Ancient China and Greece

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ANCIENT CHINA AND ANCIENT GREECE:Copyright Val Dusek Dept. of Philosophy U of New Hampshire Durham NH 03824 USA [email protected]

In attempting to understand the peculiarities of the Chinese world-viewand its differences from that of the West, the obvious contrast is between Chinaand Greece in the period from 700 B.C.E. to the early centuries C.E. Ancient Greece is often considered the source of Western philosophy and science. In the

case of science this may be less the case than was previously the Greeks absorbed thought as Babylonian, Egyptian and other Middle Eastern knowledge. However in the development of logic, strict formal demonstration in mathematics (as opposed to arithmetical or pre-algebraic problem solving or practical geometry) Greece was close to unique, as it was in the development of the philosophy of abstract, formal entities, and in the idea of an explanatory physical model. Greek logic, geometry and philosophy influenced all later Western science. Ancient Chinese thought from the period 550 B.C.E. to 200 B.C.E. or so also set the frameworkfor all later Chinese thought. Not only were the Confucian and Taoist philosophies were developed in this period, but a number of philosophical schools--"thehundred schools" such as sophists or logicians, Mohists, legalists, and others that later disappeared. The fact that ancient Greek thought is the foundation of

later Western philosophy and much of its mathematics and science and that ancient Chinese thought is the foundation of not only Chinese as but Japanese, Vietnamese, and Korean philosophy and culture makes the comparison of these two sources natural.

The chronological parallel is striking. The Axial Age (Karl Jaspers) was the time between 800 and 200 B.C.E. when Greek, Chinese, and Indian, philosophy as well Hebrew, and Iranian prophetic religious thought began. In both Greece and China a large number of philosophical positions are developed between 550 B.C.E. and 200 B.C.E. Confucius in China, Buddha in India, and Pythagoras in Greecewere near contemporaries in the sixth century B.C.E..

Soon thereafter the Greek Pre-Socratics develop some eight major metaphysical worldviews to be followed by Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. The Chinesehundred schools, notably Confucianism, Daoism, Mohism, the logicians or sophists,

the legalists, and agrarian utopianism or primitivism. We find similarities between the air or unlimited of the Greek Presocratics and the Chi of the Chinese philosophers. Zeno in Greece and Hui Shih of China develops similar paradoxes of motion and space. Both in China and Greece the period concludes with theories of elements and forces. In Greece there is the theory of the four elements of Empedocles plus the forces love and strife, the elements being taken over by Aristotle. In China there is the theory of the five phases and the Yin and Yang.

In both Greece and China development iron and new forms of warfare led to the decline of the aristocratic knight and his replacement by peasant militia,along with continuous conflict between small states. The development of new forms of large-scale military organization influenced thinking about social and cosmic organization and structure. During this period coined money is introduced

and the merchant class developed (more extensively in Greece than in China), leading to practical quantitative thinking in social practice that encourages the general rise of abstract thinking. This social and cultural breakdown of the previous order and conflict of small states produces the plurality of philosophicalschools in both Greece and China.

Also in both civilizations the amazingly wide-ranging speculation and debate of this period is curtailed with the rise of large unifying empires, the Chin in China around 220 B.C.E., that soon is replaced by the Han, and in the empire of Alexander the Great, that breaks up with his death 322 B.C.E. but is largely reunified by the Roman Empire from about 100 B.C.E.. In this later period, one major school (the Confucian) dominates in China, while in Greece the schools of Platonism and Aristotelianism and by the ethically oriented Stoics and Epicureans replace the wide-ranging cosmological speculations of the pre-Socratics. Con

ceptual innovation and widespread debate is replaced by a more authoritarian, moralistic, and cautious philosophy in both Asian and Western Empires. The curtailing of the variety of schools accompanies the disappearance of the independent


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Greek city-states and the small states and Dukedoms of the Warring States in China. In the first century C.E. the new authoritarian, universal empires, the Han and the Roman spawn new salvation religions that answer the need of newly powerless individuals for a sense of future escape and contentment. Near Eastern mystery religions spread in the Roman Empire and are displaced by Christianity. Buddhism enters China from India during the later Han Empire and spreads after the fall of the Han in 220 C.E., and it in turn stimulates the institutionalization o

f Taoist religion, a native Chinese popular salvation religion.However differences in modes of thought remain, that may be linked to so

cial differences. The Greek city-states developed extensive sea-borne commerceand trade. China remained primarily an inland, agricultural society. Navigation among the Greeks may have influenced an emphasis on geometry and mathematicalcalculation. The agricultural nature of Chinese society may have influenced aninterest in seasonal and cosmic cycles and lessened the centrality of mathematics for the Chinese. In theories of political rule the Greeks used metaphors fromboth navigation and herding while the Chinese used metaphors from gardening andthe tending of crops. G. E. R. Lloyd notes that anthropological studies of Africa do not neatly correlate agriculture and herding with specific different types of political organization. However, this would not abrogate the role of thes

e activities in the development of metaphors in political philosophy. In Greece, unlike China, the government did not manage large sectors of the economy. Government management of the economy may have encouraged the holistic and undifferentiated conception of reality that dominated all Chinese schools save one (the Mohists). In contrast, many Greek schools emphasized metaphysically pluralistic theories in which a variety of separate entities have a role in the structure ofreality (Democratic atomism, Pythagoreans, Empedocles).

Although in both cases a variety of contending schools accompanied the plurality of small, warring states, and debate declined as the small states wereincorporated in large authoritarian empires, the small states of China and Greece were different. The Greek city-states were unique on the world scene, while Chinese small states were similar to those in many other parts of the world. Small Chinese states were for the most part similar to each other, while Greek city-

states were politically very different from one another, ranging from the extreme participatory democracy (for adult male citizen non-slaves) in Athens, to theextreme authoritarian and disciplinary military state of Sparta (in whose StateCouncil women could vote), with a variety of oligarchies and aristocracies in between.

The Greek city states included both the city and its surrounding farmland, and a very intense struggle occurred between the farmers and the city landowners in which the peasants won many of the previous privileges of the aristocracyin terms of access to courts and government. In China, although there were occasional peasant upheavals, these did not lead to increased rights or status forthe peasants. One Chinese state has resemblances to the Greek city-states in terms of the degree of internal conflict but is not at all typical. The relative equality of the citizens in the Greek city-states led to an image of the cosmos in terms of equidistance and balance. The struggle to deal with social equality, isonomia may have influenced the logic of identity and sameness in Greece.In Greece the rise of slavery led to the clear and obvious contrast between slavery and freedom (similar to that in early U S A.)

Many writers have noted the very strongly competitive or agonistic natureof Greek culture. This shows up everywhere from competitive sports (and the presentations by poets and sophists) at the Olympics, through the competition among playwrights at the drama festivals, to philosophical and political modes of discourse.

Greek sports emphasized individual competition, while Chinese sports were rarely competitive (many were exercises, such as Tai Chi or Chi Gong, that aredone for self-improvement). In the few Chinese competitive sports the competiti

on was rarely individual. Sports that did involve individual competition, suchas wrestling, died out early in China. Even archery, that would easily allow individual competition was performed by row of archers who ceremonially succeeded


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one-another and the team not the individual won or lost. The one major competitive sport, Polo, was introduced later from Iran.

From the violent political struggles between peasants and landholders early on in many of the Greek states to those between democrats and aristocrats later in the Athens of Socrates, to the contests of drama and athletic contests, to the debates of citizens and sophists in law courts and assemblies, Greek culture took on the character of extreme group and individual struggle. This has bee

n linked to the nature of Greek philosophical and scientific argumentation, withits extreme speculative positions, its strong oppositions of being and becoming, abstract and concrete, truth and falsehood, literal and metaphorical language,philosophy and poetry, and the priority of logical justification and reductio ad absurdem arguments, and the logic of non-contradiction. Ancient Chinese culture shows a much greater degree of argumentation and dispute than later Chinese culture. However, Chinese philosophy never exhibits the sharp oppositions and strict refutations typical of Greek philosophy and logic. The Chinese Mohists andSchool of Names (or logicians or sophists) were the only Chinese schools that had interest in logic and strict refutation and were precisely the schools that died out with the coming of the Empire. The style of criticism of opposing philosophers or schools by later Chinese figures such as Hsn Tzu and Ssu-ma Tan was no

t to say that the opponent was wrong, but that he had a narrow view and that thecritic had the wider, more inclusive approach. Opponents were granted a partial truth, not accused of being entirely wrong. Hsn Tzu, for instance says that the Mohists understood utility but not culture, that they understood social equality but not inequality or hierarchy. Lao Tzu understood contraction but not expansion, Chuang Tzu understood heaven but not man, etc. Ssu-ma claims that each of the schools has a value and a weakness. The agrarians understood the techniques of agriculture but wrongly wished the emperor to work with the peasants, theTaoists understood action in context and changing circumstances but mistakenly wished to do away with ceremony and social conventions.

The Greek culture of law courts and debate in political assemblies led to the development of styles of oral debate involving rhetoric and logic, where relatively equal opponents debated opposite sides of a case or issue. In China t

he philosophers and diviners presented their views in the court of a Duke or King and attempted to get the approval of the ruler. Thus the style of presentation and the extent of debate were different, in the one case attempt to convince apopular assembly, in the other attempt to influence a ruler. During the periodof warring states there were still a variety of independent rulers that scholars could attempt to convince, but under the Empire there came to be only one Court and ruler that any scholar need convince. To a lesser extent this was true under the Ptolemaic Greek rulers and later Roman administrators of Alexandria in Egypt, where later Greek scholarship was centered. In the Ptolemaic Alexandria Museum democrats and cynics were banned, and the discussions avoided political topics. The resident scholars were called pet canaries.

Recent studies of the structure of intellectual exchange in Greece and China emphasize the role of social structures of communication on types of philosophy. The debate framework of Greek thought is contrasted with the written form of Chinese thought as advice to a ruler. In the small assemblies of Greece, there was a face-to-face, oral communication among all citizens that was not possible in China. Greek sophists presented their views at the Olympic games (Hippias exhibited his self-sufficiency, having made all his own clothing and equipment, and also his powers of memory.) Sophists displayed their abilities directly or via their students in law-court and assembly. The phonetic alphabet made literacy much more widespread in Greece than in China.

However, the criticism characteristic of Greek thought is not as evidentamong the pre-Socratics, in contrast to the Chinese Warring States philosophers, as Nakayama, Lloyd, and Sivin have claimed. Heraclitus does criticize Pythagoras and Hesiod, but only quite briefly. Empedocles refers to Pythagoreans, but

these references are not in the form of critiques, but of, at most, indirect allusions. Zenos arguments against the existence of change or plurality are clearly in the form of refutations, but would apply to any common-sense view as well


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as to philosophical ones. It is only with Plato and Aristotle that we find extensive critical analyses of former philosophers. In China Mo Tzu quite explicitly criticizes the views of Confucians on a number of topics such as fate, spirits, music and funerals. In Chuang Tzu we find dialogues involving criticism of Confucians at greater length than any criticism in the pre-Socratics. In Hsn Tzuwe find two passages in which his opponents are criticized in one sentence per philosopher, as well as passages where other Confucian schools are criticized in

terms of morals . The various eclectic surveyors of the schools late in the creative period, such as the Below in the Empire chapter added to the end of Chuang Tzu,and the discussion by Ssu-ma Tan (father of Ssu-ma Chien) the grand historian in the Records of the Historian, include criticisms of the various thinkers and schools. Thus the dominant explanation of the contrasts of China and Greece in terms of styles of criticism and debate is not wholly sufficient and needs to be supplemented by macro-social considerations.

In the early philosophy in both China and Greece we find traveling scholars. In China wandering scholars were either teachers or those hopeful of beingpolitical advisors. In Greece there were wandering sophists and physicians. These travelers could not carry extensive written documentation, and that they would have to depend on their oratorical abilities and memory, and were not encyclo

pedia salesmen. The exposure to different geographical regions and customs as well as the intellectual exchange with prospective students, contending scholars,sophists, and nobility interviewing possible advisors must have stimulated these wandering scholars.

Later, in both civilizations, we have officially supported scholars located at court or in research institutions. These scholars could depend on large-scale records and documentation. In very early China there were court astrologers and historians (usually in the same person). These specialists could utilizelarge amounts of written records and their style of presentation was more historical and documentary than that of the traveling scholars. In the period of theWarring States in China the wandering scholars with their sayings and disputations were in competition with the stationary diviners and historians. Later, the philosophical scholars were located at the imperial court and were as stationa

ry as the court astrologer-historians.The academies of ancient Greece are better known and perhaps were more n

umerous than those of China. Platos Academy and Aristotles Lyceum, as well as thelater and larger Alexandrian museum and library are famous. In China, we haveonly the example of the Chi Hsia Academy of which Hsn Tzu was a member and toastmaster. Sivin notes that one description of this academy (that of the Grand Historian Ssu-ma Tan in the Shih Chi, Records of the Grand Historian) describes themembers writing books rather than debating. However, in the later phase, bothAristotelianism in Greece and Confucianism in China were part of the transitionfrom an oral to a written tradition. In the Greek Museum and Library of Alexandria the culture of scholarship shifted from a rhetorical culture to a documentary one. Exegetical efforts replaced critical scholarship in both the empire ofthe Han in China and in the Greek Ptolemaic and Roman empires.

Accounts of similarities and contrasts of philosophical and cosmologicalviews in China and Greece that emphasize the styles of discussion ignore the role of money and the market in ancient Greece. G. E. R. Lloyd discusses the issue of agricultural vs. urban social life as an explanation of contrasting mentalities, only to dismiss it because agricultural societies produced a variety of cosmologies, and the necessary condition of production of wealth that allows someto pursue leisure activities of philosophy and advanced mathematics. But Lloyddoes not discuss money and the market (or lack thereof). His immensely learnedand comprehensive bibliography (including works of Jrgen Habermas, Michel Foucault, and the issues raised by feminist writers, as well as most recent comparativematerials on China.) does not cite any of the scholars who pursued issues of the relation of Greek economy and social structure to Greek thought. Presumably t

hese excluded figures, such as such as Karl Polanyi, Georg Thomson, or BenjaminFarrington, because Marxist, are now thought to be pass, licensing ignoring themrather than criticizing their claims. Lloyds theory emphasizes Karl Poppers conce


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ption of the Greek approach as critical and emphasizes for features of democracy and individualism in ancient Greece that can account for this. The dismissal ofMarxism alone does not wholly account for this neglect, for even writers such as G. E. M. de St. Croix, who is sympathetic to the Marxist account of class struggle in the ancient world (although modifying and qualifying it practically outof existence), neglects the issues of money and market in his learned and extensive survey of issues concerning classes and class conflict in antiquity.

One important factor in the rise of abstraction in ancient Greece is therise of coinage in Greece in the seventh century B.C.E. Coinage arose in thekingdom of Lydia, where gold could be panned in the river near a major city. Lydia was in Asia minor, adjacent to the coastal cities such as Miletus, where Greek philosophy and science arose in the sixth century B.C.E., as well as to the isle of Samos, where Pythagoras appeared. The impact that coined money made on Greek thought is to be seen in the myth of Midas, King of Phrygia also in Asia Minor, near both Lydia and the Greece coastal cities, who married a Greek princess.Similarly, King Croesus, who was legendary for his wealth, ruled Lydia at the

time that Thales began Greek philosophy and science. Again, the legend of the ring of Gyges, a ring that allowed the wearer to become invisible, concerns Gyges, king of Lydia. Chinese coinage appears to have begun in 524 B.C.E., over a c

entury later than did coinage in Asia Minor.The impact of coinage on philosophical and scientific conceptions of the universe is suggested by Heraclitus fragment that states that fire transforms into all things and all things are transformed by fire as gold for wares and wares for gold. Fire was Heraclitus candidate for the fundamental stuff of the universe that was conceived by him as process, not as stationary stuff. Heraclitus conceives of the conservation of the fundamental material, fire, through its transformationsby analogy with the transformation of money for goods and goods for money. Manyof Heraclitus pessimistic utterances suggest a traditional aristocrat who is shaken by the overturn of the traditional order of society by the new moneyed upstarts.

The Pythagorean cities of Italy were well known for issuing coinage. These cities were ruled by the secret society that combined religious taboos with

veneration for mathematics as the key to ultimate reality, and that probably inspired several features of the Guardians in Platos utopia in the Republic. The association of a kind veneration for number (as the ultimate constituent of reality -- things are numbers) with emphasis on extensive issue of coinage is significant.

Metal coinage alone is certainly far from sufficient for a society thatunderstands the world in formal terms. However another social factor arose in Athens that is of significance. According to the economist and anthropologist Karl Polanyi, the Agora in Athens had the first genuinely free market in food as well as other goods. The great Middle Eastern kingdoms had collected, stored and redistributed foodstuff, especially grain. The economies of these kingdoms, such as of Sumeria and Babylon, were highly centralized. It was only in Athens that a genuine market in the modern sense arose. The fact that the Agora is alsothe public space in which Socrates pursued his questioning of the beliefs of the citizens and his search for definitions of concepts is immensely suggestive.Athens, location of the world

s first market in the full economic sense, becamethe center of intellectual activity and debate that is generally credited with the major takeoff of the Western tradition of reason, philosophy and science. Abstract money could become the medium of exchange and bearer of value of all thingsallowed the conception of abstract, invisible forms that accounted for the structure and value of all metaphysical entities.

However, despite the independence and openness of the small Greek city states, with their involvement in piracy and commerce, as well as the introduction of coinage and at least small-scale and geographically limited markets, another social influence was growing that would change the quality of Greek intellectu

al activity. This was slavery. Chattel slavery grew greatly during the fifth century B.C.E. By the time of Plato and Aristotle slaves accounted for at leasta quarter to a third of the population of Athens. Slaves were excluded from cit


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izenship. (Indeed, the contrast of slavery and freedom in Greek political thought was based on the very real social situation, as it was in the colonial UnitedStates.) Manual labor was performed by slaves, and manual activity and technology came to be looked down upon as the province of slaves. This allowed the elite to pursue philosophy, astronomy, mathematics and logic (and, of necessity, medicine, for some), but cut the contact between earthy matter-related activities and intellectual scientific-philosophical pursuits. Writers such as Benjamin Far

rington have emphasized the effect of slavery on the development of Greek technology in the later period. (A steam engine was invented but used as a toy, or amysterious opener of temple doors, for slaves rowed the ships and dug the mines.) While the early pre-Socratics had concerned themselves with the nature of matter, the stuffs of the universe, Plato and Aristotle made form prior, whether totally transcendent as in Plato, or at least more significant (associated with the male as opposed to the female, as in Aristotle.)

Some authors have attempted to discount the significance of slavery in Greece (or in the United States) by noting that most societies have had slaves ofsome sort. However it has been only in ancient Greece and Rome and in the Americas (the United States, Brazil, and the Caribbean) that slaves performed a major part of the actual economic production of the society. Many societies, in Ch

ina and in Africa for instance, have had court slaves, ceremonial or symbolic,in some cases huge numbers of them, but this is different from slavery being themajor source of economic production for the society.

Ancient China and Greece during the sixth to third century B.C.E. produced a wide range of philosophical and scientific speculations. Greece was formedof relatively small city-states, while China was organized into large kingdomsor the Empire, with the exception of a few small (and often highly intellectually productive) states. Cities in China lacked autonomy even relative to later European cities, while cities in Greece were separate states. Ancient China was almost entirely oriented to agriculture, while in ancient Greece piracy and tradeplayed a far more important role. Greece was far more decentralized and variedin the range of forms of government of the city-states, and was also far more individualistic and competitive, whether in sports or intellectual dispute. Gree

ce began earlier and went further than China in the development of coined money.Athens, according to some accounts introduced the first true free market in fo

od. These economic real abstractions and formalizations may have contributed tothe more formal and abstract form taken by Greek thought. Slavery in Greece developed into a significant source of production and labor but did not in China.This may contribute to the lack of exploitation of technological inventions inGreece in contrast to extensive technological developments in China.

ENDNOTES: CHINA AND GREECE

. G. E. R. Lloyd, Demystifying Mentalities, Cambridge, 1990, p. 131.

. See the section by Garnet in Jean-Pierre Vernant, Myth and Society in Ancient Greece, London: Methuen, 1982.. Rubin, Vitaly, Tzu-Chan and the City State of Ancient China, Toung Pao, vol. 52,pp. 8-34., discussed by G. E. R. Lloyd in Demystifying Mentalities, Cambridge:1990, pp. 125.. Jean-Pierre Vernant, The Origins of Greek Thought, Ithaca, New York: CornellUniversity Press, 1982, pp. 101, 124, and case made passim.. Jean-Pierre Vernant, Myth and Society in Ancient Greece, London: Methuen, 1974, pp. 81-91.. Derk Bodde, Chinese Thought, Society and Science, Honolulu: Univ. of HawaiiPress, 1991,pp. 284-308.. Hsn Tzu, Ch. 17, A. C. Graham, Disputers of the Tao, op. cit., p. 378. Wing-Tsit Chan, A Source Book, op. cit., p. 123.. Shigeru Nakayama, Academic and Scientific Traditions in China, Japan, and th

e West, Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press, p. 34.. Such as those of G. E. R. Lloyd, Shigeru Nakayama, and Nathan Sivin. See "Comparing Greek and Chinese Philosophy and Science," in Nathan Sivin, Medicine, P


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hilosophy and Religion in Ancient China, Brookfield Vermont: Variorum, 1995, I,pp. 1-11.

Heraclitus, fragments B129, B106, Jonathan Barnes, Early Greek Philosophy, Penguin, 1987, p. 111, 124.

Empedocles, B120, B115, B141, Barnes, op. cit., pp. 197, 201.. Nakayama, ibid., p. 11.. Sivin, Nathan, Ruminations on the Tao and Its Disputers, Philosophy East and W

est, vol. 42, no. 1, Jan. 1992, p. 27.. Nakayama, p. 13. Nathan Sivin casts doubt on the "academy" status of the "Chi-hsia Academy" in "The Myth of the Naturalists," in Medicine, Philosophy and Religion in Ancient China, Brookfield, Vermont: Variorum, 1995, IV pp. 19-27.. G. E. M. de St. Croix, The Class Struggle in the Ancient Greek World, Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1981.. George Thomson, The First Philosophers, London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1955.Heraclitus, B90. Barnes, op. cit., p. 123.

. Karl Polanyi, Aristotle Discovers the Economy. in George Dalton, ed., Primitive, Archaic, and Modern Economies, Boston: Beacon Press, 1968.. Benjamin Farrington, Greek Science in Antiquity, London: Penguin Books, 1960, Head and Hand in Ancient Greece, London: Watts, 1947, Science in Antiquity, Lo

ndon: Oxford University Press, 1954.. Moses Finley, Economy and Society in Ancient Greece, London: Penguin Books,and Ancient Slavery and Modern Ideology, New York: Viking Press, 1980.A recent work that defends the coinage as source of philosophy is Seabury, Cambridge University Press, 2003.

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Ancient China and Greece