Античность как геном европейской и российской культуры

Agon is a result of great popularity of a competition in sports. In ancient Greece there were a number of national competitions, such as Olympian, Pythian, Nemian, and Istmian games. Winners of these games became national heroes. Statues were built in there honor, their names were kept in memory of many generations. Greek poet Pindar wrote a number of sentences about these games. His writings includes “moral credo” of the victors of agon: his success is a result of hard work, it includes strong morality, honesty, harmony between body and soul etc. Agon is a very good school for masculinity.

Te real kingdom of agon is drama, because it is a battle of characters, the struggle with the fatum. Greek tragedy was born not from the spirit of music, as Nietzsche said, but from the spirit of competition. Music itself was an emulative art. Greek literature is full of thousands stories about musical competitions. Te singer Famira tried to compete Muses in singing. A beautiful example is a myth about competition between Apollo, the god of Music, and Marcyas, the satyr. Te last one loved to play fute and challenged Apollo to the competition. But Apollo was a winner. Afer that he tied Marcyas to the tree and skinned him. He put a satyr’s pelt in the cave in the city of Kelenach. Te dead skin produced sad sounds, when somebody played the fute. Another myth tells us about musical competition between Apollo and Pan. Everybody, who was present at the competition, agreed, that the winner was Apollo, with the exception of king Midas. As a punishment, Apollo presented him the ears of a donkey.

Many agonal motives could be found also in painting. Pliny in his “Historia Naturalis” tells the story about a competition between two Greek painters – Appeles and Protogen. Once Appeles decided to visit his friend Protagen in his workshop. But at that time Protagen was out of his studio. As an evidence of his visit Appeles drew on the desk a very fne line. When Protagen returned, he saw the line and understood who was the visitor. So he also painted a line nearby, trying to do it better than Appeles. And then he lef. When Appeles returned again, he saw two lines, and then he drew the third one. Tis line was so fne and beautiful, that Protagen acknowledged his defeat. It seems, that Pliny’s history of painting is a history about competition of diferent masters in the art of drawing.

Te same was in Greek mind. In Greek philosophy agon created a dialogue as a method of thinking and discussion. Te nature of Greek Logos is agonistic. Plato’s dialogues are intellectual competitions, the battle of ideas. To the contrary of Oriental philosophy, Greek philosophy was developed as a struggle of diferent schools of thinking. Even the language was understood in terms of agonistic discussions. A Sophist philosopher Gorgias suggested that many speeches involved “demolishing of an opponent as one would destroy an enemy of battle”. Tat is why the competitive nature of language was using “warfare” metaphors.

In conclusion, we can say that the whole Greek culture was infuenced by agon. Tat was shown in many studies by Jacob Burckhardt, Friedrich Nietzsche, Johann Huizinga, Nicolay Bachtin, and many other historians of culture. Ancient tradition has a great infuence on European history. For many centuries Greek hero was a symbol of high morality and struggle against social chaos and barbarity. Late Middle Ages and early Renaissance try to revive many things from ancient Greece and Rome. Pedagogical system of Humanism was based on Greek education in attempt to harmonizing intellectual and physical exercises.

Ancient heroism was in the memory of many philosophers at the ages of Renaissance and Enlightenment. Italian philosopher Giambattista Vico, the frst European philosopher of history, was focused on phenomenon of heroism in ancient history. In his pioneer work “Szienza nuova” (1725) he divided history into three periods: “age of the Gods”, “age of the Heroes” and “age of Humans”. Te frst one was ruled by Gods law, the second – by law of Power, the third – by law of Reason. Te frst period created theocratic government, the second – aristocratic state, and third one – democratic republic and monarchy.

Vico was the frst philosopher, who developed an idea of progress in history. He considered that history was inconvertible, and that is why age of Heroes was impossible to return back. He wrote: “Heroism is impossible now. We need to make conclusions: the depressed people need heroes, philosophers studied them, and poets dreamed about them, but social life could not produce heroism anymore” (S.N., p.205).