Современная наука в теории и практике. Часть IV. Монография

The propensity to resort to reason, in reality, already appears in the period prior to the birth of philosophical thought in the strict sense, as evidenced clearly by the description of the Mycenaean world contained in the Homeric poems. This is certainly not the place suitable for a review, even summary, of the enormous problems that lie behind the Iliad and the Odyssey: just remember that it’s at least doubtful the historical existence of a character like Homer and that the poems, far from being a reliable testimony of the Mycenaean civilization, they rather represent a distant echo several centuries, with all that a similar chronological distance involves in terms of adherence to the facts narrated.

unity of knowledge that distinguishes the classical era.

the difficult mediation with the other heroes. Homeric morality is also, of course, an aristocratic morality, because only noble sov­ereigns are allowed to lead the armies and participate in the assemblies. There are no intrusions or exceptions, as evidenced by the episode of Tersite, of humble origins, which is severely beaten and derided by the mere fact of having dared to speak in the assembly of kings, although his opinion wasn’t dismissed by solid arguments.

sentially reduced to an erroneous evaluation, so that evil action is actually the fruit of a fallacious conviction to pursue the good. After all, according to the Athenian phi­losopher, human actions have all, indiscriminately, the aim of pursuing the good. When, due to incorrect evaluations, evil is exchanged for good, reprehensible actions are carried out, all of which are marked by a miscalculation. In this vision there is no room for the concept of responsibility, because nobody deliberately does evil, so the ethical rationalism of Socrates brings out paradoxical results.

would later return from Philip to act as a tutor to a very young Alexander. The lack of information about the relationship between Alexander the Great and Aristotle is very painful, because it prevents us from assessing to what extent the ideas of the great philosopher influenced the leader who would unify, politically and partly culturally, the East and the West. Certainly Alexander was much more ruthless and modern than Aristotle, still tied to the idea of the Greek cultural primacy. Even Aristotle, who had trained at the Platonic Academy, founded his own philo­sophical school, which he gave the name of Lyceum, also known as Peripato (which in Greek means walk), because of the habit of discussing philosophical themes while walking. Academy and Lyceum soon entered into competition with each other, with ups and downs. The conclusion of Aristotle's life was rather bitter, as he was over­whelmed by the tumultuous change of political structure following the death of Alex­ander the Great: he was reproached for being master of the Macedonian and therefore was exiled from Athens in 323 BC, only a few months before his death, which oc­curred in 322 BC.

The horizon of Aristotelian ethics remains, as tradition, eudemonistic. Man's actions always aim at achieving happiness, whether he’s virtuous or not. The differ- ence between the righteous and the vicious man consists in the wisdom of the former, able to recognize in reason the faculty worthy of being cultivated and followed during life. Once again, the well-known limit of Socratic ethics, that intellectualism which impedes giving weight to the will, proposes again, almost unchanged, attributing a little virtuous conduct to a kind of miscalculation.