Global Issues: Ancient Greece – Art, Science, and War, Nigel McGilchrist

Ancient Greece – How is it relevant to us today? Do we see the dangers and dilemmas which we face in the confrontation with Russia over Ukraine when we look at the Great War between Athens and Sparta through the eyes of the West’s first and most thoughtful historian? History repeats itself, and there are valuable lessons for us about negotiation, escalation and the imagined “inevitability” of war in Thucydides’s analysis of a world-shaking confrontation which happened 2,400 years ago. To think perceptively about any aspect of the mind of Ancient Greece helps us to understand who we are, where our science and art come from, and why we think the way we do.