Athens argues that man can be elevated by using man’s own capacities.  Three principles:

**we can discover our purpose in life from looking at nature of the world using our reason

**To learn about the world, we have to study it

**reason could help us construct the best systems for cultivating that reason

Results include natural law, science and secular govt. 

First contribution of Greeks was natural law.  We live in a physical world, full of stuff.  Nature had a purpose and we could find it (and the God behind it).   Facts and values are not separate things.  Values are embedded in facts.  A horse has value for pulling the cart.  A man is virtuous by his capacity to engage in activities that make him a man, not an animal.  Our end is to reason, judge and deliberate.

A grand plan stands behind all of creation.  Modern systems of morality focus on whether given actions are good or evil.  Ancient ethical systems focused on making men and women virtuous people capable of fulfilling their telos as human beings, using reason and character to carry out the day.   Our job is to uncover the natural law that governs the universe.  The logos is the system of unified reason behind the world, a divine revelatory principle, operating within the human mind and the world.  We use our telos to discover the logos.


​Second contribution is the roots of democracy. 

-Greeks tepid re individual purpose in absence of community, but religious in their commitment to belief in individual capacity.  Mankind has capacity and obligation to uncover the order of the universe. 

-communal purpose was wrapped up with individual purpose….if goal of ind. Is happiness through virtuous citizenry, the goal of community is promotion of that virtue. 

-Freedom meant self-control, pursuit of virtue, not the anarchy of wanton behavior

-Judaism and Greeks believed God stood behind creation, but Jews also believed God’s presence in human events.

-Christianity universalized Judaism.  Gospels written in Greek, story of Christ meant to be universal.  Access to God became universal, attained by belief.

-Christianity focused on grace, not works

-Paul morphed the political messiah into a spiritual messiah

-Hobbes: humans have individual rights, we trade some freedom for security

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​-Locke: sovereignty resides in the person, based upon natural law and reason, advocated that each person has rights to life, liberty and property (Jefferson broadened it to happiness)

-Locke: formation of govt requires consent of the governed, suggested two separate powers, legislative and executive.  Montesquieu added judicial branch


-America founded on both secular reason and religious morality

-French revolution murdered J/C God by substituting materialism for transcendental values

-Paine: French revolution necessary in movement to leveling of society.  Property is scourge of society.

-F R: power moved from priests and kings toward science, bureaucratic  state

-F R failed because it sought meaning in universal values, rights which ran counter to powers of the state

-Marx: free markets exploit man, sought meaning w/o God.  Only in community can man be free.  Marx and Rousseau saw the power of the collective.  A return to nature bot at the cost of civil

-Marx: abolish private property, family, exploitation of children and wives, , old morality since all moral systems are exploit one art of society over another, and bury the J/C God.


​-Rise of nationalism and collectivism both driven by Rousseau idea of general will-rise of bureaucratic state, where govt makes decisions w or w/o consent of governed

-Alexis De Tocqueville: bureaucratic state is oligarchy.  Hegel: revered  bureaucracy

Hegel, Comte, Dewey all advocated empowering the state to shape the citizenry into better people, believed the social contract theory of human rights (Locke, Jefferson) was bunk

Per above, govt exists for progress, placing community above individual rights

-American principles address all four ideas: individual purpose, capacity, communal purpose, capacity

-All the above views collapse individual role, make everything about communal purpose and capacity- people only have value as members of collective

-Hitler led romantic nationalism movement, German people at the top, the romance of the tribe.

-by end of WWII, the philosophies of EU (enlightenment, humans have value, need to move beyond God or Greek teleology) end in tragedy.  Hitler claimed ideological forebears in Kant, Hegel and Nietzsche.  Stalin from Marx, and the eugenicists from Darwin and Comte.  All had common goal of supplanting reason for religion, rather than seeking congruence between two.  The west placed its bets on mankind and reaped the whirlwind.

Other notes:

-Notion of moral universe is Judaism idea

-Judaism argues that we ought to be holy in imitation of God

-No people in history have insisted more firmly than the Jews that history has purpose and humanity a destiny they stand at center of attempts to give human life purpose

-Religious faith is empowering- it tells us we are loved and we can make choices between good and evil