"We speak of the ancients... Their struggles were physical, immediate; ours are often abstract and technological, pulling us further from the essence of what it means to be human."
Which ancients do you have in mind? Not trying to disagree with you; just want to understand where you're coming from.
There is a letter, possibly fictional, that Alexander the Great wrote to Darius III of Persia during the lead-up to battle between the two. Darius had sent Alexander a ball, as if to say that Alexander was a mere boy who needed to go home and play with a boy's things. Alexander wrote back to say that the ball was a symbol of the globe, which Alexander would soon possess. Whether the letter was fictional or not, both Darius and Alexander would have been well aware that the world is round. Educated people have always known that it is round; it's not a great mystery, and you can figure it out for yourself if you pay enough attention.
I bring this up because animals don't know that it is round and they wouldn't care. Even globetrotters like the Arctic Tern and Blue Whale don't know. Man knows, and this is just one example of the nature of human intellect. Further examples can be seen in architecture, astronomy, and geometry. The earliest of the ancient Egyptians-- the most ancient people for whom we have historical records-- built enormous pyramids of subtle geometric proportion and in positions precisely reflecting specific stars in the sky. The three largest pyramids at Giza, for example, are part of a larger network of pyramids that replicate the lower half of what we call Orion and some stars immediately south of Orion. The Egyptians called this constellation S3h, and it represented Osiris, a character central to a religious cosmology that, while not our cosmology, cannot be lightly dismissed. The ancient Greeks contemplated the shapes that would result if a plane intersected a cone, and thereby they gave us everything important we know today about the parabola (as in "parabolic trajectory"), hyperbola, and ellipse. We have not made significant advances in this area beyond what Apollonius of Perga wrote down thousands of years ago. The ancients were not lacking in abstract and technological culture.
Does the abstract and technological pull us further from the essence of what it means to be human? Well, do understand the essence of anything, philosophers throughout the millennia would tell us to look at a thing's causes. (Camus is among those who sought to abandon such quaint ancient simplicity. Well, good luck to Camus.) Be particularly alert to four types of causes: efficient, material, formal, and teleological. If we look at man in terms of these four causes, we end up developing an anthropology: a theory of what man is. The traditional conclusion is that man is a spiritual creature with a physical body. Though such a combination seems impossible on its face, here are the Egyptian pyramids, and there is Greek geometry, and here again is Darius' gift to Alexander. The theory explains much.
If someone doesn't like that theory, fair enough. If a new one's needed, if we need a new anthropology, then start with the causes. All four of them. Learn the causes of a thing and you'll find that thing's essence.
I appreciate your response and the depth of historical knowledge you brought to the discussion. However, when I referred to "the ancients," I wasn’t speaking of the Egyptians, the Greeks, or even the early civilizations that developed complex architecture, mathematics, and cosmologies. The ancients I referred to lived long before any stone was laid at Giza, before organized religion, before the written word allowed us to capture our knowledge in a way that could be passed down without oral tradition.
Human beings existed for tens of thousands of years before the technological and abstract revolutions you referenced. Before philosophy, before geometry, before the idea of divine cosmologies governing the stars. Their struggles were immediate, physical, and centered on survival in its purest form. Their abstract thoughts were limited by the necessity of the present moment. They did not build pyramids to reach the gods, nor did they contemplate the trajectory of a spear using mathematical principles. They hunted, gathered, and survived.
It is precisely this point that ties into my argument. The development of abstract and technological complexity has shaped human thought, often to the point where we lose sight of the primal essence of what it means to be human. The more we engage in intellectual, theological, and technological pursuits, the further we move from the immediacy of existence that governed our species for most of its time on this planet. That does not mean such pursuits lack value, but they represent a shift from what humanity was for the majority of its history.
You referenced Aristotle's four causes as a framework for understanding essence, and I would agree that they provide a useful lens. But even before one can discuss formal or teleological causes, one must acknowledge the raw, unshaped reality of early human life. A life where the immediate environment dictated one's understanding, and survival was not a philosophical question but a daily trial.
Camus' rejection of essentialist frameworks like Aristotle’s does not stem from ignorance but from an acknowledgment that human beings, despite all their advances, remain fundamentally adrift in a world that provides no inherent answers. The pyramids stand, Greek geometry endures, and yet the fundamental questions remain. Questions that the first humans, those true ancients, never had the luxury to ask.
So, when I speak of the ancients, I do not mean the builders of pyramids or the thinkers who plotted the cosmos. I mean those who came before, who lived without temples, without philosophy, without the layers of abstraction that we now take for granted. It is their existence, their raw and unfiltered engagement with reality, that I believe we have moved away from.
"We speak of the ancients... Their struggles were physical, immediate; ours are often abstract and technological, pulling us further from the essence of what it means to be human."
Which ancients do you have in mind? Not trying to disagree with you; just want to understand where you're coming from.
There is a letter, possibly fictional, that Alexander the Great wrote to Darius III of Persia during the lead-up to battle between the two. Darius had sent Alexander a ball, as if to say that Alexander was a mere boy who needed to go home and play with a boy's things. Alexander wrote back to say that the ball was a symbol of the globe, which Alexander would soon possess. Whether the letter was fictional or not, both Darius and Alexander would have been well aware that the world is round. Educated people have always known that it is round; it's not a great mystery, and you can figure it out for yourself if you pay enough attention.
I bring this up because animals don't know that it is round and they wouldn't care. Even globetrotters like the Arctic Tern and Blue Whale don't know. Man knows, and this is just one example of the nature of human intellect. Further examples can be seen in architecture, astronomy, and geometry. The earliest of the ancient Egyptians-- the most ancient people for whom we have historical records-- built enormous pyramids of subtle geometric proportion and in positions precisely reflecting specific stars in the sky. The three largest pyramids at Giza, for example, are part of a larger network of pyramids that replicate the lower half of what we call Orion and some stars immediately south of Orion. The Egyptians called this constellation S3h, and it represented Osiris, a character central to a religious cosmology that, while not our cosmology, cannot be lightly dismissed. The ancient Greeks contemplated the shapes that would result if a plane intersected a cone, and thereby they gave us everything important we know today about the parabola (as in "parabolic trajectory"), hyperbola, and ellipse. We have not made significant advances in this area beyond what Apollonius of Perga wrote down thousands of years ago. The ancients were not lacking in abstract and technological culture.
Does the abstract and technological pull us further from the essence of what it means to be human? Well, do understand the essence of anything, philosophers throughout the millennia would tell us to look at a thing's causes. (Camus is among those who sought to abandon such quaint ancient simplicity. Well, good luck to Camus.) Be particularly alert to four types of causes: efficient, material, formal, and teleological. If we look at man in terms of these four causes, we end up developing an anthropology: a theory of what man is. The traditional conclusion is that man is a spiritual creature with a physical body. Though such a combination seems impossible on its face, here are the Egyptian pyramids, and there is Greek geometry, and here again is Darius' gift to Alexander. The theory explains much.
If someone doesn't like that theory, fair enough. If a new one's needed, if we need a new anthropology, then start with the causes. All four of them. Learn the causes of a thing and you'll find that thing's essence.
I appreciate your response and the depth of historical knowledge you brought to the discussion. However, when I referred to "the ancients," I wasn’t speaking of the Egyptians, the Greeks, or even the early civilizations that developed complex architecture, mathematics, and cosmologies. The ancients I referred to lived long before any stone was laid at Giza, before organized religion, before the written word allowed us to capture our knowledge in a way that could be passed down without oral tradition.
Human beings existed for tens of thousands of years before the technological and abstract revolutions you referenced. Before philosophy, before geometry, before the idea of divine cosmologies governing the stars. Their struggles were immediate, physical, and centered on survival in its purest form. Their abstract thoughts were limited by the necessity of the present moment. They did not build pyramids to reach the gods, nor did they contemplate the trajectory of a spear using mathematical principles. They hunted, gathered, and survived.
It is precisely this point that ties into my argument. The development of abstract and technological complexity has shaped human thought, often to the point where we lose sight of the primal essence of what it means to be human. The more we engage in intellectual, theological, and technological pursuits, the further we move from the immediacy of existence that governed our species for most of its time on this planet. That does not mean such pursuits lack value, but they represent a shift from what humanity was for the majority of its history.
You referenced Aristotle's four causes as a framework for understanding essence, and I would agree that they provide a useful lens. But even before one can discuss formal or teleological causes, one must acknowledge the raw, unshaped reality of early human life. A life where the immediate environment dictated one's understanding, and survival was not a philosophical question but a daily trial.
Camus' rejection of essentialist frameworks like Aristotle’s does not stem from ignorance but from an acknowledgment that human beings, despite all their advances, remain fundamentally adrift in a world that provides no inherent answers. The pyramids stand, Greek geometry endures, and yet the fundamental questions remain. Questions that the first humans, those true ancients, never had the luxury to ask.
So, when I speak of the ancients, I do not mean the builders of pyramids or the thinkers who plotted the cosmos. I mean those who came before, who lived without temples, without philosophy, without the layers of abstraction that we now take for granted. It is their existence, their raw and unfiltered engagement with reality, that I believe we have moved away from.