Romans, Greeks and Burning Witches

After beginning to read Russel's book; History of Western Philosophy, it became apparent to be that I basically didn't have a clue what he was taking about. Personally, I have not yet understood the ways in which Philosophy, Greeks and Romans have to do with Journalism, but am hoping as time goes on it will all begin to make more sense. Looking around the room it was painfully obvious, that due to the extra long day, and many people never studying Philosophy before, that it wasn't just me struggling. Throughout the lecture and the first chapter of History of Western Philosophy, I heard a lot about Greeks and Romans; not my speciality. The only few things which I had already heard before were things i had learnt in English Language A2 about Indo-European languages and the Anglo-Saxon tribes such as the Frisians, Saxons and Jutes. Although I wrote over 4 pages of notes throughout this lecture it seems that until I read further into the book I'm not going to understand it is. However some things I did understand were this;


The first literary artefact of European Civilisation was The Odyssey which was supposedly written by Homer who is debated to be a series of poets rather than an individual. Homer also wrote the Iliad and between the both, apparently took over two hundred years to complete -roughly from 750 to 550 BC-. Following this, the first piece of English Literature was Beowulf, a story about the Saxons coming from Germany, and how they came to England. Ultimately, i have never seen it therefore that brief description is as detailed as I can give right now. However, both of these are stories of migration and the ways in which are world and language have developed throughout time. 


It can be stated that the Greeks and Romans were very similar in the ways that their technology, science and philosophy were far beyond any other research done by other countries. They knew about air, atoms, space and how the earth moved around the sun; something that was unbelievable to others. Consequently the Greeks and the Romans had a few differences, such as;
Greeks= source of culture
Romans=source of power
Being honest, just from doing History at Junior school, it is known how power-hungry the Romans were, which inevitably led to their recline. This time is called the Middle Ages (or to some the Dark Ages), the reason for this is how the Roman empire became corrupt, mainly due to slave trade. Other reasons included the way in which the Romans dropped the schools of Philosophy, meaning no further research was done into the ways in which the world and space work. They THEN declared their leader to be god, or in their words; God King, which is an Egyptian theory/Buddhist resurrection. A bit later on in this period, the Romans take on Christianity which includes the concept of only 1 God and that people are all the same (not bad theories if you ask me, even if I'm not religious in the slightest). Christianity finally adapted in the Western World in 300AD then stayed on for another 1,000 years. These Dark Ages finally came to an end in roughly the 1300's/1400's. 


Am I boring you yet? Subsequently, writing up these notes and in some ways, describing them to myself, is helping me understand this topic far more, so please excuse me as I carry on rambling about philosophy and the way our world has developed ...


During the Middle Ages the Monks (yes those ones who sit in caves to figure out their 'inner-being' and wear those odd cape things), had two main scripts; 
1. The Bible
2. The Aristotle  

Aristotle can be said to have invented logic. Logic was part of the Greek science which was presented by the Western World. He -so to speak- 'stuck' by these 3 rules;
1. All men are mortal. 
2. Socrates is a man. 
3. Therefore Socrates is mortal'
This 'craze' of logic also stuck and was eventually taken on by the Catholic Church and was then what was learnt by University students, just like I am now. Poor kids. 
Ultimately, this logic ruled out any possibility of new scientific knowledge, therefore changing the way people viewed the world. For almost a thousand years after this, civilisation as we know it seemed to 'disappear' with us now having no record of what happened during this time period; dark ages for sure!


Along came the Protestants
The Protestants called themselves the new 'Jew's; yes very charming. In the civil war they banned Shakespeare which really sounds irrevocably unnecessary - where's Romeo when you need him?- Putting it bluntly, the wore dark clothes and did extremely fun activities like holding their children over graves telling them "this is what will happen if you sin, you will die and go to hell". Even more charming, and especially offence to real Jew's who would not do that to their children! Oh and not only this, but they were witch burners! To test out whether someone was a witch, the Protestants would through them into a river, if you sank you weren't a witch, but yeah you'd die anyway! However, if you floated you were a witch and you'd get burned at the stake. Win win situation if you ask me. Concluding, the Protestants were a lovely bunch who you'd love to be born into a family with.

Image taken from Flickr, Vectorportal

Well, I'm guessing the people who started reading this have probably falling asleep now, there's no point saying I hope you enjoyed it. Although I can't promise I enjoy this topic, describing all this in my own words has actually helped me understand a topic I had no clue about before starting this post. YAY ME!