Sobered By Science
The wide-awake day
of a people mystically excitable,
let us say the earlier Greeks,
is in fact through the continually-working wonder
which mythos presupposes,
more akin to a dream
than to the day of the thinker sobered by science.
If every tree may at some time talk
as a nymph,
or a god under the disguise of a bull,
carry away virgins,
if the goddess Athene herself
be suddenly seen as, with a beautiful team,
she drives, accompanied by Pisistratus,
through the markets of Athens –
and every honest Athenian did believe this –
at any moment, as in a dream,
everything is possible;
and all nature swarms around man
as if she were nothing but the masquerade of the gods,
who found it a huge joke to deceive man
by assuming all possible forms.
On Truth And Falsity In Their Ultramoral Sense by Friedrich Nietzsche trans. By Oscar Levy p. 155
I wish that it were possible to travel time, to be present as a invisible observer, to walk about the market place of ancient Athens around 500 BC. I can imagine viewing at a distance the Parthenon, housing the patron goddess of the city, Athena. Phidias’ statue fashioned from ivory and gold symbolized feminine strength, military prowess, artisan excellence at craft-work, and wisdom.
In this quotation Nietzsche contrasts the world view of we moderns, children of Enlightenment rationalism and science, with that of the citizen of Athens. The 500 BC world of the Hellene was formed by the story collection of Homer’s Iliad and The Odyssey. The break through of the day to day by divine personalities, and of the activity of divine-human characters was what-the-world-was-like. Nietzsche writes that a 500 BC Athenian could imagine with ease Athena, protector, benefactor of their city driving a chariot of magnificent horses in company with Pisistratus who is credited with unifying Greece, later resulting in the golden age of Athenian economic and cultural supremacy. Yes, given the world as they understood it, such was within the reach of the imagination. The natural world was a screen for the play of the divine.
Consider the contrast Nietzsche paints with his and our own time. A sober society, the construct of rationalism, and uber-affluence that delights and bedevils, a credit to scientific extraction of nature’s elemental forces, — a way of life which enshrines reason contrasted with that of the Greeks. Their riches was that of the imagination, living in a world where gods and goddesses expressed purposes and directed events. By contrast we have overabundance of stuff, materials and experiences. But imagination? The needle says that our tank is empty.
Have we reached the end of the trajectory of rationalism? Is this a time of many contradictions, of concatenated intractable problems: climate warming, large scale immigration, genocidal war?
I can imagine a time when everything was possible.
3 thoughts on “Sobered By Science”
I see this very differently, from the standpoint that current imaginations are just as active, just as fertile as those of our ancient Greek ancestors, it’s just that instead of Athena driving her chariot down the streets of Athens, we have the myth spinner in the form of Donald Trump who fills the heads of true believers with his version of truth. The visions of DT have as little connection with reality as did Zeus or Hera or any of the gods. Add to that the vast number of conspiracy theories that bounce around inside the imaginations of millions of folks. These theories are as real as a tree or the sky to so many of them. The Greek gods aren’t gone, they’ve just reinvented themselves in modern form.
I think the “conservative” myth making is a rageful reaction to the slow motion social collapse, the consequence of predatory capitalism that hollows out social institutions, leaving countryside small towns in decay. “Make America Great Again” is an iteration of the Evangelical mythos, the presumption that the son of god (Trump) has supernatural powers and he will restore the America which we imagine to have been. This is a dead end vision which if enacted ensures the ruin of everyone’s future. The texture of this vision is the polar opposite in effect when compared with the confidence and inspiration derived from the old Greek mythic tale.
Not that we can know any of this because so many factors hidden to us that constitute a past ethos.
I see your point. The lessons taught by the mythology of the Greeks were intended to offer a moral compass to the population. Also, their gods were fallible, suffering from many of the same emotional maladies as their human counterparts, whereas the “Gods” of our modern world (Trump, Putin, Xi, etc) cannot admit to any shortcomings. Their pretense is false omniscience. They have the talent to convince their followers of their power and then enforce it through brutality.