interfere with the power mongers or their pursuit of profit and growth. As long as they seem harmless, they are allowed to inhabit academies—Greek for "learning communities."
To date all cultures have been cultures of belief, and none have come as close to becoming a culture of inquiry as the ancient Greeks who were in the process of letting go of ancient beliefs and superstitions when their civilization passed away, subsumed by the Romans who failed, as have we, to digest its best parts.
Like the Romans, we tolerate and even value universities that do clearly useful things, like teach youths to do monetarily useful things and tell commoners what to think, but we are not a culture of inquiry. Universities (or parts thereof) maybe, but on the whole, we are believers whose highest, greatest belief (almost universally shared) is our 'belief in belief' itself. Especially if the belief can pass as 'religious'.
The respect accorded any religious belief, no matter how absurd, appears unbounded, and pointing out absurdities is considered to be in bad form even on the critical thinking hallowed ground of universities. But remember what followed Rome: Are we heading for another Age of Faith?
Only if, like Thomas Jefferson, we declare "eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man" (unknown to most Americans, Jefferson was railing against the clergy of his day) can we guard against ideological tyranny whether religious, political, or quasi both. If the Romans had become more like the Greeks, would today's descendants of the colonizers of Mars be helping us to better appreciate the planet we have?