The Origins of Western Philosophy

In the days of ancient Greece, half a millennium prior to the biblical account of the birth of Christ, philosophy was in its fledgling state; it was viewed by the upper class and aristocratic citizenry of city-states such as Athens as a means to all universal truths, a light to illuminate the ignorance of the common man, and a panacea for all the flaws in human nature that led to mistruth, repression, and injustice. However, of all the titans of the art of philosophy, three men hold the most repute; the prolific minds of Euripides, Thucydides, and Plato have sewn their seeds most effectively in the collective conscious of humankind, their unique and varying perspectives on human nature surviving through the ages.

Euripides, in his play, The Bacchae, addresses aspects of human nature that many philosophical minds of his era would not deign to approach, whether out of distaste for the more appetitive and spirited pleasures, or more likely, a lack of his devotion and skill for stripping away the artificial barriers that society builds around one's true self, the Freudian id. That is the defining aspect of Euripides' philosophy; according to Euripides, to deny oneself the more carnal, or spirited urges can only lead to ruin. He links this ideology closely with the belief in the divine, a trait that renders him unique from his wholly logical counterparts, asserting that to defy the gods is also contrary to nature, and will result in the offender's destruction. This belief is exemplified in the following quote from TheBacchae:

"How terrible your vengeance against those

who harness your forces

to their laws of unnatural order.

A free and open mind

is safe against the excesses

lurking in the secret juices of your plants.

But those who try to strangle you

in the roots of their own nature,

who oppress and are oppressed,

through you, achieve their own destruction." (Euripides 81-82).

This is the heart of the Euripidean philosophy, that human nature is at its best when unrestricted and allowed to follow its own course in pursuit of the simple pleasures.