Importance Of My Refection On The Ancient Greece Block

My refection upon the Ancient Greece block, how and why the discussion and various topics have influenced me.

In order to appreciate want you have, sometimes it helps to envisage a life without it. Sometime we tend to take most of what we have for granted and diminish the importance of its origins. And before coming in the academy for this block, I often asked myself what would our life be without Democracy? And furthermore, why it first appeared in Greece? After all, during 5th century, Athens have build a large empire, in context of the it’s size, but on the other hand, at the same time there were far larger empires present just on the other side of the Mediterranean. Than what makes them so different from the other civilizations during

It was the center of cultural and political life which represented the majority of Ancient Greece, at least culturally. During the 5th century BCE, the victory against Persian Empire, did not only foster the trade and economical prosperity, but it brought different ideas and cultures from other Mediterranean countries such as Egypt and Mesopotamia. It led to the reign of general confidence about the human’s ability to understand their surroundings and to some degree try to control it. Instead of justification of natural phenomena and universe, during this period of time, more practical questions were raised. And this gave rise to the Sophists who were there to respond. I was raised by the idea that Sophist has a purely negative connotation. In fact, back in the university I even witness people calling each other “you sophist”, basically as a manipulator! And during this week I also learned that it was Plato who gave this connotation to this profession. In contrast, here I learned that Sophist refers to an ancient professor, who was traveling around and charged fees to teach rhetoric or ability to persuade others regardless of the validity of the arguments. It was very interesting to see how they became extremely important in the ancient Greece by teaching rhetoric to eventual leaders who were persuading masses in assemble. On the other side, it is even more interesting when you see the relevancy of rhetoric in nowadays politics. Hence, I think that asking questions such as: “What is truth?” gave the birth to relevant schools of thought in the ancient Greece and left behind an imperishable legacy for the new generations to come later on in Hellenic