The Greek Ways

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Greek Ways Greek Ways Greek Ways How the Greeks Created Western Civilization by Bruce Thornton is an illustrative book on the Greek contribution to the Western civilization . This book is based on the thesis that Hellenistic civilization with its symbolic manifestations and cherished ideals stands central to the foundations of modern western world and its characteristics . Bruce Thornton asserts that Greeks introduced and developed the core concepts of individual freedom , the democracy and representative government and rational quest of knowledge His eulogy of Hellenistic culture and its contribution

to western world does not allow Thornton to neglect the evil pervasive in the Greek society . He is of the view that Greeks admitted the horrors and pathos of wars and were the first to adopt a pacifist mode of behaviour . He also manifests clearly the women suppression and harsh slave treatment prevalent in the ancient Greek . Thornton asserts that evils in the Greek society were the evils present in the human society from the times unrecorded but their models of personal freedom , human identity etc . are their exceptional contribution to the world civilization . They were the earliest to capacitate the humankind with the notions of egalitarianism freedom and equality of social status . Thornton describes Critical consciousness ' as the most important contribution that the Greeks made to the Western civilization and all other contributions are formalized expressions ' of this Hellenistic accomplishment . He says Critical consciousness and its public expression were what most differentiated the Greeks from their neighbors , even when their own actual behavior was typical of other ancient peoples . All humans are sexual , but only the Greeks thought through so completely the meaning and implications of our sexuality . All societies in the ancient world kept slaves , but only a Greek said , Nature created no one a slave . All ancients subjected women to subordinate roles and limited their lives , but only the Greeks put on the public stage intelligent courageous , magnificent women who more often than not morally dwarfed the petty men around them , and who made trenchant commentaries on their unfair treatment , thus making possible a critical review of masculine assumptions and prejudices '[Thornton , B .S . p189] Thornton 's views are not based on subjective approach or personal fantasies . He evolves his thesis from primary and secondary sources . He uses the classical works of philosophers and intellectuals like Socrates , Plato , Aristotle etc , dramatists like Sophocles , Euripides etc , poets like Homer , Pinder etc , historian like Herodotus to illustrate the accomplishments of Greek civilizations . As secondary sources , Thornton utilized variety of modern author , academician and historian of Hellenistic culture and society . He quotes the secondary sources like Edith Hamilton , Murray Gilbert , Goethe etc . to support his thesis that Greeks were the torchbearers of the modern western civilization . Thornton cites Hamilton in the acclamation of Greek role in the development of western world as Edith Hamilton says that "The spirit of the West , the modern spirit , is a Greek discovery ' He further narrates the Gilbert Murray 's assumptions about the achievement of Hellenistic...