Every Polly in the country is up in arms about the ‘divisiveness’ of Mrs Thatcher. But for ancient Greeks, opposition, or polarity, was as inherent in the nature of things as it is in our adversarial political system.
The first Greek philosopher Thales said: ‘There are three attributes for which I am grateful to Fortune: that I was born, first, human and not animal; second, man and not woman; and third, Greek and not barbarian.’ This is a very typical Greek sentiment. ‘Most human things’ go in pairs, said Alcmaeon, and Greeks regularly set up oppositions in order to think about the nature of the world: right and left, odd and even, one and many, limited and unlimited, straight and curved, light and darkness, white and black, sweet and bitter, good and bad, large and small, and so on. It was Heraclitus who saw that somehow these opposites were ‘the same thing’, i.e.
Comments
Join the debate for just $5 for 3 months
Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for $5.
UNLOCK ACCESS Just $5 for 3 monthsAlready a subscriber? Log in