AR104 Lecture Notes - Ancient Greek Philosophy
6 Jun 2013
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Week 7 lecture 1 october 23rd 2012. What is religion: hierarchy, explains mysteries of life, belief in higher power, moral principle, explains creation, concern with the afterlife. Summarizes that religion is about structure which gives us explanations about how and why we live the way we do: no difference between religion and science. Greek world has an absence of this structure, severely lacking: greek philosophy fills this void. In an anthropological point of view there is no kind of religion. Myth: set of ideas that are important to a community, this is what myths contain, essential ideas, fraught with a lot of arguments about what they really are, cannot look to mythology for explanations. In the ancient greek mind, mythology had no lessons. What are the gods in the ancient world: do not impose structure, anything supernatural was a god, gods are selfish, always want praise or honor, their community is cosmos heaven, they come and go.
