In the last post, we started to discuss whether ancient eastern thought can be defined as philosophy or religion. As I have already mentioned, one of the most difficult things in philosophy is consensus, which is not bad because it is doubts that move the world of ideas and the spirit. Therefore, what matters most here is not certainty, but the incessant search for answers to eternal human questions. This is a starting point for you, the reader, to find answers that satisfy you.
Asian thought has as its main bases the religious tradition, the conception of the world, the problems of social behavior, but not the pure theoretical reason that emerged in Greece. Western thought tends, apart from some representatives, not so much towards the universal as towards the superficial; it develops in pure reasoning or in an empiricism limited to the most immediate, tends towards the method and the improvement of techniques, with increasing forgetfulness of cosmic motives and of tradition.
For a long time, in the East, myth and religion went hand in hand with philosophy, which does not mean immobility of ideas. When the first Greeks asked themselves, what man is, the colossal effort to systematize doctrines was already ready, or in advanced stages, in these three regions of the East:
Mesopotamia - already in 4000 BC, Assyrians and Chaldeans structured a worldview that lasted until Zoroaster (or Zarathustra) proposed a single god and conducted a religious reform, in present-day Iran.
India - the texts of the Vedas (Books of Knowledge) formed minds as early as 1500 BC, and Hinduism, Brahmanism and Buddhism came to the fore by the sixth century BC.
China - the Chang Dynasty was already introducing cultural transformations in 1600 BC. Then came the expansion of Tao do mysticism and the religious-political-family systematization of Confucius, which shaped Chinese society in the following centuries.
Mesopotamia
In the region of Asia, between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers (now Iraq and Iran), not only did innovations emerge, such as the wheel, the organization of agriculture and hydraulic engineering, but also the first writing (Sumerian) that is known. Cities like Nippur, Uruk and Eridu already existed in 3000 BC, with trade that grew steadily and a culture that spread to neighboring peoples and reached faraway lands like India and China. Mesopotamia is divided into two parts:
Upper Mesopotamia or Assyria, to the north - mountainous region in which the cities of Assur and Nineveh stood out. The Assyrians, as a warrior people, dominated this territory from 612 BC. to 539 BC;
Lower Mesopotamia or Chaldea, to the south - inhabited by the Sumerians and the Akkadians, people who built great cities, such as Ur and Nippur. The foundation of Babylon is attributed to the Akkadians.
In that arid region, rainfall was as scarce as in Egypt, but the construction of irrigation canals allowed for remarkable economic development: in summer, when the rivers flooded, the water was dammed up to be distributed during periods of drought. Among many peoples, Sumerians, Amorites, Assyrians, Chaldeans, and Akkadians inhabited the region.
The invention of writing
According to some historians, writing distinguishes prehistoric from historical societies. It is believed to have been invented in Mesopotamia around 3000 BC, although other forms of writing were created independently.
In the time when man lived in small villages, he managed to keep in his memory the names of the people who were part of his group, who belonged to each herd, the amount of grain chosen, among other information. However, when the great empires were formed, it became necessary to create a control system that preserved as long as possible the information that interested the king and his government, such as the names of his subjects, the taxes paid by them, and the values involved in commercial transactions.
Writing emerged to meet this need. Soon other matters began to be recorded in writing. Thus, sacred books, law codes, books from various areas of knowledge and literary works appeared.
The writing materials
In antiquity, people wrote on quite varied materials: the Sumerians used tablets made of clay, the Egyptians used papyrus leaves, a plant found in abundance on the banks of the Nile River. The Chinese are responsible for a fundamental invention in the 105th century BC: the paper.
The scribes
Specialists in the art of writing, scribes were responsible for writing official documents, as well as calculating royal taxes and the values of goods that entered and left the Palace's warehouses. Apprentices entered the scribal school at the age of eight and remained there for five years to learn the trade. Scribes enjoyed great prestige and good financial condition.
Code of Hammurabi
As it was a region of passage for several peoples, the Amorites realized that, to maintain order in social relations, it was necessary to create a code that would be recognized and applied by the population. In 1772 BC, King Hammurabi, who ruled Mesopotamia from 1792 to 1750 BC, began the preparation of this compilation.
The Code of Hammurabi was the first code of laws in history. This code was based on the law of Talion, which punished the criminal in an equivalent way to the crime committed. There were 281 precepts recorded on a stone in cuneiform writing. It is currently on display at the Louvre Museum in Paris. The purpose of the code was to ensure a common culture and the unification of the Babylonian kingdom.
With the invasions of the Babylonian Empire, the Code of Hammurabi was taken to the city of Susa, in present-day Iran. In 1901, a French expedition rediscovered the stone where the code was written. Abbot Jean-Vincent Scheil, a French religious and scholar of ancient peoples, translated the code shortly after the stone landed in Paris.
Religion and philosophy
The religious thought of the Mesopotamian peoples had a dualistic trait, admitting the existence of gods inclined towards Good and Evil. In this way, magic, divination, and astrology were used as means of interaction and knowledge of the designs of this complex set of deities. More elaborate thinking emerged in these early cells of urban life, in an area that later saw the flourishing cities of Nineveh and Babylon.
The original belief in the Mother Goddess, who in the Neolithic period personified the fertility of the earth, unfolded into countless cults of deities or supernatural beings that corresponded to the forces of nature. The goddess Anu is the vault of heaven. It symbolizes water and its fertility. Ishtar represents love and sexual relations.
The gods command the phenomena of nature and, little by little, assume the role of causing human events: war, peace, success, and misfortune. Around 2000 BC, Hammurabi established the cult of Marduk, or Baal, revered as the most important of the gods.
Baal is mentioned frequently in the Bible. In Canaan he was highly revered as the god of thunder. His name is a Semitic word meaning "lord" or "owner", initially being a title that later became a given name.
Who did Ahab blame for the drought? (1 Kings 18:17) According to Elijah, what was the cause of the drought? (1 Kings 18:18.) Explain that Ahab and his wife Jezebel turned the Israelites away from Heavenly Father and worshiped a false god, an idol called Baal.
The complex system of gods and beliefs is debugged in the eighth century BC. by Zoroaster who, in Persia (present-day Iran), affirms that there is only one God, Ahura Mazda, the principle of Good. Existing in the mind of every man, it constantly fights against Ariman, the principle of Evil. It is up to each being to act correctly for the victory of Good. Therefore, the wrath of the gods or natural phenomena are rejected. The search for explanations calls for more order and clarity and a greater degree of abstraction.
There was a pantheon of gods who were believed to control various aspects of life. The gods created everything. They controlled the natural forces of the universe that could be appeased through prayers, rituals, and sacrifices. The theocentric conception highlighted the small place that human beings occupied in the cosmos and developed a whole moral reflection.
Mesopotamian thought is contained in hymns, prayers, and rituals. It is necessary to consider the different and numerous myths that constitute an undoubted source of information in this regard, but which must be interpreted. It is not easy to understand and distinguish between them, those that contain true explanations and those that are part of incantations and rituals of religious festivals, containing episodes expressed through gestures.
Both the Babylonians and the Sumerians accepted the identity of the name and the thing signified, since, for them, having a name was synonymous with existing. The knowledge of the divine names had an enormous resonance. In the beginning, earth and sky were united. The goddess Nammu was the mother of heaven and earth and represented an abyss of fresh water upon which the world rested and floated. Thus, for the Sumerians, the abyss of fresh water was the one that gave rise to heaven and earth, united as a whole, in the form of a mountain. From this union came the god of the atmosphere, who was the one who separated them. The whole country was a sea.
The primitive gods were created or emerged, as if they had been born from that couple. The first of the gods who appeared endowed with a certain personality was Ea, god of the waters, called the procreator, and who is described as anthropomorphized. As for the younger gods, they clashed with their ancestors over the noise the younger generation made as they went out and entered.
But both gods, like men, like the earth, were part of the cosmos, they all had a common primeval matter and were included in its future.
And it was in the consciousness of the gods that the genesis of the first death wishes took place. The Sumerians and Babylonians worshiped three types of deities:
the sky, the waters, the earth, and the hells, which correspond to the different elements of the world;
the sky, the waters, the earth, and the hells, which correspond to the different elements of the world;
the sun, the moon, and the stars, which are the astral deities;
the fire, the lightning, the hurricane; the fertility gods, who constitute the forces of nature.
This reveals the intense feeling of communion with nature, together with the conception of the boundless sky, the strength of the wind and the fertility of the waters. The human being thus feels diminished in the face of the immensity and play of the forces of nature, and attributes to the creative principle’s feelings and an intelligence comparable or even superior to that of men. Like earth and sky, they came out of the same primeval matter. The gods preserved morality, sweetness, brutality, and majesty. They sowed terror and punished, but they also inspired trust and affection.
The Sumerian and Semitic conception had a rule that constituted the germ of the existence of all living beings and created activities, it was a kind of archetype that directed and marked the direction, functioning and nature of existence. Archetype is a psychology concept used to represent behavior patterns associated with a character or social role. These “characters” have characteristics perceived in a comparable way by all human beings. The gods possessed this archetype or totality, and they transmitted it, but they did not create it, because it was an eternal power, an unequaled force, capable of materializing in the beings that performed it.
While the Sumerians admitted that there were abstract divine powers, independent of the gods, the Semites, in turn, did not conceive of an external transcendence of the gods, and what they did was to develop the concept of personality to the maximum.
In any case, the Babylonians, by accepting and adopting the Sumerian pantheon as their own, also assimilated their own deities to those of their neighbors, and political circumstances only accelerated this process. When the Assyrian and Babylonian monarchies succeeded in forming universal empires, this unification of territories also served to unify the pantheon.
While this unifying process was taking place, the movement towards unity, there was a great interest in deepening the very concept of "god", although anthropomorphism was not overcome. An effort was made at abstraction and an insistence on feeling towards the unknown.
There is no purity in man
By his very nature, man perpetuates the sacrifice of Kingu, that is, he assumes, indirectly, the fault that the gods committed, as well as the punishment. Therefore, an initial state of purity cannot be admitted for man, since, even if he did not commit this fault, it already taints his divine origin, so that he was born impure. It is impossible not to notice the resemblance to the original sin of the Hebrews.
The breath given by the gods to man allowed his birth, and when this breath was withdrawn (which took the meaning of life) the individual became a kind of undifferentiated shadow that either retreats to hell or wanders in search of food. and a decent burial. Precisely the fate that the dead could suffer was what most worried the narrators, that darkness that surrounded them, or the dust from which they fell.
Death brought with it and activated reflection on morality in Mesopotamia, justice acquired significant importance, the numerous laws and regulations of the Assyrians and Babylonians manifest this legal concern. But those laws and those norms that the sovereigns advocated did not seek to serve only to regulate the social life of individuals, but rather highlighted the concern for the fact that justice is what prevails, as well as the order of the gods, and manifest the justice and the order of the supreme world of deities.
The quest for justice
This interest in justice sought the repression of the wicked and the wicked to prevent the weak from being crushed by the strong, to give light to the country. However, the problem also arose of how to explain the fact that the righteous suffer and the wicked triumph, for if the gods, who enjoy the greatest power, have the lives of men in their hands and reward justice and punish iniquity, how to explain such injustice?
The problem had already been raised in the Ur Dynasty and there were three texts devoted to this issue. The solutions point to the fact that suffering gives rise to the certainty of liberation, and from that moment on, ascension takes place. The gods maintain their power and control, without forgetting man's will to understand the implicit belief in the value of rational argumentation, which gives human beings an integrity capable of facing everything that stands in their way.
The concept of soul
One of the most important philosophical concepts in ancient Mesopotamia was that of the soul, considered immortal and composed of two parts, the breath of life and the spirit. The soul was essential to life. After death she left her body and traveled to the underworld, where she would be judged. The judgment would determine whether she would be rewarded or punished.
The nature of reality
Reality was composed of two separate realms, the physical and the spiritual. The physical realm was the world of everyday experience, and the spirit realm was the world of the gods and the afterlife. The spiritual realm was more important. The goal of life was to achieve a positive relationship with the gods. The physical realm was subject to change and decay. The spiritual realm was eternal and unchanging. The gods controlled the natural forces of the universe, so it was important to understand and respect their power.
The problem of evil
The gods were responsible for everything that was good or bad, but sometimes it was hard to understand why terrible things happened to good people. Therefore, it was important to maintain a positive relationship with the gods, even in the face of suffering and adversity.
The Epic of Gilgamesh
One of the most famous works of Mesopotamian literature, it tells the story of Gilgamesh and his quest for immortality after the death of his friend, Enkidu. He embarks on a journey to find a plant that can grant him eternal life but ends up failing in his quest. The work raises important philosophical questions about the nature of immortality. It also explores the relationship between humans and the gods and the importance of living a virtuous life.
Babylonian philosophy
The origins of Babylonian philosophy can be seen from the remote Mesopotamian knowledge, which was the basis of certain philosophies of life, particularly ethics. This Babylonian philosophy was present more in forms of dialect, dialogues, epic poetry, folklore, hymns, prose, and proverbs.
Esagil-kin-apli's Medical Diagnostic Manual, a writing dating from the 11th century BC, was based on a set of logical axioms, including the modern view that by examining and checking a patient's symptoms, it is possible to determine the disease, its development, and the chances of recovery.
During the 8th and 7th centuries BC, Babylonian astronomers began to study philosophy. They initially dealt with the ideal nature of the universe and began to employ an internal logic in their predictable planetary systems, which contributed to the philosophy of science and to astronomy in general.
It is likely that Babylonian philosophy influenced Greek philosophy, particularly Hellenistic. The Babylonian text Dialogue of Pessimism contains similarities with the agnostic thought of the sophists, Plato's dialogues, and the Socratic method.
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