From The Existentialist Cowboy
By Len Hart

Bertrand Russell, in his Wisdom of the West, put forward a simple thesis. Western Civilization is essentially Greek civilization.

There is no civilization but the Greek in which a philosophic movement goes hand in hand with a scientific tradition. It is this that gives the Greek enterprise its peculiar scope; it is this dual tradition that has shaped the civilization of the west.

–Bertrand Russell, Wisdom of the West

In support of his thesis, Russell points to the authoritarian, theocratic natures of earlier civilizations –Egypt and Babylonia. Religion, Russell stated, seems inconsistent with the Greek spirit of free inquiry typified most famously by Socrates and the Platonic tradition that followed. It is because Greek civilization was primarily secular, Russell believed, that the spirit of “free inquiry” took root in the west. This spirit, he believed, was incompatible with both authoritarianism and religion itself.

A Renaissance of Western Civilization was associated with the pre-eminence of Lorenzo Di Medici in Florence and specifically his support of a new Plato Academy. Eminent scholars -Marsilio Ficino, Cristoforo Landino, Angelo Poliziano and Demetrios Chalkondyles, depicted (above) by Domenico Ghirlandaio’s fresco, Zaccaria in the Temple -refocused European attention on the Greek classics and inspired a renewed interest in learning. The plights of Giordano Bruno and Galileo make clear the fact that despite the Greek revival an Eastern religion, Christianity, was, in fact, at odds with the secular nature of inquiry and learning.

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