THE MARXIST VIEW OF ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY (HIE subject of this paper is the application of the Marxist interpretation of history to ancient philosophy in two recent books: Mr Farrington’s Science and Politics in the Ancient World and Mr George Thomson's Aeschylus and Athens. Mr Thomson’s book covers a much wider field; his references to the philosophers are only incidental. But he seems to share Mr Farrington’s view of them; and he is an avowed believer in the ‘Marxist doctrine. ‘A.word must frst be said about this doctrine. I will quote one statement of it from a work which is still cited as authoritative. Engels, in his polemic against the unfortunate Dihring,* declared that the conception of history had been decisively changed by the ‘new facts’ of the working-class movements in the 1830's and 1840's. “The new facts’, he says, ‘made imperative a new examination of all past history, and then it was seen that all past history was the history of class struggles, that these warring classes of society are always the product of the modes of production and exchange, in a word of the economic conditions of their time; that therefore the economic structure of society always forms the real basis from which, in the last analysis, is to be explained the whole superstructure of legal and political institutions, as well as the religious, philosophical, and other conceptions of each historical period. Now idealism was driven from its last refuge, the philo- sophy of history; now a materialist conception of history was propounded, and the way found to explain man’s conciousness by his being, instead of, as heretofore, his being by his consciousness. This is a very sweeping statement, I shall try to follow out its implications in a train of thought which can be traced in Mr Farrington’s treatment of the history of philosophy, and in parti- cular in his view of Epicurus and Plato. * Ant-Dihing (English trans), p. 32. m7THE MARXIST VIEW OF ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY T am not at all concerned to deny that the economic interpre tation of history has thrown into relief certain neglected factors which have had some influence on the course of religious and philosophic speculation. I have long believed that at least some philosophic and scientific concepts have a social origin, in one sense of that highly ambiguous phrase. In a book published thirty years ago I tried to trace some of them back to collective repre- Sentations current in pre-scientifie ages and preserved in later myth and poetry. But at that time I had never heard of dialectical materialism, and my speculations (for what they were worth) ‘were entirely independent of Marxian doctrine, Now that I have made some study of that doctrine, I can see further light to be gained from that quarter. The history of philosophy may be brought into closer touch with the history of other forms of human activity, provided that the influence of economic and other social factors can be measured and appraised dispassionately. But here at once—over that word ‘dispassionately’—I find myself at issue with my Marxian friends. They will not admit that either the philosophers themselves, or the scholar who interprets them, can be dispassionate or disinterested. For the Marxian there can be no light without heat; indeed the more light he sees, the hotter he becomes. ‘The reason appears plainly in that passage I quoted from Engels. The Marxian doctrine took shape a century ago, when the Industrial Revolution had produced an acute crisis in the clas-war, and Europe seemed to be in the bieth-throes of a social revolution, which proved to be abortive. The Communist Manifesto was issued in 1848; and since then ithas become the fighting creed of a very energetic political party. The members of such a party find strength in the conviction that their opponents, even in the sphere of abstract thought and scholarship, are not merely mistaken, but selfishly clinging to their wealth and social position. Their own generous sympathy with the oppressed is further strengthened by an interpretation of ll history which assures them that they are on the right side, that is to say, on the side which is bound to win. If they even tried to be dispassionate, their attitude would be worse than wrong: it would be ‘unhistorical’. n8‘THE MARXIST VIEW OF ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY Fortified by this creed, the Marxian carries back into the study of the past that mood of righteous indignation which is so appro- priate to a partisan in the contemporary conflict, Quite naturally; since he holds that “all past history is the history of class struggles’, and all philosophical systems are reflections, on the plane of ab- stract ideas, of the economic antagonisms of society. It follows that the philosophers, and even the poets in so far as they have philosophies of life, must be lined up on one or the other side of the class conflict, as it was being waged in the society of their time and place. Their professedly disinterested speculations ust be correlated with some economic or social change. Those ‘who can be ranged on the side of the social forces which were in fact destined to prevail, will be approved as revolutionary and progressive. Those who appear to be supporting a cause which ‘was in fact destined to be lost, will be denounced as selfishly erying to perpetuate the privileges of their own class. Now, if we ap- proach the study of Greck philosophy from this angle, we notice at once that (as the ancients themselves perceived) there were two main traditions running side by side all the way through. At various points, indeed, they might overlap and flow into one another in composite systems; but on the whole they maintained a distinct, character, and, as time went on, came into more open conflict. ‘The first tradition was called Ionian, Starting from Thales and Anaximander, it was continued in the fifth century by Anaxagoras, Axchelaus, Diogenes of Apollonia, and found its most fortunate expression in the Atomism of Democritus, adopted and modified by Epicurus. The trend ofthis tradition was towards materialism— the belief that reality isto be found in the bodies we can see and handle, and that the soul consists merely of bodies of specially fine texture, destined to be dispersed at the moment of death. The existence of gods was not denied; but they were not to interfere swith the course of physical events, which is left to the purposeless play of necessity and chance. The other tradition, called Italian, starts from Pythagoras. It throws the emphasis, not on matter, but on form, and sets the interests of an immortal soul above those of the perishable body. Ie culminates in the Platonic idealism, which asserts that soul is 19