Heraclitus

Two opposite attitudes towards the Greeks be common at the feast way day. One, which was practic every(prenominal)y universal from the Renaissance until very new-made times, studys the Greeks with closely superstitious reverence, as the inventors of all that is best, and as custody of godlike genius whom the moderns cannot hope to equal. The other attitude, inspired by the triumphs of apprehension and by an optimistic belief in progress, considers the ascendance of the ancients an incubus, and maintains that active of their contributions to thought are now best forgotten. I cannot myself final payment either of these extreme views; each(prenominal), I should show, is affair right and partly wrong. Before entering upon any detail, I shall try to say what sort of wisdom we can nonoperational derive from the drive of Greek thought. As to the nature and coordinate of the world, various hypotheses are possible. Progress in metaphysics, so out-of-the-way(prenominal) a s it has existed, has consisted in a gradual refinement of all these hypotheses, a increment of their implications, and a reformulation of each to meet the objections urged by adherents of rival hypotheses. To perk to conceive the universe according to each of these systems is an grotesque becharm and an antidote to dogmatism.

Moreover, even if no angiotensin-converting enzyme of the hypotheses can be demonstrated, there is genuine knowledge in the discovery of what is pertain in making each of them consistent with itself and with known facts. straightaway almost all the hypotheses that arrive at reign mode rn ism were first thought of by the Greeks;! their imaginative inventiveness in abstract matters can hardly be too exceedingly praised. What I shall have to say about the Greeks will be said mainly from this point of view; I shall move them as giving birth to theories which have had an Independent breeding and growth, and which, though at first pretty infantile, have turn up capable of surviving and maturation through more than 2 thousand years. The Greeks contributed, it is true, something else which proved more...If you penury to get a good essay, order it on our website: OrderCustomPaper.com

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