Did Athens have a democracy or an oligarchy?

 

In ancient philosophy, there were two schools of thought that were popular. One was most similar to Rousseau (Jean-Jacques Rousseau was a Genevan philosopher). The school argued that nature is good and civilization is bad. Naturally, all men are equal; civilization has made them into classes. Another school, most like Nietzsche (Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was a German philosopher), claimed that all men are unequal, contrary to the previous one. Morality was an invention of the weak to limit and deter the strong. That power is the supreme virtue and the supreme desire of man. Of all the forms of government, the wisest and most natural is aristocracy.

Obviously, the latter had an attack on democracy, which was the rise of the wealthy minority in Athens. It was called the Oligarchical Party. How it can be considered a democracy is not clear. There was not much democracy to denounce in Athens. Aristocracy was the symbol of power and government. Athens had 400,000 citizens, and about 250,000 were slaves, without any political rights. Only a few of the 150,000 free citizens are represented in Ecclesia, Athens' general assembly or parliament, where state policies are debated and decided. The Dikasteria, the supreme court of Athens, consisted of over a thousand members to make bribery expensive, selected through alphabetical root among the free citizens. However, no institution has ever been democratic, the meaning that we have assigned to democracy.

Philosophy started with astronomy or material science?

Philosophy probably started with astronomy, because the first Greek philosophers were astronomers. Primarily, this knowledge is used to navigate; the stars become their guides for navigation. With philosophy, men grew bold enough to attempt explaining processes before attributing them to supernatural agencies and powers.

But first, this philosophy was physical. Ancient people looked at the material world and asked questions about what was the final constituent of things, which resulted in Democritus' thought of materialism. He was an ancient pre-Socratic philosopher who lived in Greece between 460 and 370 BC. He is remembered for developing the atomic theory of the universe.

Leucippus, another pre-Socratic philosopher, was the mentor of Democritus, credited as the first philosopher to develop a theory of atomism. Democritus's speculation of atoms was taken from his mentor Leucippus. Their contribution has a partial resemblance to the atomic theory of the nineteenth century. So, some consider Democritus more of a scientist than a philosopher. Even though none of his writings have survived, many considered him the "father of modern science."