Does Herodotus believe in Cultural Relativism Essay

For its magazine and place, The Histories of Herodotus is a work of remarkably lordly scope. To set the pose for the wars amidst Greece and Persia ( 490-479 B. C. ), Herodotus describes the geographical and ethnic backg exposit and re believes the political muniment of Lydia, Media, Babylon, Egypt, Persia, Scythia, Libya, Ionia, and various classical city-states in Asia Minor, on the Aegean islands, and on the European mainland.To nature the results of his research (historie, in Greek) with the greatest nil and accuracy, Herodotus traveled to many of these places and ga in that respectd primary data from native in constructants. For this type of research, in the words of a forward-looking commentator, Herodotus merits the backing non whole if of the father of score he is in addition the father of comparative anthropology. Among the various classes of information which Herodotus seems to sop up emphasized, thusly suggesting a pattern for later translations, wer e conglutination customs, religious rites, burial practices, and food habits.The description of these four categories of traits, or well-disposed institutions, were not necessarily executed in the round for e truly tribe that happened to stroll crosswise the pages of the Histories more(prenominal)over they were menti whizd often enough to evince the direction taken by his curiosity, and the satisfy of the questions he probably put to informants. Herodotus, the old-fashioned Greek, was a cheerful, inquisitive, rationalistic extrovert who traveled over his conception to discover the facts, who to a faultk rape in telling a straightforward story provided usually avoided the lure to wander very far from olive-drab common sense.His cultural relativism is well cognize and such(prenominal) discussed, hardly it is particularly famous that Greeks and tempestuouss atomic number 18 placed on a equal footing at the outset. Distinctions between Greek and non-Greek break down as the work progresses the first crosspatch for whom we adopt any detailed information is the Hellenized Lydian king, Croesus the divisions of lands public among the Greeks that separate Greek and non-Greek peoples atomic number 18 purely haughty we learn of the Phoenician melodic phrase of Spartas kings and Herodotus states that the descendants of Perseus came to be counted as Greeks.The come across dichotomy is not the Hellenic- cruel bipolarity, only when rather the opposition of the ordered nine based on law and the arbitrary rule of the despot. But political and social institutions ar fragile structures, and Herodotus gives no take in charge that the Greek superiority at the prison term of the Iranian Wars, which was based upon those institutions, bequeath last. In fact his work closes on an baleful note that appears to warn imperial capital of Greece that it is in danger of becoming, if it has not already become, the barbarian.We are presented with the grueso me picture of the crucifixion of the Iranian satrap Artayctes at the command of the Athenian commander Xanthippus, father of Pericles, and a put together of wisdom from the Persian founding father, Cyrus, on the dangers of success and affluence. And it is well to remember that Herodotus wrote coarse after the Persian threat had passed, when Athenian imperial power was at its apogee. Herodotos cheer in reciprocality is symptomatic of coeval philosophy, not least in Ionia.Moreover, Herodotos very project, his attempt to explain and explore the Persian Wars, can be considered as a study of reciprocity in cross-cultural fundamental interaction, not least because those wars were for Herodotos a stage in a common, cross-cultural process, as he asserts in the proem. Indeed, war itself whitethorn be seen as an exchange, a reciprocal beneathtaking the tactics of the Skythian Idanthyrsos allow him to mesh war while explicitly rejecting the human creations beings congenership that war usually entails.Herodotos origins in horse opera Asia Minor, a key area of interface between Greek and non-Greek horticulture, may shake led him to give particular aspect to the exhaust of cross-cultural reciprocity, as also to the Persian Wars, for which the Ionian Revolt had been the catalyst, if not the cause. At the akin time, the justice and dark of imperialism remained a burning issue by dint of and through the fifth nose candy into the fourth, and not only Persian imperialism, merely also Athenian, Spartan, and Macedonian.The Persian Wars were the great antecedents of the Peloponnesian War, in the proto(prenominal) years of which Herodotos seems to postulate completed his work. The Persians themselves proceed to play a major mapping in the politics of the Greek world the onset of the Peloponnesian War seems to gain inspired new attempts to deal with them, and with new(prenominal)(a) non-Greeks, as indicated in comic bolt in Aristophanes Akharnians of 425 BC. 25 This is understandable, for it was to be Persian resources that would give ultimate victory to the Spartans in that war.Thus, it is quite possible that crosscultural reciprocity was a topical guardianship in capital of Greece and elsewhere when Herodotos completed his work, though the issue had been close to the centre of Greek preoccupations at least since the time of the Persian Wars, Herodotos subject. The Persian Wars had reinforced a Hellenic self-image, delimitate by contrast with the barbarian identicalness, and had thitherby move on problematized relationships between Greek and non-Greek. In particular, Greeks (especially Athenians, perhaps) could and did use their defeat of Persia as hindrance of a broader superiority over the barbarian.In exploring the difficulties of forming relationships with the other, Herodotos Histories present refs with failures and disasters, arising primarily from ignorance, over-confidence, and cultural chauvinism. There is a defi nite share of pessimism in the Histories, for the in powerfulness to penetrate beyond contingent nomoi and thereby to see other as self is taken to be an observable feature of human nature, as manifested throughout the narrative. In particular, wars are seen to be the products of injustice and attendant ignorance.But there is also hope for the author claims for himself the ability to rise above commonplace failings and offers to set up his readers with a better understanding of themselves, of others, and of reciprocity. uniform Kroisos, the reader may pass into a state of deeper understanding through advice actualize by experience. Where Kroisos had the advice of Solon and suffered personal disaster, the reader has the advice of Herodotos the author and suffers vicarious disaster, experiencing experiences.Baldry notices that Herodotos calls into question the full-length dichotomy between Greek and barbarian, when he presents the Egyptian perspective, according to which barbari ans are not those who do not speak Greek, exclusively those who do not speak Egyptian. At the same time, as Laurot has shown, Herodotos displays no vex in condemning barbarians as such, nor in subordinating them to Greeks. Rather, his presentation in the Histories of nomoi of the barbarian other offers insights into the nomoi of the Greek self (or better, selves), as yet as the various Greek nomoi occasion Herodotos principal frame of reference and benchmark.However, as Rosellini and Said valuably stress, Herodotos does not present the barbarian other as a big unity, any more than he presents the Greeks themselves as a unity rather he ranges across the different nomoi that exist among barbarians and through the complexities of interaction between various barbarian peoples. The Histories are not so much a mirror, as Hartog would have it, but a hall of mirrors with multiple reflections.The key point is that in the Histories cultural differences, so far profound they may be, are p resented as secondary to a common human nature and a common human condition in that sense too Greek is barbarian, self is other. The categories of Greek and barbarian are familiar to Herodotos, but on his view, as the proem indicates, they need not entail the subordination of the barbarian, whose achievements are to be celebrated also. For Herodotos, it is humanness that is the natural identity and the group identity that matters, and man-made variations are clear uply contingent, for all their exotic reputation and interest.Confirmation of such a view of Herodotos may be found in the condemnatory response of Plutarch, for whom Herodotos is far too positive about barbarians. The ferocity of Plutarchs response (indeed, his very decision to import a response at all) further indicates the strength of the challenge that Herodotos case presented to the smug asseverations of Greek specialness that seem to have developed through the fifth century and which Plutarch in his day assumed t o be right and proper. Cross-cultural interaction was rudimentary to Herodotos project in the Histories.At the same time, the problematic nature of reciprocity the disbelief that arises from its under-negotiation is particularly apparent in interaction across cultures. Indeed, Herodotos concern with the problematics of reciprocity as a phenomenon can be seen as intimately bound up with his concern with cross-cultural interaction. Of course, Herodotos starting-point is a matter of mere speculation. But we can and should observe the innate relationship between cross-cultural interaction, crosscultural reciprocity, and the problematics of reciprocity as a phenomenon.It is precisely at heart the problematics of cross-cultural reciprocity that the appreciation of cultural relativism is particularly necessary. Therefore, if we move from the claim, already mentioned, that there is a strong sense in which the Histories are about reciprocity to adopt why Herodotos should be so arouse in the phenomenon, I would suggest that an settlement is to be found not in the topicality of reciprocity as a al-Qaida in the later fifth century, but in the rationale of Herodotos very undertaking.A broadlybased treatment of the Persian Wars by its very nature invites a simultaneous and built-in treatment of reciprocity as a phenomenon. To examine societies is to explore forms of reciprocities. All the more so, when societies invite comparisons through their It also seems clear that Herodotus approached the task of describing manners and customs with a fairly definite idea of what be a culture, and a fairly peculiar(prenominal) set of questions for evoking details from informants.The criteria which separated one group from another and gave individuality to his descriptive portraits were common descent, common talking to, common religion, and the service of like manners in the littler details of living, such as dress, diet, and dwellings. The Argippeans, who lived at the foo t of the Ural Mountains, were presented vividly as being bald from birth, speaking a language of their own, using no weapons, dispensing justice in the quarrels of their neighbors, and dressing after the manner of the Scythians. They lived on the juice of a species of cherry, making the lees into a solid cake which they ate alternatively of meat.They dwell each man, he said, under a tree, covering it in wintertime with a white felt cloth, but using no felt in summer. For each group, in other words, vii categories of cultural fact are given. We are told their geographical location and something of their environment. We are told of their language, their dress, their food, their dwellings, their form of self-defense, or their lack of it, their prestige as judges among other peoples. On the other hand, concerning Egypt, one of the more important culture areas, Herodotus says at the outset that he will have to extend his remarks to some length.This clownishits climate, its people and animalswas a constant strike and challenge to the observer, very much as Japan with its customs and Australia with its fauna have challenged the modern traveller. For the Egyptians the number of cultural categories evoked far exceeds the seven used in describing the Argippeans. As for history, Bodins belief in its power to confer knowledge concerning the ways of mankind was unfaltering and much of both(prenominal) the Methodus and the Republique is devoted to the assemblage of documentation to support this contention.Never in the first place perhaps had a writer on politics or ethnography amassed so large a body of dated materials or set(p) so large a literature under tribute. He was well-read, not only in the law and the Bible, but in the Talmud and the Cabala in the ancients, including Herodotus, Strabo, Cicero, Tacitus, and Caesar in the modern historians, such as Joinville, Froissart, Monstrelet, Commines and in the travelers, Marco Polo, king of beasts Africanus, and Las Casas.As they err, said he, who study the maps of regions before they have learned accurately the relation of the whole universe and the separate split to each other and to the whole, so they are not less mistaken who imply they can understand particular histories before they have judged the order and sequence of common history and of all times, set fore as it were in a table.