Documenti di Didattica
Documenti di Professioni
Documenti di Cultura
I. In China
B.C.1
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S O C I A L H I S :r O R Y A N D T H E E V O L U T I O N O F I D E A S
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of the intelligence) and the senses (the "ears and eyes"). But we
should be quite wrong to interpret this in terms of our own famil
iar opposition. On close analysis 'it becomes clear that this dis
tinction rests upon another: that between the productive and the
administrative functions. Mencius is simply expressing a dualist
hierarchy of complementary grades and values. Indeed, the radi
cal opposition so characteristic of Greek thought, between the
sensible world and the intelligible, is totally unfamiliar to the Chi
nese Writers before the empire. No doubt they would have r(!jected
as artificial.
Similarly, the distinction, so important in our eyes, "',,'-u"''''''
a positivist and a religious attitude does not appear to have pre
occupied the Chinese. The opposition does not appear in the same
form in the Greek and Chinese worlds. The first emperor of China
unified the administrative system of the new empire, in 2 2 1 B.C.
But we should beware of.regarding this simply as a positivist action
to be explained purely in terms of the practical needs of the admin
istration. Another powerful and, to our way of seeing it, irratio
nal idea is also detectable here: that it is the emperor's own genius,
his own personal "virtue" that is diffused through the world and
brings it order. There were thus ritualistic and religious aspects
to the system, and without these aspects the administrative action
would undoubtedly have lost its essential significance and efficacy.
The Chinese authors bf the three centuries before the empire
were not engaged in a quest for the Truth, the non-changing and
non-contradictory._ We should like, in passing, to point out that
in China there-were linguistic obstacles, quite apart from anything
else, to the development of a philosophy of being and to the elabo
ration of logic. Chinese thought took a quite different path:
toward a .D:1()re precise analysis of the factors ordering the social
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and the cosmic spheres. . .
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II. In Greece
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such a comparison. The upheavals in' their social life that led to
their setting up new forms of state occurred at roughly the same
period. In both cases the transition was from an archaic stage in
which power essentially rested upon religious privileges and was
exercised through procedures of a ritualistic type, to mOre posi
tivist types of state organization and a mentality that can be
described as more modern. Vassal relationships and links of per
sonal dependence are destroyed, the imprtance of the world o f
the peasant increases , and towns develop: The same facts appear
to recur in China and in Greece. In both cases these social changes
appear to be linked to technical innovations of great importance:
iron metallurgy, and the use of the metal not only for "noble"
objects but also for utilitarian products for general use. There are
changes on the military level as well: The peasantry becomes more
important as the infantryman takes the place of chariots and horses
on the battlefield. Finally, it is during the same period, between
the seventh and the third centuries B.C., that the characteristic
features of both the Chinese and the Greek cultures emerge.
Schools that produce works which deeply affect the humanist stud
ies flourish. The range covers the philosophy 'of nature, moral and
political thought, sciences such as mathematics and medicine, and
dialectic and logic. It is therefore easy to understand the desire
to assimilate the Chinese and Greek data and assume that these
two peoples underwent analogous historical transformations, any
differences between them being accounted for by the fact that
Greece developed both faster and further. If that were the case,
the purpose ofany comparison would be to determine what obsta
cles were encountered by the Chinese that prevented them from
progressing so fast or so far along the same path - as if there was
only one path for human evolution to take, and that was the one
taken by the West, which today, through technology and science,
affects the whole of the rest of the world. Jacques Gernet's study
has shown us that to pose the problem in terms such as these is
to make it insoluble at the outset. Greek civilization is no more
the measure of the Chinese than the reverse. I t is not that the
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S O C I A L H I S TO R Y A N D T H E E VO L U T I O N O F I D E A S
Chinese did not get so far as the Greeks; they simply advanced
in a different direction. The divergences in their social evolutions
and in the orientation of their thought are to be valued, for they
help us to seize upon what is original in each of the two cultures.
They set in a new perspective and make sense of certain features
of the Greek civilization that are so familiar to us that we take
them for granted. What I should like to do, in this study, is con- '
sider the nature, scope, and origin of these divergences.
There are striking differences even within the similarities that
have appeared most noticeable to us. We have mentioned iron
metaHurgy.Butin-fact-we-are-dealinghere wiln two very affferent techniques. China, was prodUcing cast iron, a technique
that the West did not discover until the dawn of modem times.
Such metallurgical work requires more complicated methods and
investment on a larger scale than anything in Greece. For this rea'
son it was always more or less in the hands or under the control
of the state, which made it an instrument of its power. In Greece
the blacksmith was a small independent producer, operating in
his workshop to satisfy the needs of the public by selling directly
to the customer.
hi China the changes in the status of the peasantry result at
the same time from a sweeping transformation of the human envi
ronment, and from the setting up of vast centralized states. Land
clearance leads to the sole cultivation of cereals over extensive
areas. The progress made in this type of agriculture is tied to the
development of a central administration capable of controlling
it and setting up large-scale schemes using the power of water.
In Greece, peasant life combines the raising in particular of
sheep and goats but also of cattle and horses with agriculture of
an increasingly diversified kind. Tree cultivation, which is more
' lilcnitive and aimed at overseas trade, develops alongSide the pro
duction of cereals. Here, agricultural production, organized out
side the control of a centralized state, has two purposes: to ensure
the subsistence of the family, the aikas, and to sell any surplus
on the open market.
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MYTH A N D S O C I ETY
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the slave, the status o f each being defined in relation to the other.
Without free citizens there would be no slaves, but instead a hier
archy of degrees of dependence stretching from the top to the
bottom of the social scale, a general state of servitude from
which even the king, in his relations with the gods or the divine
order, is not exempt.
Nothing better illustrates the importance of this aristocratic
ideal of autonomy implying an isokratia (in which power is shared
equally by all) than the intellectual significance of the urban phe
nomenon in Greece.
The town, which always constitutes a favorable setting for
the flowering of a new mentality, has a particular significance in
Greece insofar as it is connected with the institutions of the polis.
Mycenaean Greece no doubt produced a kind of palace-city; and
archaic Greece had its towns that were inhabited by the nobility,
as opposed to the countrySide that was populated by "villeins"
who were responsible for feeding the kaloi kagathoi. But, unlike
in China, the classical Greek town did not become the royal admin
istrative center for a vast rural territory, populated by civil ser
vants, priests, and political councillors in the direct service of the
sovereign, together with a number of merchants and industrial
contractors. In Greece the urban establishment is not opposed
to the countryside, because the city encompasses both the rural
territory and the urban complex without making any specific
political distinction between the two. Peasants arid town-dwellers
enjoy the same rights and assume the same responsibilities; they
sit in the same assembly and on the same tribunals, and toge_ther
elect the same magistrates. So what is the role of the town as such
in the system of the city-state? It provides a center for and makes
a communitybf the whole territory, or rather; of the human group
established there that cultivates it. Essentially; the urban complex
is comprised of those buildings connected with public life, that
is to say, everything that, being comrribrnatherthan private prop
erty, concerns the fndividuals insofar as they are all, equally, citi
zens; the temples, the buildings set aside for the magistracies, the
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tribunals, the assemblies, the agora, the theater, and the gymna
siums. Thus, the town is conceived as the center that gives the
social space of the Greeks its uniformity: In relation to this com
mon center all the citizens occupy positions that are, in a way,
symmetrical and reversible. In a city inspired by the ideal o f
isonomia, power and authority are, as the Greeks put i t , placed at
the center ( en mesoi ) , and are not the prerogative of one individual
such as the king or of a privileged minority of citizens.
There is a clos connection between this political system o f
the city-state and the ne spiritual world of the Greeks of the
sixth century. Of course, their ideas were bound to change, but
so long as the city remained alive they were the ideas of men who
saw themselves as autonomous and free within the framework
of small," independent commnities. Just as, in the city, power
belongs to everyone, is placed en mesoi ( an expression that is sig
nificantly reminiscent of a military aristocracy's way of conduct
ing its wars and dividing up the spoils), so too does culture belong
to all; it is placed at the center, no longer the privilege of a few
families or, as in China, of a class of educated men. This democ"
ratization is, of course, only made possible by alphabetic writ
ing, which is no longer the speCiality of a class of scribes, and
which enables all the citizens to learn to read and write. For the
rest, by participating in the festivals and going to the theater,
the whole city has access to artistic and literary productions of
the highest quality.
This common participation in the culture, paralleled by the
common sharing of poli tical authority, has decisive consequences
for the evolution of ideas. Henceforward , all the knowledge and
intell ectual techniques that were hitherto the more or less jeal
ously guarded secrets of certai privileged families , are fully and
publidy revealed . The rules of poli tical life - that it should .
take place in public, conducted via free discussion and reasoned
debate - also become the rule in intellectual life. Truth is no
longer derived from mysterious revelation. Doctrines are made
public, submitted to criticism and controversy, and subjected to
S O C I A L H I STORY A N D T H E E VO L U T I O N O F I D E A S
S O C I A L H I STO R Y A N D T H E EVO L U T I O N O F I D E A S
M YT H A N D SOCIETY
gods are n o longer seen as being outside nature and the human
world; instead, the natural order itself is, in a way, considered as
divine. And yet there are considerable differences. The Greek
image of the world is fundamentally geometrical in character. The
cosmos is imagined in spatial terms. The order that governs it is
egalitarian rather than hierarchical. It assumes a balanced distri
bution between contrary powers so that no one of these can come
to dominate the others. Finally, the Milesian philosophers, far
more than the Chinese thinkers, had to break with traditional
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ligious beliefs, and on many_p_Qints_they_deliberately_take-up_a
contradictory position to them. For this reason the opposition
between this emerging philosophy, on the one hand, and religion
or myth on the other is, in certain respects, extremely marked.
Nevertheless, Greek religion is more of a practice, a manner
of behavior and an internal attitude, than a system of beliefs and
dogmas. So, on this level, philosophy fills a gap; in its attempt
to construct a coherent world system, philosophy has no cause
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to come into direct conflict with religion.
Besides, philosophy does not reject the concept of the divine;
rather, from the very first it uses and transforms it. For the Ionian'
physicists the divine is present within the world that they seek
to explain. The universe can be explained not by the activities
of the traditional gods but by the interaction of the powers that
, form the basis for the phusis, and represent the principles or archai
at work in it. These principles still carry a religious charge. In
what senses can the Milesians call these physical elemental prin
ciples "divine"? Like the gods, these principles are contrasted with
natural phenomena in that they are invisible; they belong to the
domain 9f what is adela, not of what is phanera. They are eternal
apd indestructible , not mortal and perishable; immutable, not
changeable anci epheraf;- pure, not mixed. In short, like the
gods, they are powers that are superior to all others and that,
., betWeen them, govem the woi-Id. "
So the--physical thought f the Milesians develops within the
frameworK o[th. gr_e.at oppositions established by Greek religious
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