From: jmc@SAIL.Stanford.EDU (John McCarthy)
Subject: An Art Historical Perspective on ... Philosophy
Reply-To: jmc@cs.Stanford.EDU
Organization: Computer Science Department, Stanford University
Date: 4 Jan 93 00:11:10

   AN ART HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE ON THE ORIGINS OF WESTERN
                          PHILOSOPHY

                      Francis J. Greene

The debate over the origins of Western philosophy continues unabated.
At issue is a questioning of the long held belief that philosophy in
the Western World began with the ancient Greeks. Another view holds
that the origins of Western philosophy are to be found in Africa,
specifically ancient Egypt, some thousands of years before the full
flowering of ancient Greek civilization. (Cf. George G. M.  James,
Stolen Legacy, New York: Philosophical Library, 1954.) Of course the
larger context is the ongoing debate over the relationship of all of
ancient Greek culture to ancient Africa. The latest round of exchanges
can be found in two articles by Cornell University professors in the
September/October '92 issue of Archeology: John Coleman's "Did Egypt
Shape the Glory that was Greece?" and Martin Bernal's response to
Coleman, "The Case for Massive Egyptian Influence in the Aegean."

It seems clear to this writer that the ancient Egyptians did not
practice philosophy, properly understood, although they did, of
course, have a highly developed system of religious beliefs and
rituals. The error most frequently made is in confusing philosophy
and religion. There is another important distinction to be made.
Egyptian influence on aspects of ancient Greek culture is evident, but
this does not imply Egyptian origins of Greek culture. Some of the
best recent arguments to uphold these crucial distinctions can be
found in Mary Lefkowitz's New Republic article, February 19, 1992,
"Not Out of Africa." As an architectural and art historian, I propose
to look at my own disciplines to see if they can shed any light on the
question of the origins of Western philosophy. A comparison of typical
ancient Egyptian and Greek temples provides, I believe, some insight
into this question.

In essence the Egyptian temple and the Greek Doric Temple are
opposites. In the typical ancient Egyptian temple, the columns are on
the inside. The only notable visual experience on the exterior is the
pylon or entrance area. The points of interest might be the
freestanding statues of a god or pharaoh. Despite this, it is safe to
say that the primary visual and emotional experience of a typical
ancient Egyptian temple is in the interior--most notably the great
halls, filled with columns. After passing through the pylon one
usually crosses an open, but interior courtyard, and then enters the
first of the great halls. Immediately one leaves behind the bright and
familiar light of day and enters into an interior world of ever
increasing darkness. The halls themselves are enclosed and filled with
row upon row of gigantic columns. In effect one proceeds through a
veritable forest of stone with less and less light as one advances.
The great volume and height of the columns serve to instill a sense of
smallness and insignificance in anyone approaching the next and final
room--the sanctuary where the statues of the gods repose. Thus the
precession to the sanctuary followed a pathway into increasing
darkness, a leaving behind of the day to day world of familiar
sunlight, as one enters into the shadowy domain of the gods. It has
been suggested that , near the end of the procession, it was barely
possible to see anything in one's path. The pilgrim is traversing a
forest of stone, so to speak, in almost total darkness--a world
designed to "throw one off"--to instill awe, if not outright fear--a
world where mystery and non-comprehension reign supreme. This
represent s a brilliant architectural use of volume (the mass of the
stone) and light (the darkness) to manipulate emotions. Finally, the
sanctuary is entered where, by utter contrast, the ceiling suddenly
plunges down to within feet of one's head at the entrance to the
small, almost claustrophobic sanctuary itself, sufficiently
illuminated to permit the priest to come fact to face, as it were,
with the gods and goddesses. At every point the experience is one of
utter mystery, of a domain alien to and incomprehensible to man--a
nebulous world of shadows belonging to and appropriate only to a god.
Of course, the public never entered these deep recesses of the
temples; only priests and temple staff were permitted such access.1

By contrast, it can be said that the really important artistic and
emotional experiences of a Greek Doric temple were almost exclusively
on the outside. The interior of a typical Greek temple consisted of
two simple rooms, one serving as ante-chamber to the second where the
statue of the god or goddess was placed. The public did not enter
these temples and religious ceremonies most often took place outside.
The most profound architectural experience was on the outside also,
particularly in experiencing the columns which ring the temple. If
there is any beauty in the exterior aspect of a Greek temple, it is,
to a large degree, in the regularity of the columns--verticality
reinforced and repeated by the fluting of each column. This
verticality is then picked up in the frieze by the three carved lines
of the triglyphs, as they alternate with the metopes around the entire
temple. Indeed it is the verticality of the columns and their fluting
which leads the eye upwards to the triglyphs of the frieze where this
visual experience is continued. There is also a strong visual
horizontality to supplement all this , beginning with the horizontal
lines of the steps, stylobate and stereobate, below the columns. This
is continued above the columns by the horizontal lines of the
entablature--architrave, frieze, and cornice, so that the total
impression is one of mathematical regularity and precision.

All this is experienced, not in the interior and in shadows, as in
ancient Egypt , but on the outside, for all to see, in the full light
of day. The resulting ex perience is one, not of incomprehension,
mystery, or fear, but rather of understanding and enlightenment.
Indeed mathematical measurements and research, such as those carried
out by the British mathematician Penrose in the nineteenth century,
have revealed a complex but understandable system of subtle
proportions worked into almost every detail of the Parthenon's
exterior. Today these complex mathematical relationships are known as
the refinements of the Parthenon, and subseq uent study and
measurements have only added, since Penrose's day, to our
understanding of this logical exterior. At the Parthenon and other
Greek Doric temples, the more one looks, the more one examines, the
more one understands. In the typical Egyptian temple, the deeper one
penetrates, the less one sees, the less one understands, the more one
surrenders to the shadows of unknowing--to the utter mystery and
otherness of the world of the gods.

What do these observations about typical Greek and Egyptian temples
possibly tell us in relation to the question of the origins of Western
philosophy? They suggest, at least as far as architecture is
concerned, that the Egyptians seem to have preferred to dwell in
mystery and non-understanding. By contrast, the ancient Greeks aimed
at understanding, at organizing logical systems--complex yet
discernible. From the point of view of architecture, there is nothing
to suggest that the ancient Egyptians were open to or interested in
philosophy, properly understood. By its very essence the ancient
Greek temple is an expression of the philosophical stance before
life.

A brief analysis of typical sculptures of both ancient Egypt and
Greece seems to suggest the same conclusions about the origins of
Western philosophy. Although comparative architecture provides a
stronger argument, comparisons from the domain of sculpture are, I
believe, informative. With some rare exceptions, ancient Egyptian
sculpture most usually depicted the individual in the next life.
Sculptures were usually created for the grave, to serve as a potential
resting place for the soul of the deceased when it needed respite from
its journeys. Thus the faces of most such sculptures are marked by
impassivity and a lack of specification of age. Both characteristics,
of course, were intended to suggest the figure as being in eternity
where one would be in the eternal present and thus beyond changes such
as those of emotion or the passing years. The earliest ancient Greek
sculptors certainly copied this Egyptian style in the Archaic period
until about 500 B.C. Thus we encounter the rigid frontality of the
typical Greek Kouros and Kore figures.  However, from the outset, the
Egyptian style of impassivity and rigidity did not suit the Greeks
because it was too other-worldly and not sufficiently suggestive of
life here and now. Thus the Greeks added to their otherwise
Egyptian-like figures the so-called Archaic smile. Today many are
struck by the contrast in these early Greek sculptures between an
otherwise lifeless and rigid figure and the enormous smile upon its
face. But for the sculptors of the Greek Archaic period this smile was
crucial; it represented a break with the ancient Egyptian mentality.
In this smile was invested all the life of the sculpted figure. No
matter how rigid the form might be, one can tell, by the smile, that
there is life in this world and not merely in the great beyond. It is
precisely in the life in this world that the Greek sculptors were
interested, unlike their Egyptian counterparts. In the following fifty
years of the Transitional Period of Greek sculpture that interest,
formerly limited to the smile, would explode into every detail of the
figure--be it god, goddess, or athlete. Myron's Discobolus of 450 B.C.
is an early example of the triumph, in ancient Greece, of interest in
the spatiality and temporality of this world over Egypt's
other-worldly propensity. Gone is any trace of Egyptian frontality or
rigidity. The discus thrower is caught in a specific moment of
time--the split second of intense concentration and muscular
contraction before he brings his arm forward to release the discus .
The rest of ancient Greek sculpture to follow represents a deeper
unfolding of the ancient Greek desire to penetrate, understand, and
celebrate the reality of life of this world. By sharp contrast, the
ancient Egyptians were content to remain with their other-worldly
style for the better part of four thousand years before Christ, with
the notable but brief exception of the Amarna period. From an art
historical perspective, I see in their sculpture an ancient Egyptian
people inclined towards and almost exclusively devoted to religion. By
contrast the evolution of Greek sculpture before the time of Christ
suggests to me a people instinctively given to an attitude more
philosophical than theological or even religious.

These observations do not denigrate in the least the superb and
brilliant achievements of the ancient Egyptians in art, literature,
architecture, religion, and in many other areas of human endeavor.
They merely suggest that the practice of the discipline we correctly
call philosophy did not begin with them.

The debate on this question of the origins of Western philosophy will
continue, but for those who wish to arrive finally at some truth on
the issue, it may well be desirable and even necessary to consult
other, closely related disciplines and fields of experience.
Architectural and art history appear to offer some unambiguous clues
to resolving this question.

_____________________________________________________
Footnote

1 - For a new and provocative interpretation of this interior procession
I refer the reader to the recently published Ideas Into Images:
Essays on Ancient Egyptian Thought (Timkin Publishers, 1992) by Erik
Hornung, Professor of Egyptology at the University of Basel, who
interprets the experience in terms of water imagery . Hornung sees the
columns as water plants, growing out of a marsh, crossed by a path
leading to the inner sanctum. When the Nile overflowed its banks, says
Hornung, it often flooded the column rooms and thereby reified the
illusion of progression into a primordial swamp. (Chapter 6, p. 123).
Although suggesting a different interpretation, Hornung basically
affirms the concept of an interior journey that is mysterious and
potentially frightening. Clearly the procession he suggests is not
towards enlightenment.
__________________________________________________

Francis J. Greene is professor of French and Art History at St. Francis College
in Brooklyn, New York.  ##
--
John McCarthy, Computer Science Department, Stanford, CA 94305
*
He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense.

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