PDF: The discovery of the mind; the Greek origins of European thought (1953) by Bruno Snell Translated by Thomas G. Rosenmeyer









. They have made it what it is: our only way of thinking; its authority, in the Western world, is undisputed. When we concern ourselves with the sciences and philosophy, we use this thought quite independently of its historical ties, to focus upon that which is constant and unconditioned: upon truth; and with its help, we hope to grasp the unchanging principles of this life. On the other hand, this type of thinking was a historical growth, perhaps more so than is ordinarily implied by that term. Because we are accustomed to regarding the Greek way of thinking as obligatory, we instinctively — or should we say naively? — project it also into thought processes of another order.Since the turn of the eighteenth century, our growing awareness of evolutionary patterns may have contributed to the elimination of such rationalist concepts as the ageless, unchanging ^spirit'. Yet a proper understanding of the origins of Greek thought remains difficult because all too frequently we measure the products of early Greece by the fixed standards of our own age. The Iliad and the Odyssey, which stand at the source of the Greek tradition, speak to us with a strong emotional appeal; and as a result, we are quick to forget how radically the experience of Homer differs from our own.To trace the course along which, in the unfolding of early Greek culture, European thought comes into its own, we must, first of all, understand that the rise ofjhinking^mong. the Greeks_was nothing less than a ^evolution. They did not by means of mental equipment already at their disposal, merely map out new subjects for discussion, such as the sciences and philosophy. They discovered the human mind. This drama, man's gradual understanding of himself, is revealed to us in the career of Greek poetry and philosophy. The stages of the journey which saw a rational view of the nature of man establish itself are to be traced in the creations of epic and lyric poetry, and in the plays.The discovery of the intellect cannot be compared with the discovery of, let us say, a new continent. America had existed long before Columbus discovered the New World, but the European way of thinking did not come into being until it was discovered; it exists by grace of man's cognizance of himself. All the same, our use of the word * discovery' can, I think, be defended. The intellect was not ^invented', as a man would invent a tool to improve the operation of his physical functions or a method to master a certain type of problem. As a rule, inventions are arbitrarily determined; they are adapted to the purpose from which they take their cue. No objective, no aims were involved in the discovery of the intellect. In a certain sense, it actually did exist before it was discovered, only not in the same form, not qua intellect.Translator's Note. ivIntroduction... v1 Homer's View of Man .. i2 The Olympian Gods. 233 The Rise of the Individual in the EarlyGreek Lyric ... ... ... ... 424 Pindar's Hymn to Zeus ... ... ... 715 Myth and Reality in Greek Tragedy ... 906 Aristophanes and Aesthetic Criticism ... 1137 Human Knowledge and Divine KnowledgeAmong the Early Greeks ... ... ... 1368 The Call to Virtue: A Brief Chapter fromGreek Ethics 1539 From Myth to Logic: The Role of theComparison ... ... ... ... 19110 The Origin of Scientific Thought ... ... 22711 The Discovery of HumanitaSy and OurAttitude Toward the Greeks ... ... 246I an Art and Play in Callimachus ... ... 26413 Arcadia: The Discovery of a SpiritualLandscape 281Notes ... 311Index ... ... ... ... 324