The Gospel of Hellas - Research Institute for Waldorf Education

the rise of philosophy
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T H E R I S E O F P H I L O S O P H Y
the quest for the golden fleece
1. THE FIRST PHILOSOPHERS
The Torch of Ionia
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Philosophy is God’s special
covenant with the Greeks
as a basis for the
philosophy according to Christ.
– clement of alexandria
To become a philosophos, a poietes and a politikos was among the foremost ideals
of education in Hellas. Every Hellene was on the road to become a philosopher
just as everyone wished to be an artist and an active member of the polis. To
aim at wisdom was as natural as to use the gifts of the head along with the
forces of the heart and hand for developing harmony in man.
The striving for knowledge was intimately bound up with the love for
wisdom, philo-sophia, from which the word philosopher, lover (philos) of wisdom
(sophia), is derived. This love of wisdom sprang not only from the head but
from the heart where the arts are nurtured. It was a true and beautiful phrase
in which Plato called philosophy “the noblest and best of music.” 147
We may say that philosophy in Hellas as the “noblest music” of Apollo’s
muses derived from Mount Parnassus where Deucalion’s ark landed after the
deluge. In speaking of Greek philosophy we touch the very soul of Hellas in
her profoundest revelations and ultimate perfections!
Philosophy could not arise until after the flood of Deucalion which was
followed by the age of darkness, making blind the eyes of the soul in the
declining days of the oracles. To philosophize was, therefore, the soul’s desire for
light within the darkness. Ever since the flood of Deucalion, the Hellenes had
been occupied with the quest of the golden fleece, a pursuit which influenced
Greek life from its incipience to its decadence. 148 The golden fleece represented