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Thursday, September 19, 2024

Allegory

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegory
Pearl, miniature from Cotton Nero A.x. The dreamer stands on the other side of the stream from the Pearl-maiden. Pearl is one of the greatest allegories from the High Middle Ages.

As a literary device or artistic form, an allegory is a narrative or visual representation in which a character, place, or event can be interpreted to represent a meaning with moral or political significance. Authors have used allegory throughout history in all forms of art to illustrate or convey complex ideas and concepts in ways that are comprehensible or striking to its viewers, readers, or listeners.

Writers and speakers typically use allegories to convey (semi-) hidden or complex meanings through symbolic figures, actions, imagery, or events, which together create the moral, spiritual, or political meaning the author wishes to convey. Many allegories use personification of abstract concepts.

Etymology

Salvator Rosa: Allegory of Fortune, representing Fortuna, the goddess of luck, with the horn of plenty
Allegory of the recognition of the Empire of Brazil and its independence. The painting depicts British diplomat Sir Charles Stuart presenting his letter of credence to Emperor Pedro I of Brazil, who is flanked by his wife Maria Leopoldina, their daughter Maria da Glória (later Queen Maria II of Portugal), and other dignitaries. At right, a winged figure, representing History, carving the "great event" on a stone tablet.
Marco Marcola: Mythological allegory

First attested in English in 1382, the word allegory comes from Latin allegoria, the latinisation of the Greek ἀλληγορία (allegoría), "veiled language, figurative", literally "speaking about something else", which in turn comes from ἄλλος (allos), "another, different" and ἀγορεύω (agoreuo), "to harangue, to speak in the assembly", which originates from ἀγορά (agora), "assembly".

Types

Northrop Frye discussed what he termed a "continuum of allegory", a spectrum that ranges from what he termed the "naive allegory" of the likes of The Faerie Queene, to the more private allegories of modern paradox literature. In this perspective, the characters in a "naive" allegory are not fully three-dimensional, for each aspect of their individual personalities and of the events that befall them embodies some moral quality or other abstraction; the author has selected the allegory first, and the details merely flesh it out.

Classical allegory

The origins of allegory can be traced at least back to Homer in his "quasi-allegorical" use of personifications of, e.g., Terror (Deimos) and Fear (Phobos) at Il. 115 f. The title of "first allegorist", however, is usually awarded to whoever was the earliest to put forth allegorical interpretations of Homer. This approach leads to two possible answers: Theagenes of Rhegium (whom Porphyry calls the "first allegorist," Porph. Quaest. Hom. 1.240.14–241.12 Schrad.) or Pherecydes of Syros, both of whom are presumed to be active in the 6th century B.C.E., though Pherecydes is earlier and as he is often presumed to be the first writer of prose. The debate is complex, since it demands we observe the distinction between two often conflated uses of the Greek verb "allēgoreīn," which can mean both "to speak allegorically" and "to interpret allegorically."

In the case of "interpreting allegorically," Theagenes appears to be our earliest example. Presumably in response to proto-philosophical moral critiques of Homer (e.g., Xenophanes fr. 11 Diels-Kranz), Theagenes proposed symbolic interpretations whereby the Gods of the Iliad actually stood for physical elements. So, Hephestus represents Fire, for instance (for which see fr. A2 in Diels-Kranz). Some scholars, however, argue that Pherecydes cosmogonic writings anticipated Theagenes allegorical work, illustrated especially by his early placement of Time (Chronos) in his genealogy of the gods, which is thought to be a reinterpretation of the titan Kronos, from more traditional genealogies.

In classical literature two of the best-known allegories are the Cave in Plato's The Republic (Book VII) and the story of the stomach and its members in the speech of Menenius Agrippa (Livy ii. 32).

Among the best-known examples of allegory, Plato's Allegory of the Cave, forms a part of his larger work The Republic. In this allegory, Plato describes a group of people who have lived chained in a cave all of their lives, facing a blank wall (514a–b). The people watch shadows projected on the wall by things passing in front of a fire behind them and begin to ascribe forms to these shadows, using language to identify their world (514c–515a). According to the allegory, the shadows are as close as the prisoners get to viewing reality, until one of them finds his way into the outside world where he sees the actual objects that produced the shadows. He tries to tell the people in the cave of his discovery, but they do not believe him and vehemently resist his efforts to free them so they can see for themselves (516e–518a). This allegory is, on a basic level, about a philosopher who upon finding greater knowledge outside the cave of human understanding, seeks to share it as is his duty, and the foolishness of those who would ignore him because they think themselves educated enough.

In Late Antiquity Martianus Capella organized all the information a fifth-century upper-class male needed to know into an allegory of the wedding of Mercury and Philologia, with the seven liberal arts the young man needed to know as guests. Also, the Neoplatonic philosophy developed a type of allegorical reading of Homer and Plato.

Biblical allegory

Other early allegories are found in the Hebrew Bible, such as the extended metaphor in Psalm 80 of the vine and its impressive spread and growth, representing Israel's conquest and peopling of the Promised Land. Also allegorical is Ezekiel 16 and 17, wherein the capture of that same vine by the mighty Eagle represents Israel's exile to Babylon.

Allegorical interpretation of the Bible was a common early Christian practice and continues. For example, the recently re-discovered Fourth Commentary on the Gospels by Fortunatianus of Aquileia has a comment by its English translator: "The principal characteristic of Fortunatianus' exegesis is a figurative approach, relying on a set of concepts associated with key terms in order to create an allegorical decoding of the text."

Medieval allegory

See also: Four senses of Scripture
British School 17th century – Portrait of a Lady, Called Elizabeth, Lady Tanfield. Sometimes the meaning of an allegory can be lost, even if art historians suspect that the artwork is an allegory of some kind.

Allegory has an ability to freeze the temporality of a story, while infusing it with a spiritual context. Mediaeval thinking accepted allegory as having a reality underlying any rhetorical or fictional uses. The allegory was as true as the facts of surface appearances. Thus, the Papal Bull Unam Sanctam (1302) presents themes of the unity of Christendom with the pope as its head in which the allegorical details of the metaphors are adduced as facts on which is based a demonstration with the vocabulary of logic: "Therefore of this one and only Church there is one body and one head—not two heads as if it were a monster... If, then, the Greeks or others say that they were not committed to the care of Peter and his successors, they necessarily confess that they are not of the sheep of Christ." This text also demonstrates the frequent use of allegory in religious texts during the Mediaeval Period, following the tradition and example of the Bible.

In the late 15th century, the enigmatic Hypnerotomachia, with its elaborate woodcut illustrations, shows the influence of themed pageants and masques on contemporary allegorical representation, as humanist dialectic conveyed them.

The denial of medieval allegory as found in the 12th-century works of Hugh of St Victor and Edward Topsell's Historie of Foure-footed Beastes (London, 1607, 1653) and its replacement in the study of nature with methods of categorisation and mathematics by such figures as naturalist John Ray and the astronomer Galileo is thought to mark the beginnings of early modern science.

Modern allegory

Since meaningful stories are nearly always applicable to larger issues, allegories may be read into many stories which the author may not have recognized. This is allegoresis, or the act of reading a story as an allegory. Examples of allegory in popular culture that may or may not have been intended include the works of Bertolt Brecht, and even some works of science fiction and fantasy, such as The Chronicles of Narnia by C. S. Lewis.

The story of the apple falling onto Isaac Newton's head is another famous allegory. It simplified the idea of gravity by depicting a simple way it was supposedly discovered. It also made the scientific revelation well known by condensing the theory into a short tale.

Poetry and fiction

Detail of Laurent de La Hyre's Allegory of Arithmetic, c. 1650

While allegoresis may make discovery of allegory in any work, not every resonant work of modern fiction is allegorical, and some are clearly not intended to be viewed this way. According to Henry Littlefield's 1964 article, L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, may be readily understood as a plot-driven fantasy narrative in an extended fable with talking animals and broadly sketched characters, intended to discuss the politics of the time. Yet, George MacDonald emphasized in 1893 that "A fairy tale is not an allegory."

J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings is another example of a well-known work mistakenly perceived as allegorical, as the author himself once stated, "...I cordially dislike allegory in all its manifestations, and always have done so since I grew old and wary enough to detect its presence. I much prefer history – true or feigned – with its varied applicability to the thought and experience of readers. I think that many confuse applicability with allegory, but one resides in the freedom of the reader, and the other in the purposed domination of the author."

Tolkien specifically resented the suggestion that the book's One Ring, which gives overwhelming power to those possessing it, was intended as an allegory of nuclear weapons. He noted that, had that been his intention, the book would not have ended with the Ring being destroyed but rather with an arms race in which various powers would try to obtain such a Ring for themselves. Then Tolkien went on to outline an alternative plot for "Lord of The Rings", as it would have been written had such an allegory been intended, and which would have made the book into a dystopia. While all this does not mean Tolkien's works may not be treated as having allegorical themes, especially when reinterpreted through postmodern sensibilities, it at least suggests that none were conscious in his writings. This further reinforces the idea of forced allegoresis, as allegory is often a matter of interpretation and only sometimes of original artistic intention.

Like allegorical stories, allegorical poetry has two meanings – a literal meaning and a symbolic meaning.

Some unique specimens of allegory can be found in the following works:

  • Shel Silverstein – The Giving Tree: The book has been described as an allegory about relationships; between parents and children, between romantic partners, or between humans and the environment.

Art

Some elaborate and successful specimens of allegory are to be found in the following works, arranged in approximate chronological order:

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Renaissance philosophy

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 
Renaissance
The School of Athens (1509–1511) by Raphael
Aspects
Regions
History and study

Part of a series on
Philosophy

The designation "Renaissance philosophy" is used by historians of philosophy to refer to the thought of the period running in Europe roughly between 1400 and 1600. It therefore overlaps both with late medieval philosophy, which in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries was influenced by notable figures such as Albert the Great, Thomas Aquinas, William of Ockham, and Marsilius of Padua, and early modern philosophy, which conventionally starts with René Descartes and his publication of the Discourse on Method in 1637.

Continuities

The structure, sources, method, and topics of philosophy in the Renaissance had much in common with those of previous centuries.

Structure of philosophy

Particularly since the recovery of a great portion of Aristotelian writings in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, it became clear that, in addition to Aristotle's writings on logic, which had already been known, there were numerous others roughly having to do with natural philosophy, moral philosophy, and metaphysics. These areas provided the structure for the philosophy curriculum of the emerging universities. The general assumption was that the most 'scientific' branches of philosophy were those that were more theoretical and therefore more widely applicable. During the Renaissance too, many thinkers saw these as the main philosophical areas, with logic providing a training of the mind to approach the other three.

Sources of philosophy

A similar continuity can be seen in the case of sources. Although Aristotle was never an unquestioned authority (he was more often than not a springboard for discussion, and his opinions were often discussed along those of others, or the teaching of Holy Scripture), medieval lectures in physics consisted of reading Aristotle's Physics, lessons in moral philosophy consisted of examinations of his Nicomachean Ethics (and often his Politics), and metaphysics was approached through his Metaphysics. The assumption that Aristotle's works were foundational to an understanding of philosophy did not wane during the Renaissance, which saw a flourishing of new translations, commentaries, and other interpretations of his works, both in Latin and in the vernacular. After the Reformation, Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics continued to be the main authority for the discipline of ethics at Protestant universities until the late seventeenth century, with over fifty Protestant commentaries published on the Nicomachean Ethics before 1682.

In terms of method, philosophy was considered during the late Middle Ages as a subject that required robust enquiry on the part of people trained in the subject's technical vocabulary. Philosophical texts and problems were typically approached through university lectures and 'questions'. The latter, similar in some ways to modern debates, examined the pros and cons of particular philosophical positions or interpretations. They were one of the cornerstones of the 'scholastic method', made students who proposed or responded to questions quick on their feet, and required a deep familiarity with all of the known philosophical tradition, which would often be invoked in support of or against specific arguments. This style of philosophy continued to have a strong following in the Renaissance. Pico della Mirandola's Disputations, for instance, depended directly on this tradition, which was not at all limited to university lecture halls.

Bust of Aristotle, Roman copy after a Greek bronze original by Lysippos from 330 BC.

Topics in philosophy

Given the remarkable range of Aristotelian philosophy, it was possible to discuss all kinds of issues in medieval and Renaissance philosophy. Aristotle had treated directly problems such as the trajectory of missiles, the habits of animals, how knowledge is acquired, the freedom of the will, how virtue is connected with happiness, the relationship of the lunar and the sublunar worlds. Indirectly he had stimulated discussion on two points that were particularly of concern to Christians: the immortality of the soul and the eternity of the world. All of these continued to be of considerable interest to Renaissance thinkers, but we shall see that in some cases the solutions offered were significantly different because of changing cultural and religious landscapes.

Discontinuities

Having established that many aspects of philosophy were held in common during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, it will now be useful to discuss in what areas changes were afoot. The same outline as above will be used, to show that within trends of continuity one can also find surprising differences.

Sources of philosophy

It is therefore useful to reconsider what was mentioned above about philosophical sources. The Renaissance saw a significant broadening of source material. Plato, known directly only through two and a half dialogues in the Middle Ages, came to be known through numerous Latin translations in fifteenth century Italy, culminating in the hugely influential translation of his complete works by Marsilio Ficino in Florence in 1484. Petrarch was not able to read Plato directly, but he greatly admired him. Petrarch was also a great admirer of Roman poets such as Virgil and Horace and of Cicero for Latin prose writing. Not all Renaissance humanists followed his example in all things, but Petrarch contributed to a broadening of his time's 'canon' (pagan poetry had previously been considered frivolous and dangerous), something that happened in philosophy as well. In the sixteenth century anyone who considered himself 'au fait' read Plato as well as Aristotle, trying as much as possible (and not always very successfully) to reconcile the two with each other and with Christianity. This is probably the main reason why Donato Acciaiuoli's commentary on Aristotle's Ethics (first published in 1478) was so successful: it blended the three traditions beautifully.

Other movements from ancient philosophy also re-entered the mainstream. While this was seldom the case for Epicureanism, which was largely caricatured and considered with suspicion, Pyrrhonism and Academic Skepticism made a comeback thanks to philosophers such as Michel de Montaigne, and Neostoicism became a popular movement due to the writings of Justus Lipsius. In all of these cases it is impossible to separate the pagan philosophical doctrines from the Christian filter through which they were approached and made legitimate.

Structure of philosophy

Portrait of St. Thomas by Antonio del Castillo y Saavedra, ca. 1649

While generally the Aristotelian structure of the branches of philosophy stayed in place, interesting developments and tensions were taking place within them. In moral philosophy, for instance, a position consistently held by Thomas Aquinas and his numerous followers was that its three subfields (ethics, economics, politics) were related to progressively wider spheres (the individual, the family and the community). Politics, Thomas thought, is more important than ethics because it considers the good of the greater number. This position came under increasing strain in the Renaissance, as various thinkers claimed that Thomas's classifications were inaccurate, and that ethics were the most important part of morality.

Other important figures, such as Francesco Petrarca (Petrarch) (1304–1374), questioned the whole assumption that the theoretical aspects of philosophy were the more important ones. He insisted, for instance, on the value of the practical aspects of ethics. Petrarch's position, expressed both strongly and amusingly in his invective On His Own Ignorance and That of Many Others (De sui ipsius ac multorum ignorantia) is also important for another reason: it represents the conviction that philosophy should let itself be guided by rhetoric, that the purpose of philosophy is therefore not so much to reveal the truth, but to encourage people to pursue the good. This perspective, so typical of Italian humanism, could easily lead to reducing all philosophy to ethics, in a move reminiscent of Plato's Socrates and of Cicero.

Method of philosophy

If, as mentioned above, scholasticism continued to flourish, the Italian humanists (i.e., lovers and practitioners of the humanities) challenged its supremacy. As we have seen, they believed that philosophy could be brought under the wing of rhetoric. They also thought that the scholarly discourse of their time needed to return to the elegance and precision of its classical models. They therefore tried dressing philosophy in a more appealing garb than had their predecessors, whose translations and commentaries were in technical Latin and sometimes simply transliterated the Greek. In 1416–1417, Leonardo Bruni, the pre-eminent humanist of his time and chancellor of Florence, re-translated Aristotle's Ethics into a more flowing, idiomatic and classical Latin. He hoped to communicate the elegance of Aristotle's Greek while also making the text more accessible to those without a philosophical education. Others, including Nicolò Tignosi in Florence around 1460, and the Frenchman Jacques Lefèvre d'Étaples in Paris in the 1490s, tried to please the humanists either by including in their commentaries on Aristotle appealing historical examples or quotations from poetry, or by avoiding the standard scholastic format of questions, or both.

Portrait of Erasmus by Hans Holbein the Younger, 1523

The driving conviction was that philosophy should be freed of its technical jargon so that more people would be able to read it. At the same time, all kinds of summaries, paraphrases, and dialogues dealing with philosophical issues were prepared, in order to give their topics a wider dissemination. Humanists also encouraged the study of Aristotle and other writers of antiquity in the original. Desiderius Erasmus, the great Dutch humanist, even prepared a Greek edition of Aristotle, and eventually those teaching philosophy in the universities had to at least pretend that they knew Greek. Humanists were not, however, great fans of the vernacular. There is only a handful of examples of dialogues or translations of Aristotle's works into Italian during the fifteenth century. Once it had been determined, however, that Italian was a language with literary merit and that it could carry the weight of philosophical discussion, numerous efforts in this direction started to appear, particularly from the 1540s onward. Alessandro Piccolomini had a programme to translate or paraphrase the entire Aristotelian corpus into the vernacular.

Other important figures were Benedetto Varchi, Bernardo Segni and Giambattista Gelli, all of them active in Florence. Efforts got underway to present Plato's doctrines in the vernacular as well. This rise of vernacular philosophy, which quite predated the Cartesian approach, is a new field of research whose contours are only now beginning to be clarified.

Topics in philosophy

It is very hard to generalize about the ways in which discussions of philosophical topics shifted in the Renaissance, mainly because to do so requires a detailed map of the period, something we do not yet have. We know that debates about the freedom of the will continued to flare up (for instance, in the famous exchanges between Erasmus and Martin Luther), that Spanish thinkers were increasingly obsessed with the notion of nobility, that duelling was a practice that generated a large literature in the sixteenth century (was it permissible or not?).

Earlier histories gave perhaps undue attention to Pietro Pomponazzi's pronouncements on the immortality of the soul as a question that could not be resolved philosophically in a way consistent with Christianity, or to Pico della Mirandola's Oration on the Dignity of Man, as if these were signals of the period's increasing secularism or even atheism. In fact, the most successful compendium of natural philosophy in the period (Compendium philosophiae naturalis, first published in 1530) was authored by Frans Titelmans, a Franciscan friar from the Low Countries whose work has a very strong religious flavour. We must not forget that most philosophers of the time were at least nominal, if not devout, Christians, that the sixteenth century saw both the Protestant and the Catholic reformations, and that Renaissance philosophy culminates with the period of the Thirty Years' War (1618–1648). In other words, religion had a massive importance in the period, and one can hardly study philosophy without remembering this.

Marsilio Ficino, detail of Angel Appearing to Zacharias by Domenico Ghirlandaio, ca. 1490

This is true among others for the philosophy of Marsilio Ficino (1433–1499), who reinterpreted Plato in the light of his early Greek commentators and also of Christianity. Ficino hoped that a purified philosophy would bring about a religious renewal in his society and therefore transformed distasteful aspects of Platonic philosophy (for instance, the homosexual love exalted in the Symposium) into spiritual love (i.e., Platonic love), something later transformed by Pietro Bembo and Baldassare Castiglione in the early sixteenth century as something also applicable to relationships between men and women. Ficino and his followers also had an interest in 'hidden knowledge', mainly because of his belief that all of ancient knowledge was interconnected (Moses, for instance, had received his insights from the Greeks, who in turn had received them from others, all according to God's plan and therefore mutually consistent; Hermeticism is relevant here). Although Ficino's interest in and practice of astrology was not uncommon in his time, one should not necessarily associate it with philosophy, as the two were usually considered to be quite separate and often in contradiction with each other.

In conclusion, like any other moment in the history of thought Renaissance philosophy cannot be considered to have provided something entirely new nor to have continued for centuries to repeat the conclusions of its predecessors. Historians call this period the 'Renaissance' in order to indicate the rebirth that took place of ancient (particularly classical) perspectives, sources, attitudes toward literature and the arts. At the same time, we realize that every re-appropriation is constrained and even guided by contemporary concerns and biases. It was no different for the period considered here: the old was mixed with and changed by the new, but while no claims can be made for a revolutionary new starting point in philosophy, in many ways the synthesis of Christianity, Aristotelianism, and Platonism offered by Thomas Aquinas was torn apart in order to make way for a new one, based on more complete and varied sources, often in the original, and certainly attuned to new social and religious realities and a much broader public.

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Greek Heroic Age

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Greek Heroic Age, in mythology, is the period between the coming of the Greeks to Thessaly and the Greek warriors' return from Troy. The poet Hesiod (fl. c. 700 BCE) identified this mythological era as one of his five Ages of Man. The period spans roughly six generations; the heroes denoted by the term are superhuman, though not divine, and are celebrated in the literature of Homer and of others, such as Sophocles, Aeschylus and Euripides.

The Greek heroes can be grouped into an approximate mythic chronology, based on the stories of events such as the Argonautic expedition and the Trojan War. Over the course of time, many heroes, such as Heracles, Achilles, Hector and Perseus, came to figure prominently in Greek mythology.

Early heroes

Many of the early Greek heroes were descended from the gods and were part of the founding narratives of various city-states. They also became the ancestors of later heroes. The Phoenician prince Cadmus, a grandson of Poseidon, was the first Greek hero and the founder of Thebes.

Perseus, famous for his exploits well before the days of his great-grandson, Heracles, was the son of Zeus. Perseus beheaded the gorgon Medusa, saved Andromeda from the sea monster Cetus, and was the legendary founder of Mycenae.

Aeacus was also a son of Zeus. Bellerophon was descended from the nymph Orseis. Oenomaus, king of Pisa, in the Peloponnese, was the son of Ares.

Perseus, son of Zeus, after beheading Medusa.

Among these early heroes the three - Cadmus, Perseus and Bellerophon - were considered the greatest Greek heroes and slayers of monsters before the days of Heracles.

Heroes in Art

Heroes in the Greek Heroic Age are often depicted on vases, expressing a portion of their story. Greek Hero Heracles is a popular icon among vases and paintings in early art.[6] Moments in history from this period are also captured in statues, such as Perseus with the head of Medusa, the Statue of Achilles, and the Pasquino Group. Polykleitos of Argos is one famous Greek Sculptor that has transformed Greek myth through bronze and marble sculptures, and primarily created a system for reproductions of art to occur.

Argonauts

The myth of Jason and the Golden Fleece is one of the oldest stories of a hero's quest. Jason sailed on the Argo, and those who accompanied him were called the "Argonauts". Their mission was to travel to the kingdom of Colchis, on the Black Sea, to obtain the "Golden Fleece", a symbol of authority and kingship. With it, Jason would become king of Iolcos in Thessaly.

The Argonauts:

Calydonian boar hunt

Main article: Calydonian boar hunt

A monstrous boar was sent by Artemis to ravage the region of Calydon in Aetolia because its king neglected to honour her in his rites to the gods. King Oeneus sent messengers seeking the best hunters in Greece, offering them the boar's pelt and tusks as a prize. A number of heroes responded, including Atalanta, Castor and Pollux, Jason, Laertes, Lynceus, Meleager (the host and boar killer), Nestor, Peleus, Phoenix, and Theseus. Many of them were also the "Argonauts". One notable exception was Heracles, who vanquished his own Goddess-sent Erymanthian boar separately.

Others

Generation of Oedipus

(about two generations before Troy)

The story of Oedipus is the basis of a trilogy of plays by Sophocles, however, similar stories have been traced to cultures all over the world.

Generation of the Seven against Thebes

(about a generation before Troy)

Oedipus places a curse upon his sons Eteocles and Polynices. The underlying theme in the story of the "Seven Against Thebes" is the fulfilment of that curse. Although the brothers had agreed to share the rule of Thebes, when it is time for Eteocles to step aside he refuses, and Polynices brings an army against his beloved city to enforce his claim. In Aeschylus' play the concept of the individual vs. community becomes a central theme. In the Phoenissae (The Phoenician Women), patriotism is a significant theme.

Generation of the Trojan War

See Trojan War and Epigoni.

Gregory Nagy sees mortality as the "dominant theme in the stories of ancient Greek heroes." In heading for Troy, Achilles opts for a short life, leaving a memory of being immortal and renown over a long peaceful life in relative obscurity.

Greek Heroes in The Iliad

Achilles making a sacrifice to Zeus for Patroclus from The Iliad.

Face of the Trojan War, Achilles, helped escalate the war after killing the Trojan Prince Hector. A description of the Trojan War is given to audiences through a telling of the myth in the form of a poem by Greek poet Homer, titled The Iliad,

Generation after the Trojan War

See also

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Pre-Marxist communism

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Chiefs of the Six Nations of the Haudenosaunee, a vital influence on and precursor to Marxist communism.

While Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels defined communism as a political movement, there were already similar ideas in the past which one could call communist experiments. Marx himself saw primitive communism as the original hunter-gatherer state of humankind. Marx theorized that only after humanity was capable of producing surplus did private property develop.

Pre-history

Main article: Primitive communism
An artist's rendering of a temporary wood house, based on evidence found at Terra Amata (in Nice, France) and dated to the Lower Paleolithic (c. 400,000 BP)

Karl Marx and other early communist theorists believed that hunter-gatherer societies as were found in the Paleolithic through to horticultural societies as found in the Chalcolithic were essentially egalitarian and he, therefore, termed their ideology to be primitive communism. Since Marx, sociologists and archaeologists have developed the idea of and research on primitive communism. According to Harry W. Laidler, one of the first writers to espouse a belief in the primitive communism of the past was the Roman Stoic philosopher Seneca who stated, "How happy was the primitive age when the bounties of nature lay in common ... They held all nature in common which gave them secure possession of the public wealth." Because of this he believed that such primitive societies were the richest as there was no poverty. According to Erik van Ree, other Greco-Roman writers that expressed a belief in a prehistoric humanity that had a communist-like societal structure include Diodorus Siculus, Virgil, and Ovid.

Due to the strong evidence of an egalitarian society, lack of hierarchy and lack of economic inequality, historian Murray Bookchin has argued that Çatalhöyük was an early example of anarcho-communism, and so an example of primitive communism in a proto-city.

Bronze Age

It has been argued that the Indus Valley civilisation is an example of a primitive communist society, due to its perceived lack of conflict and social hierarchies. Others argue that such an assessment of the Indus Valley civilisation is not correct.

Classical antiquity

See also: History of communism § Origins of communism, and History of socialism § In antiquity
The 1st century BC Roman philosopher Seneca believed that humans had fallen from a Golden Age of primitive communism

The idea of a classless and stateless society based on communal ownership of property and wealth also stretches far back in Western thought long before The Communist Manifesto. There are scholars who have traced communist ideas back to ancient times, particularly in the work of Pythagoras and Plato. Followers of Pythagoras, for instance, lived in one building and held their property in common because the philosopher taught the absolute equality of property with all worldly possessions being brought into a common store.

It is argued that Plato's Republic described in great detail a communist-dominated society wherein power is delegated in the hands of intelligent philosopher or military guardian class and rejected the concept of family and private property. In a social order divided into warrior-kings and the Homeric demos of craftsmen and peasants, Plato conceived an ideal Greek city-state without any form of capitalism and commercialism with business enterprise, political plurality, and working-class unrest considered as evils that must be abolished. While Plato's vision cannot be considered a precursor of communist thinking, his utopian speculations are shared by other utopian thinkers later on. An important feature that distinguishes Plato's ideal society in the Republic is that the ban on private property applies only to the superior classes (rulers and warriors), not to the general public.

Roman imperial period to late antiquity

Further information: Religious communism, Christian communism, and Intentional community

Biblical scholars have argued that the mode of production seen in early Hebrew society was a communitarian domestic one that was akin to primitive communism.

The early Church Fathers, like their non-Abrahamic predecessors, maintained that human society had declined to its current state from a now lost egalitarian social order. There are those who view that the early Christian Church, such as that one described in the Acts of the Apostles (specifically Acts 2:44–45 and Acts 4:32–45) was an early form of communism. The view is that communism was just Christianity in practice and Jesus Christ was himself a communist. This link was highlighted in one of Marx's early writings which stated: "As Christ is the intermediary unto whom man unburdens all his divinity, all his religious bonds, so the state is the mediator unto which he transfers all his Godlessness, all his human liberty". Furthermore, the Marxist ethos that aims for unity reflects the Christian universalist teaching that humankind is one and that there is only one god who does not discriminate among people. Later historians have supported the reading of early church communities as communistic in structure.

Pre-Marxist communism was also present in the attempts to establish communistic societies such as those made by the ancient Jewish sects the Essenes and by the Judean desert sect.

Post-classical history

Inside the urban centre Kuélap of the Chachapoya culture.

Europe

Peter Kropotkin argued that the elements of mutual aid and mutual defense expressed in the medieval commune of the Middle Ages and its guild system were the same sentiments of collective self-defense apparent in modern anarchism, communism and socialism. From the High Middle Ages in Europe, various groups supporting Christian communist and communalist ideas were occasionally adopted by reformist Christian sects. An early 12th century proto-Protestant group originating in Lyon known as the Waldensians held their property in common in accordance with the Book of Acts, but were persecuted by the Catholic Church and retreated to Piedmont. Around 1300 the Apostolic Brethren in northern Italy were taken over by Fra Dolcino who formed a sect known as the Dulcinians which advocated ending feudalism, dissolving hierarchies in the church, and holding all property in common. The Peasants' Revolt in England has been an inspiration for "the medieval ideal of primitive communism", with the priest John Ball of the revolt being an inspirational figure to later revolutionaries and having allegedly declared, "things cannot go well in England, nor ever will, until all goods are held in common."

South America

See also: Pre-Columbian era

The Chachapoya culture indicated an egalitarian non-hierarchical society through a lack of archaeological evidence and a lack of power expressing architecture that would be expected for societal leaders such as royalty or aristocracy.

Asia

Mazdak, a Sasanian prophet who founded the eponymous Zoroastrian offshoot of Mazdakism, is argued by various historical sources, including Muhammad Iqbal, to have been a proto-communist. This view originates from Mazdak's belief in the abolition of private property, advocacy of social revolution, and criticism of the clergy.

Researchers have commented on the communistic nature of the society built by the Qarmatians around Al-Ahsa from the 9th to 10th centuries.

Early modern period

Europe

Woodcut from a Diggers document by William Everard

Thomas Müntzer led a large Anabaptist communist movement during the German Peasants' War. Engels' analysis of Thomas Müntzer work in and the wider German Peasants' War lead Marx and Engels to conclude that the communist revolution, when it occurred, would be led not by a peasant army but by an urban proletariat.

In the 16th century, English writer Sir Thomas More portrayed a society based on common ownership of property in his treatise Utopia, whose leaders administered it through the application of reason. Several groupings in the English Civil War supported this idea, but especially the Diggers who espoused communistic and agrarian ideals. Oliver Cromwell and the Grandees' attitude to these groups was at best ambivalent and often hostile. Engels considered the Levellers of the English Civil War as a group representing the proletariat fighting for a utopian socialist society. Though later commentators have viewed the Levellers as a bourgeois group that did not seek a socialist society.

During the Age of Enlightenment in 18th century France, some liberal writers increasingly began to criticize the institution of private property even to the extent they demanded its abolition. Such writings came from thinkers such as the deeply religious philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau. In his hugely influential The Social Contract (1762) Rousseau outlined the basis for a political order based on popular sovereignty rather than the rule of monarchs, and in his Discourse on Inequality (1755) inveighed against the corrupting effects of private property claiming that the invention of private property had led to the, "crimes, wars, murders, and suffering" that plagued civilization. Raised a Calvinist, Rousseau was influenced by the Jansenist movement within the Roman Catholic Church. The Jansenist movement originated from the most orthodox Roman Catholic bishops who tried to reform the Roman Catholic Church in the 17th century to stop secularization and Protestantism. One of the main Jansenist aims was democratizing to stop the aristocratic corruption at the top of the Church hierarchy.

Victor d'Hupay's 1779 work Project for a Philosophical Community described a plan for a communal experiment in Marseille where all private property was banned. d'Hupay referred to himself as a communiste, the French form of the word "communist", in a 1782 letter, the first recorded instance of that term.

North America

Ely S. Parker, co-author of The League of the Ho-dé-no-sau-nee or Iroquois
Further information: Great Law of Peace and Economy of the Iroquois

Lewis Henry Morgan's descriptions of "communism in living" as practiced by the Haudenosaunee of North America, through research enabled by and coauthored with Ely S. Parker, were viewed as a form of pre-Marxist communism. Morgan's works were a primary inspiration for Marx and Engel's description of primitive communism, and has led to some believing that early communist-like societies also existed outside of Europe, in Native American society and other pre-Colonized societies in the Western hemisphere. Though the belief of primitive communism as based on Morgan's work is flawed due to Morgan's misunderstandings of Haudenosaunee society and his, since proven wrong, theory of social evolution. This, and subsequent more accurate research, has led to the society of the Haudenosaunee to be of interest in communist and anarchist analysis. Particularly aspects where land was not treated as a commodity, communal ownership and near non-existent rates of crime.

Primitive communism meaning societies that practiced economic cooperation among the members of their community, where almost every member of a community had their own contribution to society and land and natural resources would often be shared peacefully among the community. Some such communities in North America and South America still existed well into the 20th century. Historian Barry Pritzker lists the Acoma, Cochiti and Isleta Puebloans as living in socialist-like societies. It is assumed modern egalitarianism seen in Pueblo communities stems from this historic socio-economic structure. David Graeber has also commented that the Inuit have practiced communism and fended off unjust hierarchy for "thousands of years".

Age of Revolution

Louise Michel, a communard who supported the 1878 Kanak insurrection whilst exiled from France.

The Shakers of the 18th century under Joseph Meacham developed and practiced their own form of communalism, as a sort of religious communism, where property had been made a "consecrated whole" in each Shaker community.

Many Pre-Marx socialists lived, developed, and published their works and theories during this period from the late 18th century to the mid 19th century, including: Charles Fourier, Louis Blanqui, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Pierre Leroux, Thomas Hodgskin, Claude Henri de Saint-Simon, Wilhelm Weitling, and Étienne Cabet. Utopian socialist writers such as Robert Owen are also sometimes regarded as communists. The use of the term "communism" in English was popularised by advocates of Owenism.

The currents of thought in French philosophy from the Enlightenment from Rousseau and d'Hupay proved influential during the French Revolution of 1789 in which various anti-monarchists, particularly the Jacobins, supported the idea of redistributing wealth equally among the people, including Jean-Paul Marat and Francois Babeuf. The latter was involved in the Conspiracy of the Equals of 1796 intending to establish a revolutionary regime based on communal ownership, egalitarianism and the redistribution of property. Babeuf was directly influenced by Morelly's anti-property utopian novel The Code of Nature and quoted it extensively, although he was under the erroneous impression it was written by Diderot. Also during the revolution the publisher Nicholas Bonneville, the founder of the Parisian revolutionary Social Club used his printing press to spread the communist treatises of Restif and Sylvain Maréchal. Maréchal, who later joined Babeuf's conspiracy, would state it his Manifesto of the Equals (1796), "we aim at something more sublime and more just, the COMMON GOOD or the COMMUNITY OF GOODS" and "The French Revolution is just a precursor of another revolution, far greater, far more solemn, which will be the last." Restif also continued to write and publish books on the topic of communism throughout the Revolution. Accordingly, through their egalitarian programs and agitation Restif, Maréchal, and Babeuf became the progenitors of modern communism. Babeuf's plot was detected, however, and he and several others involved were arrested and executed. Because of his views and methods, Babeuf has been described as an anarchist, communist and a socialist by later scholars. The word "communism" was first used in English by Goodwyn Barmby in a conversation with those he described as the "disciples of Babeuf". Despite the setback of the loss of Babeuf, the example of the French Revolutionary regime and Babeuf's doomed insurrection was an inspiration for French socialist thinkers such as Henri de Saint-Simon, Louis Blanc, Charles Fourier and Pierre-Joseph Proudhon. Proudhon, the founder of modern anarchism and libertarian socialism would later famously declare "property is theft!" a phrase first invented by the French revolutionary Brissot de Warville.

Maximilien Robespierre and his Reign of Terror, aimed at exterminating the monarchy, nobility, clergy, conservatives and nationalists was admired among some anarchists, communists and socialists. In his turn, Robespierre was a great admirer of Voltaire and Rousseau.

By the 1830s and 1840s in France, the egalitarian concepts of communism and the related ideas of socialism had become widely popular in revolutionary circles thanks to the writings of social critics and philosophers such as Pierre Leroux and Théodore Dézamy, whose critiques of bourgeois liberalism and individualism led to a widespread intellectual rejection of laissez-faire capitalism on economic, philosophical and moral grounds. According to Leroux writing in 1832, "To recognise no other aim than individualism is to deliver the lower classes to brutal exploitation. The proletariat is no more than a revival of antique slavery." He also asserted that private ownership of the means of production allowed for the exploitation of the lower classes and that private property was a concept divorced from human dignity. It was only in the year 1840 that proponents of common ownership in France, including the socialists Théodore Dézamy, Étienne Cabet, and Jean-Jacques Pillot began to widely adopt the word "communism" as a term for their belief system. Those inspired by Étienne Cabet created the Icarian movement, setting up communities based on non-religious communal ownership in various states across the US, the last of these communities located a few miles outside Corning, Iowa, disbanded voluntarily in 1898.

The participants of the Taiping Rebellion, who founded the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, are viewed by the Chinese Communist Party as proto-communists. Marx referred to the communist tendencies in the Taiping Rebellion as "Chinese socialism".

The Communards and the Paris Commune are often seen as proto-communists, and had significant influence on the ideas of Karl Marx, who described it as an example of the "dictatorship of the proletariat".

Karl Marx and the contemporary age

Main article: History of communism § Marxism

Marx saw communism as the original state of mankind from which it rose through classical society and then feudalism to its current state of capitalism. He proposed that the next step in social evolution would be a return to communism.

In its contemporary form, communism grew out of the workers' movement of 19th-century Europe. As the Industrial Revolution advanced, socialist critics blamed capitalism for creating a class of poor, urban factory workers who toiled under harsh conditions and for widening the gulf between rich and poor.
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