Solon’s philosophy: the development of personality and the concept of “measure”

Alek­san­dra S. Solovy­o­va
Saint Peters­burg State Uni­ver­si­ty

Solon’s phi­los­o­phy: the devel­op­ment of per­son­al­i­ty and the con­cept of “mea­sure”

Abstract. The arti­cle con­sid­ers the phi­los­o­phy of the Athen­ian politi­cian Solon, who was able to lay the foun­da­tions of the demo­c­ra­t­ic struc­ture of Atti­ca. The aim of the work is to study the fea­tures of Solon’s world out­look and the his­tor­i­cal con­text that influ­enced his for­ma­tion. With the help of the his­tor­i­cal-genet­ic method, the arti­cle ana­lyzes the polit­i­cal and social pre­req­ui­sites for the emer­gence of the phi­los­o­phy of the wise man. The his­tor­i­cal-com­par­a­tive method is used to crit­i­cal­ly com­pre­hend ancient sources. The typo­log­i­cal method helps to cor­re­late Solon’s out­look with the gen­er­al devel­op­ment of ancient thought of the archa­ic epoch. The research is based on the his­tor­i­cal approach, which is nec­es­sary to link the for­ma­tion of the phi­los­o­phy of the Athen­ian sage and those events that took place in the polis dur­ing the archa­ic peri­od of Greece.
In mod­ern his­to­ri­og­ra­phy Solon is most often seen as a politi­cian, leg­is­la­tor of Atti­ca. The world out­look of the “sev­en wise men” is stud­ied in the gen­er­al con­text of the emer­gence of ancient social thought. The nov­el­ty and rel­e­vance of this arti­cle are a detailed con­sid­er­a­tion of the new con­cepts that appear in the world view of Solon as one of the rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the “Sev­en Wise Men” and can be traced in the fur­ther phi­los­o­phy of ancient Greece, name­ly, the emer­gence of indi­vid­u­al­ism and the notion of “mea­sures.” In ancient times, Solon was ranked among the “sev­en wise men”, whom the Greeks wor­shiped.
The phi­los­o­phy of the “sev­en wise men” is the ini­tial peri­od of the for­ma­tion of ancient Greek thought, a grad­ual depar­ture from the epic and mytho­log­i­cal per­cep­tion of the world. Their views laid the foun­da­tion for the sub­se­quent devel­op­ment of phi­los­o­phy in Greece.
Despite the fact that the ancient authors list of per­sons who are ranked among the sev­en wise men, is con­stant­ly chang­ing, Solon is men­tioned in almost every enu­mer­a­tion of the sages. In addi­tion, the study of Solon’s out­look is helped by the safe­ty of sources that describe his activ­i­ties. Espe­cial­ly impor­tant are the infor­ma­tion of Aris­to­tle, Herodotus, Plutarch. Equal­ly impor­tant are the ele­gies of the leg­is­la­tor, which have sur­vived to our time, which reflect Solon’s views on con­tem­po­rary real­i­ty. In the arti­cle, Solon’s world out­look is stud­ied, the emer­gence of the con­cept of “mea­sures” in the phi­los­o­phy of the sage. Con­sid­er­a­tion of the socio-polit­i­cal con­text helps to under­stand the con­di­tions under which Solon’s per­son­al­i­ty evolved. The reformer, being of noble ori­gin, was engaged in trade busi­ness, which affect­ed his way of life and per­cep­tion of real­i­ty. Solon lived in an era when there was a con­stant aris­to­crat­ic strug­gle that under­mined the sta­bil­i­ty of the Athen­ian pol­i­cy. In addi­tion, the dom­i­na­tion of noble births led to the fact that ordi­nary peo­ple were unable to par­tic­i­pate in polit­i­cal life. Solon was a wit­ness to these process­es, which influ­enced his world­view. Injus­tice, a con­stant strug­gle for pow­er, greed, abuse are those cat­e­gories that the sage con­demns, con­trast­ing them with love for the home­land, the law, a sense of pro­por­tion. The his­tor­i­cal analy­sis of the biog­ra­phy of Solon allows us to draw con­clu­sions about how the views of the Athen­ian sage were formed.

Key­words: Solon, sev­en sages, per­son­al­i­ty, mod­er­a­tion, phi­los­o­phy, archa­ic age.

DOI: 10.5840/dspl20181224

Ref­er­ences:

  1. Aris­to­tle. Afin­skaya poli­tiya [Con­sti­tu­tion of the Athe­ni­ans] / S.I. Radt­sig (transl.). Moscow: Gosu­darstven­noe sot­sial­no-ehko­nomich­eskoe izda­tel­st­vo, 1936. 144 p. (In Russ­ian)
  2. Blok, J.H., Lardi­nois, A.P.M.H. Solon of Athens: New His­tor­i­cal and Phi­lo-log­i­cal Approach­es. Boston: Brill Aca­d­e­m­ic Pub­lish­ers, 2006. 489 p.
  3. Herodotus. Istoriya [His­to­ry] / G.А. Stratanovskiy (transl.). Leningrad: Nau­ka, 1972. 500 p. (In Russ­ian)
  4. Frol­ov, Je.D. Rozh­de­nie grech­esko­go polisa [The birth of the Greek pol­i­cy] / 2nd ed. St. Peters­burg: Izdat. dom SPbGU, 2004. 266 p. (In Russ­ian)
  5. Frol­ov, Je.D. Fakel Prom­eteya. Ocher­ki antich­noj obshch­estven­noj mys­li [The torch of Prometheus. Essays on ancient social thought]. Leningrad: Izd-vo Leningr. un-ta, 1991. 440 p. (In Russ­ian)
  6. Ehren­berg, V. From Solon to Socrates: Greek his­to­ry and civ­i­liza­tion dur­ing the 6th and 5th cen­turies b.c. Lon­don: Rout­ledge, 2011. 401 p.
  7. Chany­shev, A.N. Kurs lek­t­sij po drevnej filosofii [Lec­tures on ancient phi-los­o­phy]: Ucheb. poso­bie dlya filos. fak-tov i otde­lenij un-tov. M.: Vysshaya shko­la, 1981. 374 p. (In Russ­ian)
  8. Kolobo­va, K.M. Revolyu­ciya Solona [The rev­o­lu­tion by Solon], Uchenye zapis­ki Leningrad­sko­go uni­ver­site­ta. His­to­ry stud­ies series, 1939, no 39, iss. 4, pp. 25–72. (In Russ­ian)
  9. Lenc­man, Ja.A. “Dos­tover­nost antich­noj tra­dit­sii o Solone” [The accu­ra­cy of the ancient tra­di­tion on Solon], in: Drevnij mir: sbornik statej v chest akademi­ka V.V. Struve [The ancient world: a col­lec­tion of arti­cles in hon­or of Aca­d­e­mi­cian V.V. Struve], Moscow: Izda­tel­st­vo vos­tochnoj lit­er­atu­ry, 1962, pp. 579–586. (In Russ­ian)
  10. Lewis, J.D. Solon the Thinker: Polit­i­cal Thought in Archa­ic Athens. Lon­don: Blooms­bury Aca­d­e­m­ic, 2008. 196 p.
  11. Lin­forth, J.M. Solon the Athen­ian. Berke­ley: Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia Press, 1919. 341 p.
    Plutarch. Sravnitel­nye zhiz­neopisaniya [Par­al­lel Lives] / S.S. Аver­int­sev et al. (ed.). Moscow: Nau­ka, 1994. 706 p. (In Russ­ian)
  12. Surikov, I.E. Prob­le­my ran­nego afin­sko­go zakon­o­da­tel­st­va [Prob­lems of ear­ly Athen­ian law]. Moscow: Yazy­ki slav. kul­tu­ry, 2004. 144 p. (In Russ­ian)
  13. Surikov, I.E. Sol­ntse Ella­dy: Istoriya afin­skoy demokratii [The Sun of Hel­las: The His­to­ry of Athen­ian Democ­ra­cy]. St. Peters­burg: Fakul­tet filologii i iskusstv SPbGU, 2008. 360 p. (In Russ­ian)
  14. Tumans, H. Rozh­de­nie Afiny. Afin­skij put k demokratii: ot Gomera do Perik­la (VIII—V vv. do n. eh.) [The Birth of Athena. The Athens road to democ­ra­cy: from Homer to Per­i­cles (VIII-V cen­turies BCE)]. St. Peters­burg: Guman­i­tar­naya Akademiya, 2002. 544 p. (In Russ­ian)
  15. Ver­nant, J.-P. Proiskhozh­de­nie drevne­grech­eskoj mys­li [Les orig­ines de la pen­sée grecque] / F.X. Kes­si­di, A.P. Yushke­vich (eds.). Moscow: Progress, 1988. 224 p. (In Russ­ian)
  16. Windel­band, W. Istoriya drevnej filosofii [Geschichte der alten Philoso­phie] / A.I. Vve­den­skiy (transl.). Kiev: Tan­dem, 1995. 368 p. (In Russ­ian)
  17. Zeller, E. Ocherk istorii grech­eskoj filosofii [Die Philoso­phie der Griechen in ihrer geschichtlichen Entwick­lung]. St. Peters­burg: Alete­jya, 1996. 296 p. (In Russ­ian)

Comments are closed.