Did the Greeks Believe in Their Myths?
by
by
Paula Wissing (Translation)
The Ethics of Journalism
One of the academic hoops that almost all doctoral students must jump through to obtain their degree is demonstration of a ‘complete knowledge’ of their chosen topic. This is usually interpreted to mean a mastery of the most recent professional literature - authors, controversies, unsolved problems, methods used etc. The candidate is expected to enter into and absorb the academic culture he or she wants to join before anyone will take seriously his or her views about how that culture might be improved. Before writing there must be total immersion.
Some, perhaps many, find this requirement tedious at best and at worst entirely irrelevant to the intellectual project they have in mind. But from the ancient Greeks onward, it is this certified knowledge of what has gone before that is the sine qua non of respectable ideas. Not truth, or originality, or practical significance, but tradition - what has been handed on from others. One may criticise, modify, or destroy the views of another but only after one has demonstrated an understanding of these views.
Since the birth of the university in the Middle Ages, this requirement has been enforced through the existence of a community of scholars which is broadly in agreement about the content of the relevant tradition - the vulgate or received texts - upon which intellectual certification is based. Without this community, advance is made impossible, among other reasons because the definition of advance itself would be moot. The fact that many of the best minds balk at the requirement to serve a sort of apprenticeship or noviciate, doesn’t mitigate the dominance of the community. They will only be successful if they can show how their ideas fit, or don’t, with the ideas of their colleagues both past and present.
By the standards of intellectual life, ever since dominated by the university, ancient writers of events were journalists not historians. They wrote what was reported to them, generally in good faith, but with little effort to assess the actual occurrence of events. Internal consistency in an account was sufficient to accept it as ‘true’. Or at least sufficiently credible to be used as a focus of intellectual contemplation. What was presented were not definitive facts but a melange of eye-witness reporting, tall tales, and authorial inferences. They rarely argued a case but aimed to set forth what had been passed down with commentary. Imagination was the foundation of the entire process, but imagination sparked by the same attention tradition as subsequent ‘qualified’ types.
Veyne is explicit in his view of both history and journalism and: “... the analogy between ancient history and the deontology or methodology of modem journalism. A reporter adds nothing to his credibility by including his infonnant's identity. We judge his value on internal criteria. We need only read him to know whether he is intelligent, impartial, or precise and whether he has a broad cultural background.” His presumption (and implication) is clear: neither history nor journalism can be judged with reference to either ‘the facts’ nor external authority. The ‘truth’ is only accessible within the text itself and by the standards of the culture from which it emanates.
This is likely to be disconcerting to positivists and even less rigid scientific types who are trained in the methods of the university. But that is because those folk exist within the fantasy that words can be matched against reality and then assessed for their degree of correlation. That this is impossible was obvious to the Greeks who considered the community of readers to be constituted as laymen such as themselves - educated, discerning, interested in their culture but not experts - who were able to make judgments of value. Truth for this community is constituted by that which is significant to contemplate, not that which should be considered as factually correct much less believed in the Christian sense. Myth was intended to provoke thought - moral, psychological, spiritual, and social - not faith. To believe was to value not to affirm. In that sense the Greeks believed their myths.
In our era, journalism and journalistic readership appear to have lost two key attributes when compared with their Greek forebears. As Veyne suggests, the ideal of deontological (value free) reporting is a modern conceit. It simply cannot be accomplished. Nor is it desirable. Such reporting implies the rejection of tradition and therefore the very culture in which the writing takes place. The readership is often similarly rootless. It doesn’t possess the ability to identify the lack of cultural erudition or the internal coherence of what they read. From a cultural perspective they are illiterate. They believe what they read with the fervour of faith - the more salacious, the more faith they invest. This has probably been the case for generations. But the triumph of the the likes of Trump and QAnon make the case without question. Journalism as the Greeks knew it is dead.
One of the academic hoops that almost all doctoral students must jump through to obtain their degree is demonstration of a ‘complete knowledge’ of their chosen topic. This is usually interpreted to mean a mastery of the most recent professional literature - authors, controversies, unsolved problems, methods used etc. The candidate is expected to enter into and absorb the academic culture he or she wants to join before anyone will take seriously his or her views about how that culture might be improved. Before writing there must be total immersion.
Some, perhaps many, find this requirement tedious at best and at worst entirely irrelevant to the intellectual project they have in mind. But from the ancient Greeks onward, it is this certified knowledge of what has gone before that is the sine qua non of respectable ideas. Not truth, or originality, or practical significance, but tradition - what has been handed on from others. One may criticise, modify, or destroy the views of another but only after one has demonstrated an understanding of these views.
Since the birth of the university in the Middle Ages, this requirement has been enforced through the existence of a community of scholars which is broadly in agreement about the content of the relevant tradition - the vulgate or received texts - upon which intellectual certification is based. Without this community, advance is made impossible, among other reasons because the definition of advance itself would be moot. The fact that many of the best minds balk at the requirement to serve a sort of apprenticeship or noviciate, doesn’t mitigate the dominance of the community. They will only be successful if they can show how their ideas fit, or don’t, with the ideas of their colleagues both past and present.
By the standards of intellectual life, ever since dominated by the university, ancient writers of events were journalists not historians. They wrote what was reported to them, generally in good faith, but with little effort to assess the actual occurrence of events. Internal consistency in an account was sufficient to accept it as ‘true’. Or at least sufficiently credible to be used as a focus of intellectual contemplation. What was presented were not definitive facts but a melange of eye-witness reporting, tall tales, and authorial inferences. They rarely argued a case but aimed to set forth what had been passed down with commentary. Imagination was the foundation of the entire process, but imagination sparked by the same attention tradition as subsequent ‘qualified’ types.
Veyne is explicit in his view of both history and journalism and: “... the analogy between ancient history and the deontology or methodology of modem journalism. A reporter adds nothing to his credibility by including his infonnant's identity. We judge his value on internal criteria. We need only read him to know whether he is intelligent, impartial, or precise and whether he has a broad cultural background.” His presumption (and implication) is clear: neither history nor journalism can be judged with reference to either ‘the facts’ nor external authority. The ‘truth’ is only accessible within the text itself and by the standards of the culture from which it emanates.
This is likely to be disconcerting to positivists and even less rigid scientific types who are trained in the methods of the university. But that is because those folk exist within the fantasy that words can be matched against reality and then assessed for their degree of correlation. That this is impossible was obvious to the Greeks who considered the community of readers to be constituted as laymen such as themselves - educated, discerning, interested in their culture but not experts - who were able to make judgments of value. Truth for this community is constituted by that which is significant to contemplate, not that which should be considered as factually correct much less believed in the Christian sense. Myth was intended to provoke thought - moral, psychological, spiritual, and social - not faith. To believe was to value not to affirm. In that sense the Greeks believed their myths.
In our era, journalism and journalistic readership appear to have lost two key attributes when compared with their Greek forebears. As Veyne suggests, the ideal of deontological (value free) reporting is a modern conceit. It simply cannot be accomplished. Nor is it desirable. Such reporting implies the rejection of tradition and therefore the very culture in which the writing takes place. The readership is often similarly rootless. It doesn’t possess the ability to identify the lack of cultural erudition or the internal coherence of what they read. From a cultural perspective they are illiterate. They believe what they read with the fervour of faith - the more salacious, the more faith they invest. This has probably been the case for generations. But the triumph of the the likes of Trump and QAnon make the case without question. Journalism as the Greeks knew it is dead.
posted by The Mind of BlackOxford @ April 13, 2021
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