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From, A. Zimmern, Political Thought,
in R.W. Livingstone (ed.), The Legacy of Greece, Oxford University Press, 1921.
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Page 6
This leads on to a further reflection. The Greeks, in their political thinking, were essentially realists, rather than idealists. This is true of all the Greek writers, even those who, like Plato, starting from the market-place of Athens, lead us up to a Utopia in the clouds. They were realists in that they based their political studies on the world as it is and human nature as it is, rather than on some personal and fanciful conception of what man and the world ought to be. To put it in other words, they are realists because they are psychologists, because they applied the psychological method to political problems. That they were the first to do so goes without saying: for no one before them had applied any method at all, except in the most rough-and-ready manner. But they did it so perfectly, with such utter and artistic simplicity, that those who followed them accepted or criticized their results without observing the basis of human study on which they were built up, and it is only in quite recent years, through the work of patient inquirers who, like Graham Wallas, have laboured systematically in both fields, that politics and psychology have once more been drawn together.
It may perhaps seem strange to a modern reader to be told that, in this very important respect, Thucydides, Plato, and Aristotle are sounder in their method than the whole long line of political thinkers and statesmen up to our own day. Let the reader who doubts it turn to the texts. He will find that all the three writers whom I have named toiled at the study of human nature before they set pen to paper. The Republic opens with several books of psychological analysis, no doubt at times a little fantastic in its attempts at premature classification, but full of life and reality, and not only Greek reality but human reality. Aristotle precedes his work on Politics, in which he embodied the results of a study of all the available political and constitutional material of his day—for a Greek could work like a modern German or American thesis-grubber when he tried—with a book on Ethics which is still regarded, quite rightly, as a standard work for the modern student.
Cf. Ancient Greek History and the West * Greek is the higher life of man * Greek History Resources
Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome
A History of Greek Philosophy * Plato Home Page
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Reference address : https://www.ellopos.net/elpenor/greek-texts/ancient-greece/political-theory.asp?pg=6
