VOLUME III, SEMESTER 1, CHAPTER 9, SECTION 1
The Philosophy of Athens Was Dug Up Out of a Mine
The last chapter walked the three steps through in China. The Shang held the person, the Zhou held the person by law, the Han held the person by the market. This chapter crosses to the far side of the Mediterranean. The people there never once met the ancestors of China, never read one character of one another. And yet, each walking to the step where wei is made whole into institutions, the thing that grew up was startlingly alike.
First, set the question of this chapter straight
Mark this. This chapter does not weigh who came first, and does not weigh who was crueler. Neither of those two questions has any meaning.
There is one thing only to look at. When two civilizations that have nothing to do with one another each walk to the step where that line, it is only right, is made into an institution, are the things they each invent, in their frame, alike.
If they are alike, then one thing is shown. This is not the ailment of some one culture. This is a common product of wei, that mechanism, on the layer of the economy.
Wherever it is only right that I take more is made into an institution, there a thing of similar form will grow.
Hold this line. It is the one thing this chapter is out to prove.
Athens, the place they call a cradle
Ancient Greece, and Athens above all, is often lifted up by people today as the cradle of democracy.
Turn this cradle over, and look once at what is set underneath it.
In the fifth century before the common era, at the height of Athens, the whole population of the city-state was something like three to four hundred thousand. Of them, the slaves were something like one hundred to one hundred fifty thousand.
One in three, or even more.
The citizen of Athens, why did he have the free hours to go to the citizens’ assembly, why did he have the free hours to train in the gymnasium, why did he have the free hours to sit and discuss what justice is, what the good is, what the good life is.
Because his field, someone was tilling it. His silver mine, someone was digging it. His house, someone was cooking in it.
Set this line beside Guanzi’s eight characters from the third chapter of this semester. When the granaries are full they know propriety.
The philosophy of Athens grew up out of the granary. And that granary, someone else filled it for them.
The Laurion silver mine
What did that granary look like, in the concrete. Go outside the city and see.
Outside Athens there was a silver mine, called Laurion. At its height it worked twenty to thirty thousand slaves at once.
Stop on that number. Twenty to thirty thousand people, under the ground.
These slaves, most of them worked in the mine shafts until they died.
In the shaft there is no light. The air is bad. A person has to bend at the waist, even crawl on his belly, to work his way in. Once in, he does not come out for a day. Some never saw the sky outside again in their lives.
And the silver dug out of this mine was the money of Athens. It was the fleet of Athens, the temples of Athens, and the attendance fee handed to each citizen at the assembly of the city-state.
That attendance fee let even a poor citizen put down the work in his hands and walk into the assembly hall, and cast his sacred vote.
See this layer clear. The freedom of that vote was bought with the whole lives of the twenty to thirty thousand people under the ground.
This is not out to tear Athens down
Said this far, the words have to be got exact, or the section slides into the merely satisfying.
This section is not out to say the democracy of Athens was false, is not out to say those philosophies are worth nothing.
The things the Athenians stood up are real. That a person can stand up and reason to another’s face, and yield when he is out-reasoned, this is an extraordinary thing in the history of mankind. The questioning of Socrates is real. Those days of discussing justice are real.
This volume does not cheapen that share.
This volume does one thing only. It sets the layer underneath out at the same time.
Up above is the citizens’ assembly, down below is the mine shaft. Up above they discuss what justice is, down below a person crawls in the dark. These two things are the two ends of one thing.
Hold this way of working, for every chapter to come will use it. It is not to tear the one end down, it is to see both ends at once.
Walk in close, close to both ends
Walk in first to the end up above.
An Athenian citizen, forty years old, is going to the assembly today. He has eaten his breakfast, and that meal the household slave made. He walks along, and in his mind is the vote he means to cast today. He is sincere. He feels he is doing an extraordinary thing. He does not feel he is holding anyone down. From his childhood up, the world he saw was made this way. Some people are simply born to do that work.
Mark that last line. This is wei. It is not one person’s bad heart, it is the shape a whole generation saw the moment it opened its eyes.
Now walk in to the end down below.
A slave, twenty three years old, in the tunnel at Laurion. What is in his mind today. He does not think of freedom, because those two words, freedom, he has never seen. What is in his mind is this. Can I hold out through this stretch till the shift ends, when will that mouthful of water come.
Set these two people side by side.
One is discussing justice, one is fixed on that mouthful of water. They live in the one same city, at the one same hour. Neither has ever seen the other.
The one line that matters most in this section
Now draw this section into one line.
Philosophy did not fall out of the sky. Philosophy grew up out of the granary. And that granary of grain, someone always has to go and grow it.
Turn this line over, and you run into an exceedingly uncomfortable question.
The book in your hands right now, the classroom you are sitting in this moment, these two hours you get to sit here and read and not go down a mine, what is set underneath them.
This question, do not hurry to answer. But from today, carry it with you as you walk.
The twelfth chapter will walk all the way down to the very bottom of that chain, to look at today’s mines that cannot be seen.
What this section set up, and the turn to the next
This section set up three things.
The first. This chapter is out to prove one thing only. That position is not the ailment of some one culture. Two civilizations that never met, each walking to that step, grew things whose frame is the same.
The second. The philosophy of Athens was dug up out of a mine. One in three was a slave, twenty to thirty thousand were under the ground, and the freedom of that vote was bought with their whole lives.
The third. It is not to tear the one end down, it is to see both ends at once. The justice up above is real, and the tunnel down below is real too. They are the two ends of one thing.
Then, how did the Athenians themselves account for the twenty to thirty thousand under the ground. Did it sit easy in their hearts. There was a man who reasoned the thing round for them. He was one of the greatest minds of that age. He said, some people are slaves by nature.
The next section, Aristotle’s line, the natural slave.
Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.