Did Zeus Exist?
July 31, 2013, 12:15 pm
By GARY GUTTING
Gary Gutting is a professor of philosophy at the University of Notre Dame, and an editor of Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews.
When my children were little, they liked to play “Mother, May I?” At one point, I combined the game with an early introduction to classical culture, changing the key question to “Zeus, May I?” with an imaginary thunderbolt throwing back anyone forgetting to ask permission.
Reminiscing about this recently, I asked the kids if they had thought that Zeus was real. “Well,” one said, “I knew he didn’t exist anymore, but figured that he did back in ancient Greece.” This set me thinking about why we are so certain that Zeus never existed. Of course, we are in no position to say that he did. But are we really in a position to say that he didn’t?
The standard line of thought seems to be that we have no evidence at all for his existence and so have every right to deny it. Perhaps there is no current evidence of his existence — certainly no reports of avenging thunderbolts or of attempted seductions, no sightings around Mount Olympus. But back in the day (say, 500-400 B.C.), there would seem to have been considerable evidence, enough in any case to make his reality unquestioned among most members of a rapidly advancing Greek civilization.
Further, as this civilization developed the critical tools of historiography and philosophy, Zeus’s reality remained widely unquestioned. Socrates and Plato criticized certain poetic treatments, which showed Zeus and the gods in an unworthy light. But they never questioned the very existence of the gods, and Socrates regularly followed the dictates of his daimon, a personal divine guide. There were many questions about the true nature of the divine, but few about its existence.
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/07/31/did-zeus-exist/?hp&_r=2
A curious little exercise.
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