MARY LEFKOWITZ
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undervalue or to overlook some of the Greeks' most astounding and
original contributions. In retrospect, before insisting that I did not think
that the Greeks were "superior" to other civilizations, I should have
asked Professor Asante whether superiority was in fact the issue. Ancient
Greek civilization has been included in the curriculum not because it has
been judged to be superior to Egyptian or any other African civilization.
Rather, the Greeks have been included in the curriculum because their
ideas have made a lasting contribution to later European civilization.
True multiculturalism (as opposed to uni- or anticulturalism) would
then require us to try objectively to appreciate them and their achieve–
ments,
to
praise or criticize different aspects of their legacy to us, and to
point out that they are like us in some ways, and very unlike us in oth–
ers. For one thing, the ancient Greeks did not think of themselves as
Europeans, since Europe literally had not yet come into existence.
According to the myth, Europa, the Phoenician woman for whom the
continent was later named, only got so far as the island of Crete. Until
the conquests of Alexander, their notion of the civilized world extended
only as far west and north as Sicily and Italy. What we think of as
"European" civilization derives from the Christian Roman Empire.
Almost certainly the Greeks' most important accomplishments could
not have taken place if their religion had been monotheistic and had
codified in writing correct and incorrect ways of thinking, like the Jews
and after them the Christians. The Greeks' polytheistic religion permitted
them to question the behavior of gods, and to account for conflicts and
problems by supposing that one god's plans had been opposed by an–
other.
It
is here - in the nature of Greek religion - that we should look
for an explanation of "the Greek achievement," since it is a religion that
encouraged inquiry. By asking questions about traditional stories about
the gods, known as myths, the Greeks came to ask questions about how
the world came into being and about the origins of mankind, and to
provide different and conflicting answers to their questions. The Greek
word
historia
literally means "inquiry," and what Herodotus wanted to
find out is how the Greeks came to quarrel with their Eastern neighbors.
The Greeks were not the only people who have in the course of his–
tory developed democracies, but they were the first people to theorize
about the best systems of government. This kind of abstract theorizing is
perhaps their most distinctive achievement. Here as in many other cases
the Greeks could not have developed their theories without the work of
their predecessors. The complex arithmetical and mathematical calcula–
tions on which Greek theories were based were invented by Egyptians
and the Babylonians, but it was the Greeks who articulated the abstract
principles behind them. Similarly, although surely other Aegean peoples
