It is both difficult and rare for persons living today to have any clear idea โ let alone, an experience โ of what the first Greek philosophers were up against as they made their first bold steps towards understanding the whole, or the cosmos, ๐๐ ๐๐๐ก๐ข๐๐. How many today can recognize what an โun-naturalโ and terrifying breakthrough this discovery of nature was to those first initiates into the mystery that was (and still is) entailed in this new way of seeing ๐๐ฃ๐๐๐ฆ๐กโ๐๐๐? A small handful of speculative philosophers and their loyal disciples were taking this momentous, irreversible step โ a step from mental childhood into adulthood โ with this audacious self-liberation from a mythopoetic, religious understanding and experience of the mysterious whole into a natural-rational perspective. With this move from mythological enchantment to philosophical sobriety, a great sense of responsibility descends upon the human heads and shoulders of the few self-liberated adults. They quickly learn that, so far as the generality is concerned, their new insights and teachings operate like a toxic, corrosive substance. This โsubstanceโ is precious to them, but it is dangerous to the myth-and-opinion-based atmosphere in which society โ any society โ dwells, and it is implicitly understood that society (the people, or ๐๐๐๐๐ ) must be protected from this dangerous substance of philosophy, or a โnaturalโ understanding of things. For some sensitive, childlike persons, even a microdose of philosophy is enough to engender hopelessness and despair. For others it produces a kind of megalomania or madness. Only a few, it seems, are constitutionally fit to imbibe a big gulp without adverse or disastrous consequences. One might describe such individuals as natural candidates for the transformative ordeal that genuine philosophy initiates in the soul.
No wonder, then, that philosophers have, for the most part, been feared, hated, and misunderstood by those far more numerous members of the human family who, like timid children, stubbornly and sometimes violently refuse to accept the responsibilities and burdens of spiritual-intellectual adulthood. Who, I wonder, is in a suitable position to ascertain โ or even roughly estimate โ the ratio between proven adults and untested, opinion-governed children in the ever-growing family of Homo sapiens? Are the โchildrenโ capable of such discernment?
When those first ancient Greek philosophers began to question the authority and provenance of the prevailing myths about the gods, about the origins of the world and mankind, they had no ready or direct recourse to alternative means of explaining or accounting for these things, such as we take for granted today. They had to invent โ or discover โ an entirely new way of seeing and making sense of the things and events treated by the myths they were questioning and discarding. How much of this was invention and how much was discovery? We nowadays associate invention, fabrication, and construction with the imagination, while connecting discovery with perception, intuition, and reason. But it seems that the first philosophers regarded the myths they were rejecting as products of the ๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐ก๐๐๐ โ or as poetic ๐๐๐๐ก๐๐๐๐ . If it was the fictional or imaginative basis of myth that they had qualms about, is it likely that they would ๐๐๐๐ค๐๐๐๐๐ฆ counter such myths with merely imagined or invented replacements? Werenโt โpoetsโ (the supposed inventors and depicters of the gods) and the inventive, fictionalizing imagination both under critical scrutiny and suspicion by these philosophical seekers of natural and rational explanations? But, as we have already hinted, these natural-rational accounts of things and events tend to be disturbing to the childlike feelings and orientation of โthe people.โ So, not only is the imagination โ as a potentially misleading or truth-distorting faculty โ under attack by these troublemaking philosophers. So are the decent, stabilizing, society-preserving ๐๐๐๐๐๐๐-๐ฃ๐๐๐ข๐๐ that are nourished and protected by the majority and (at least apparently) by their accepted leaders.
