The Gospel of Hellas - Research Institute for Waldorf Education

0 the gospel of hellas
connection with Iphigenia. The self-sacrifice of Socrates marked the beginning
of the third and last stage of the unfolding of the city-state on its way to
becoming the cosmopolis. Socrates’ death as a martyr glorified his memory. It
became the symbol of Hellas’ climax and was destined to be preserved as the
pre-eminent gift for the following millennia in the philosophy of Plato and
Aristotle.
These two towering figures in the field of philosophy were outstanding
personalities in the political history of Greece as well as in the story of her
intellectual development. On three occasions Plato went to Dionysius, the tyrant
of Syracuse, and urged him to introduce the ideal state of a commonwealth as
described in his Republic. It was not Athens, nor any of the quarreling poleis of
Greece that attracted Plato, but a foreign Sicilian city. However, even after his
third visit, he did not succeed in the realization of his ideal.
Aristotle had a similar destiny which led him to the court of Philip, the king
of Macedon at Pella, to become the tutor of his son, Alexander. Aristotle was
not only the greatest teacher of antiquity, but also one of those few outstanding
personalities who changed the course of Hellenic history. His teaching was,
indeed, the most glorious compensation for the loss of freedom by the Hellenic
polis. It was the foundation of a new period of Greek history which we call the
era of Hellenism.
Is it not more than accidental that Demosthenes and Aristotle had
exactly the same dates of birth and death, although they lived as the greatest
polarities of their age? Demosthenes and Aristotle were both representatives
of the cosmopolitan age. Demosthenes was not pure Greek, his mother had
Scythian blood. Aristotle, born in Stagira on the Peninsula of Chalcidice, lived
long abroad and had never received Athenian citizenship. Yet Demosthenes
fanatically preached resistance to the barbarians of Macedonia to whom
Aristotle went as teacher and friend. Demosthenes expended his energy on the
forms and phrases of the word and failed to prevent disaster to the Hellenic
polis. Aristotle awakened responsibilities toward the meaning of the word and
unfolded his system of logic. The Athenian world had to choose between the
oratory of Demosthenes and the philosophy of Aristotle, between logomachy
and logic. History decided for the cosmopolitan Aristotelians against the
narrow-minded nationalists around Demosthenes!