The Classical Message in a Bottle – Should “Classical Wisdom” Determine Our Identity and Future?

Abstract

"No one finds it easy to live uncomplainingly and fearlessly with
the thesis that human reality is constantly being made and unmade,
and that anything like a stable essence is constantly under threat."
These were the words used by Edward Said in the late 1970ís
in the context of introduction of the new paradigms for the identity
of the people, communities and societies in the East and the West,
as well as the world as a whole. He was ahead of a wider decades-
long process of re-evaluating and reimagining of our identities and
values, leading to exposure of serious and numerous misconceptions
and illusions in the perceptions and analyses of the self and the
other.
The growing tendencies of scientific relativism and constant
re-evaluation of the key paradigms, especially in social sciences
and humanities, of the last decades, were further emphasized by
the massive waves of globalisation, that have shaken societal tradi-
tions, norms, and principals all over the world. One of the key aspects
of this transformative process in the West was the confrontation
with the societal and scientific biases created by the Eurocentric
views of the world and human history, connected to the dominant
classicistic traditions in both society and academia.
This paper provides a novel multidisciplinary approach in
thinking about our classical traditions and examines if the classical
principals, ideals, and ìwisdomî are still relevant in confronting
contemporary challenges of the world and reimagining our own
identity and our vision for the future.