Excerpted from her book:
Not Out of Africa: How Afrocentrism
Became an Excuse to Teach Myth as History
Why I wrote the book
In the fall of 1991 I was asked to write a review-article for The New Republic
about Martin Bernal's Black Athena and its relation to the Afrocentrist
movement. The assignment literally changed my life. Once I began to work on
the article I realized that here was a subject that needed all the attention,
and more, that I could give to it. Although I had been completely unaware of
it, there was in existence a whole literature that denied that the ancient Greeks
were the inventors of democracy, philosophy, and science. There were books in
circulation that claimed that Socrates and Cleopatra were of African descent,
and that Greek philosophy had actually been stolen from Egypt. Not only were
these books being read and widely distributed; some of these ideas were being
taught in schools and even in universities.
Ordinarily, if someone has a theory which involves a radical departure
from what the experts have professed, he is expected to defend his position
by providing evidence in its support. But no one seemed to think it was
appropriate to ask for evidence from the instructors who claimed that the
Greeks stole their philosophy from Egypt.
Normally, if one has a question about a text that another instructor
is using, one simply asks why he or she is using that book. But since this
conventional line of inquiry was closed to me, I had to wait till I could
raise my questions in a more public context. That opportunity came in February
1993, when Dr. Yosef A. A. ben-Jochannan was invited to give Wellesley's
Martin Luther King, Jr. memorial lecture. Posters described Dr. ben-Jochannan
as a "distinguished Egyptologist," and indeed that is how he
was introduced by the then President of Wellesley College. But I knew from
my research in Afrocentric literature that he was not what scholars would
ordinarily describe as an Egyptologist, that is a scholar of Egyptian language
and civilization. Rather, he was an extreme Afrocentrist, author of many
books describing how Greek civilization was stolen from Africa, how Aristotle
robbed the library of Alexandria, and how the true Jews are Africans like
After Dr. ben-Jochannan made these same assertions once again in his
lecture, I asked him during the question period why he said that Aristotle
had come to Egypt with Alexander, and had stolen his philosophy from the
Library at Alexandria, when that Library had only been built after his
death. Dr. ben-Jochannan was unable to answer the question, and said that
he resented the tone of the inquiry. Several students came up to me after
the lecture and accused me of racism, suggesting that I had been brainwashed
by white historians. But others stayed to hear me out, and I assured Dr.
ben-Jochannan that I simply wanted to know what his evidence was: so far
as I knew, and I had studied the subject, Aristotle never went to Egypt,
and while the date of the Library of Alexandria is not known precisely,
it was certainly only built some years after the city was founded, which
was after both Aristotle's and Alexander's deaths.
A lecture at which serious questions could not be asked, and in fact
were greeted with hostility -- the occasion seemed more like a political
rally than an academic event. As if that were not disturbing enough in
itself, there was also the strange silence on the part of many of my faculty
colleagues. Several of these were well aware that what Dr. ben-Jochannan
was saying was factually wrong. One of them said later that she found the
lecture so "hopeless" that she decided to say nothing. Were they
afraid of being called racists? If so, their behavior was understandable,
but not entirely responsible. Didn't we as educators owe it to our students,
all our students, to see that they got the best education they could possibly
get? And that clearly was what they were not getting in a lecture where
they were being told myths disguised as history, and where discussion and
analysis had apparently been forbidden.
Good as the myths they were hearing may have made these students feel,
so long as they never left the Afrocentric environment in which they were
being nurtured and sheltered, they were being systematically deprived of
the most important features of a university education. They were not learning
how to question themselves and others, they were not learning to distinguish
facts from fiction, nor in fact were they learning how to think for themselves.
Their instructors had forgotten, while the rest of us sat by and did nothing
about it, that students do not come to universities to be indoctrinated
--at least in a free society.
Was Socrates Black?
I first learned about the notion that Socrates was black several years
ago, from a student in my second-year Greek course on Plato's Apology,
his account of Socrates' trial and conviction. Throughout the entire semester
the student had regarded me with sullen hostility. A year or so later she
apologized. She explained that she thought I had been concealing the truth
about Socrates' origins. In a course in Afro-American studies she had been
told that he was black, and my silence about his African ancestry seemed
to her to be a confirmation of the Eurocentric arrogance her instructor
had warned her about. After she had taken my course, the student pursued
the question on her own, and was satisfied that I had been telling her
the truth: so far as we know, Socrates was ethnically no different from
What had this student learned in her course in Afro-American studies?
The notion that Socrates was black is based on two different kinds of inference.
The first "line of proof" is based on inference from possibility.
Why couldn't an Athenian have African ancestors? That of course would have
been possible; almost anything is possible. But it is another question
whether or not it was probable. Few prominent Athenians claim to have had
foreign ancestors of any sort. Athenians were particularly fastidious about
their own origins. In Socrates' day, they did not allow Greeks from other
city-states to become naturalized Athenian citizens, and they were even
more careful about the non-Greeks or barbaroi. Since Socrates was
an Athenian citizen, his parents must have been Athenians, as he himself
says they were.
Another reason why I thought it unlikely that Socrates and/or his immediate
ancestors were foreigners is that no contemporary calls attention to anything
extraordinary in his background. If he had been a foreigner, one of his
enemies, or one of the comic poets, would have been sure to point it out.
The comic poets never missed an opportunity to make fun of the origins
of Athenian celebrities. Socrates was no exception; he is lampooned by
Aristophanes in his comedy the Clouds. If Socrates and/or his parents
had had dark skin, some of his contemporaries would have been likely to
mention it, because this, and not just his eccentric ideas about the gods,
and the voice that spoke to him alone, would have distinguished him from
the rest of the Athenians. Unless, of course, he could not be distinguished
from other Athenians because they all had dark skin; but then if they did,
why did they not make themselves bear a closer resemblance the Ethiopians
in their art?
Was Cleopatra Black?
Until recently, no one ever asked whether Cleopatra might have had an
African ancestor, because our surviving ancient sources identify her as
a Macedonian Greek. Her ancestors, the Ptolemies, were descended from one
of Alexander's generals. After Alexander's death in 323 B. C., these generals
divided up among themselves the territory in the Mediterranean that Alexander
had conquered. The name Cleopatra was one of the names traditionally given
to women in the royal family; officially our Cleopatra (69-30 BC) was Cleopatra
VII, the daughter of Ptolemy XII and his sister. Cleopatra VII herself
followed the family practice of marrying within the family. She married
her two brothers (Ptolemy XIII and XIV) in succession (after the first
died in suspicious circumstances, she had the second murdered). Her first
language was Greek; but she was also the first member of the Ptolemaic
line who was able to speak Egyptian. She also wore Egyptian dress, and
was shown in art in the dress of the goddess Isis. She chose to portray
herself as an Egyptian not because she was Egyptian, but because she was
ambitious to stay in power. In her surviving portraits on coins and in
sculpture she appears to be impressive rather than beautiful, Mediterranean
in appearance, with straight hair and a hooked nose. Of course these portraits
on metal and stone give no indication of the color of her skin.
The only possibility that she might not have been a full-blooded Macedonian
Greek arises from the fact that we do not know the precise identity of
one member of her family tree. We do not know who her grandmother was on
her father's side. Her grandmother was the mistress (not the wife) of her
grandfather, Ptolemy IX. Because nothing is known about this person, the
assumption has always been that she was a Macedonian Greek, like the other
members of Ptolemy's court. Like other Greeks, the Ptolemies were wary
of foreigners. They kept themselves apart from the native population, with
brothers usually marrying sisters, or uncles marrying nieces, or in one
case a father marrying his daughter (Ptolemy IX and Cleopatra Berenice
III). Because the Ptolemies seemed to prefer to marry among themselves,
even incestuously, it has always been assumed that Cleopatra's grandmother
was closely connected with the family. If she had been a foreigner, one
of the Roman writers of the time would have mentioned it in their invectives
against Cleopatra as an enemy of the Roman state. These writers were supporters
of Octavian (later known as Augustus) who defeated Cleopatra's forces in
the battle of Actium in 31 B.C.
Does Racial Identity Matter?
The question of race matters only insofar as it is necessary to show
that no classicists or ancient historians have tried to conceal the truth
about the origins of the Greek people or the ancestry of certain famous
ancient figures. It has been suggested that classicists have been reluctant
to ask questions about Greek origins, and that we have been so "imbued
with conventional preconceptions and patterns of thought" that we
are unlikely to question the basic premises of our discipline. But even
though we may be more reluctant to speculate about our own field than those
outside it might be, none of us has any cultural "territory"
in the ancient world that we are trying to insulate from other ancient
Did ancient Greek religion and culture derive
The idea that Greek religion and philosophy has Egyptian origins derives,
at least in part, from the writings of ancient Greek historians. In the
fifth century BC Herodotus was told by Egyptian priests that the Greeks
owed many aspects of their culture to the older and vastly impressive civilization
of the Egyptians. Egyptian priests told Diodorus some of the same stories
four centuries later. The church fathers in the second and third centuries
AD also were eager to emphasize the dependency of Greece on the earlier
cultures of the Egyptians and the Hebrews. They were eager to establish
direct links between their civilization and that of Egypt because Egypt
was a vastly older culture, with elaborate religious customs and impressive
monuments. But despite their enthusiasm for Egypt and its material culture
(an enthusiasm that was later revived in eighteenth and nineteenth-century
Europe), they failed to understand Egyptian religion and the purpose of
many Egyptian customs.
Classical scholars tend to be skeptical about the claims of the Greek
historians because much of what these writers say does not conform to the
facts as they are now known from the modern scholarship on ancient Egypt.
For centuries Europeans had believed that the ancient historians knew that
certain Greek religious customs and philosophical interests derived from
Egypt. But two major discoveries changed that view. The first concerned
a group of ancient philosophical treatises attributed to Hermes Trismegistus;
these had throughout the Middle Ages and into the Renaissance been thought
of as Egyptian and early. But in 1614 the French scholar Isaac Casaubon
demonstrated that the treatises were actually late and basically Greek.
The second discovery was the decipherment of hieroglyphics, the official
system of Egyptian writing, completed by 1836. Before decipherment, scholars
had been compelled to rely on Greek sources for their understanding of
Egyptian history and civilization. Once they were able to read real Egyptian
texts, and could disregard the fanciful interpretations of hieroglyphics
that had been circulating since late antiquity, it became clear to them
that the relation of Egyptian to Greek culture was less close than they
had imagined. Egyptian belonged to the Afroasiatic language family, while
Greek was an Indo-European language, akin to Sanskrit and European languages
On the basis of these new discoveries, European scholars realized that
they could no longer take at face value what Herodotus, Diodorus, and the
Church fathers had to say about Greece's debt to Egypt. Once it was possible
to read Egyptian religious documents, and to see how the Egyptians themselves
described their gods and told their myths, scholars could see that the
ancient Greeks' accounts of Egyptian religion were superficial, and even
misleading. Apparently Greek writers, despite their great admiration for
Egypt, looked at Egyptian civilization through cultural blinkers that kept
them from understanding any practices or customs that were significantly
different from their own. The result was a portrait of Egypt that was both
astigmatic and deeply Hellenized. Greek writers operated under other handicaps
as well. They did not have access to records; there was no defined system
of chronology. They could not read Egyptian inscriptions or question a
variety of witnesses because they did not know the language. Hence they
were compelled to exaggerate the importance of such resemblances as they
could see or find.
Did the theory of the transmigration of souls
come from Egypt?
Because he tended to rely on such analogies as he could find, Herodotus
inevitably made some false conjectures. Herodotus thought that Pythagoras
learned about the transmigration of souls from Egypt, when in fact the
Egyptians did not believe in the transmigration of souls, as their
careful and elaborate burial procedures clearly indicate. Herodotus tells
us that he wrote down what the Egyptians told him; but when they spoke,
what did he hear? Since he did not know Egyptian, his informants could
have been Greeks living in the Greek colony of Naucratis in the Nile Delta,
or Egyptians who knew some Greek. How well-informed were his informants?
On the question of origins, at least, it seems that neither group had any
more than a superficial understanding of the other's culture. Perhaps someone
explained to him about the Egyptian "modes of existence," in
which a human being could manifest itself both materially, or immaterially,
as ka or ba or a name, and that death was not an end, but
a threshold leading to a new form of life. Belief in these varied modes
of existence required that bodies be preserved after death, hence the Egyptian
practice of mummification. Greeks, on the other hand, believed that the
soul was separated from the body at death, and disposed of bodies either
by burial or cremation. In any case, there is no reason to assume that
Pythagoras or other Greeks who believed in transmigration, like the Orphics
and/or the philosopher-poet Empedocles, got their ideas from anyone else:
notions of transmigration have developed independently in other parts of
Did Plato Study in Egypt?
Plato never says in any of his writings that he went to Egypt, and there
is no reference to such a visit in the semi-biographical Seventh Epistle.
But in his dialogues he refers to some Egyptian myths and customs. Plato,
of course, was not a historian, and the rather superficial knowledge of
Egypt displayed in his dialogues, along with vague chronology, is more
characteristic of historical fiction than of history. In fact, anecdotes
about his visit to Egypt only turn up in writers of the later Hellenistic
period. What better way to explain his several references to Egypt than
to assume that the author had some first-hand knowledge of the customs
he describes? For authors dating from the fourth century and earlier, ancient
biographers were compelled to use as their principal source material the
author's own works. Later biographers add details to the story of Plato's
Egyptian travels in order to provide aetiologies for the "Egyptian"
reference in his writings. The most ironic anecdote of all is preserved
by Clement of Alexandria: Plato studied in Egypt with Hermes the "Thrice
Great" (Trismegistus). This is tantamount to saying that Plato studied
with himself after his death. The works of Hermes could not have
been written without the conceptual vocabulary developed by Plato and Aristotle,
and is deeply influenced not just by Plato, but by the writings of Neoplatonist
philosophers in the early centuries AD. In any case, whoever these teachers
were, Plato seems never to have learned from them anything that is characteristically
Egyptian, at least so far as we know about Egyptian theology from Egyptian
sources. Instead, Plato's notion of the Egyptians remains similar to that
of other Athenians; he did not so much change the Athenian notion of Egyptian
culture as enrich and idealize it, so that it could provide a dramatic
and instructive contrast with Athenian customs in his dialogues.
Was there ever such a thing as an "Egyptian
Even after nineteenth-century scholars had shown that the reports of
Greek visitors to Egypt misunderstood and misrepresented what they saw,
the myth that Greek philosophy derived from Egypt is still in circulation.
The notion of an Egyptian legacy was preserved in the literature and ritual
of Freemasonry. It was from that source that Afrocentrists learned about
it, and then sought to find confirmation for the primacy of Egypt over
Greece in the fantasies of ancient writers. In order to show that Greek
philosophy is in reality stolen Egyptian philosophy, Afrocentrist writers
assume that there was in existence from earliest times an "Egyptian
Mystery System," which was copied by the Greeks. The existence of
this "Mystery System" is integral to the notion that Greek philosophy
was stolen, because it provides a reason for assuming that Greek philosophers
had a particular reason for studying in Egypt, and for claiming that what
they later wrote about in Greek was originally Egyptian philosophy. But
in reality, the notion of an Egyptian Mystery System is a relatively modern
fiction, based on ancient sources that are distinctively Greek,
or Greco-Roman, and from the early centuries AD.
In their original form, ancient mysteries had nothing to do with schools
or particular courses of study; rather, the ritual was intended to put
the initiate into contact with the divinity, and if special preparation
or rituals were involved, it was to familiarize the initiate with the practices
and liturgy of that particular cult. The origin of the connection of Mysteries
to education in fact dates only to the eighteenth century. It derives from
a particular work of European fiction, published in 1731. This was the
three-volume work Sethos, a History or Biography, based on Unpublished
Memoirs of Ancient Egypt, by the Abbé Jean Terrasson (1670-1750),
a French priest, who was Professor of Greek at the Collège de France.
Although now completely forgotten, the novel was widely read in the eighteenth
century..Of course Terrasson did not have access to any Egyptian information
about Egypt, since hieroglyphics were not to be deciphered until more than
a century later.
Why claim that Greek philosophy was stolen
Perhaps the most influential Afrocentrist text is Stolen Legacy,
a work that has been in wide circulation since its publication in 1954.
Its author, George G. M. James, writes that "the term Greek philosophy,
to begin with is a misnomer, for there is no such philosophy in existence."
He argues that the Greeks "did not possess the native ability essential
to the development of philosophy." Rather, he states that "the
Greeks were not the authors of Greek philosophy, but the Black people of
North Africa, The Egyptians." It is not hard to understand why James
wishes to give credit for the Greek achievement to the Egyptians, even
if there is little or no historical foundation for his claims. Like the
other nationalistic myths, the story of a "Stolen Legacy" both
offers an explanation for past suffering, and provides a source of ethnic
But although the myth may encourage and perhaps even "empower"
African-Americans, its use has a destructive side, which cannot and should
not be overlooked. First of all, it offers them a "story" instead
of history. It also suggests that African-Americans need to learn only
what they choose to believe about the past. But in so doing, the Afrocentric
myth seeks to shelter them from learning what all other ethnic groups must
learn, and indeed, face up to, namely the full scope of their history.
What people on earth have had a completely glorious history? While we
point to the great achievements of the Greeks, anyone who has studied ancient
Greek civilization knows that they also made terrible and foolish mistakes.
Isn't treating African-Americans differently from the rest of humankind
just another form of segregation and condescension? Implied discrimination
is the most destructive aspect of Afrocentrism, but there are other serious
problems as well. Teaching the myth of the Stolen Legacy as if it were
history robs the ancient Greeks and their modern descendants of a heritage
that rightly belongs to them. Why discriminate against them when discrimination
is the issue? In addition, the myth deprives the ancient Egyptians of their
proper history and robs them of their actual legacy. The Egypt of the myth
of the Stolen Legacy is a wholly European Egypt, as imagined by Greek and
Roman writers, and further elaborated in eighteenth-century France. Ancient
Egyptian civilization deserves to be remembered (and respected) for what
it was, and not for what Europeans, ancient and modern, have imagined it
What is the evidence for a "Stolen Legacy?"
James's idea of ancient Egypt is fundamentally the imaginary "Mystical
Egypt" of Freemasonry. He speaks of grades of initiation. In these
Mysteries, as the Freemasons imagined them, Neophyte initiates must learn
self-control and self-knowledge. He believes that Moses was an initiate
into the Egyptian mysteries, and that Socrates reached the grade of Master
Mason. In his description of the Greek philosophy, he emphasizes the Four
Elements that play such a key role in Terrasson's Memphis and Masonic initiation
ceremonies. He speaks of the Masonic symbol of the Open Eye, which based
on an Egyptian hieroglyph but in Masonry has come specifically to represent
the Master Mind. As in the University/Mystery system invented by Terrasson,
Egyptian temples are used as libraries and observatories.
What then are the Greeks supposed to have stolen from the Egyptians?
Are there any texts in existence that be found to verify the claim that
Greek philosophy was stolen from Egypt? How was the "transfer"
of Egyptian materials to Greece accomplished? If we examine what James
says about the way in which the "transfer" was supposed to have
been carried out, we will find that that few or no historical data can
be summoned to support it. In fact, in order to construct his argument,
James overlooked or ignored much existing evidence.
Did Aristotle raid the Library at Alexandria?
No ancient source says that Alexander and Aristotle raided the Library
at Alexandria. That they do not do so is not surprising, because it is
unlikely that Aristotle ever went there. Aristotle was Alexander's tutor
when Alexander was young, but he did not accompany him on his military
campaign. Even if he had gone there, it is hard to see how he could have
stolen books from the library in Alexandria. Although Alexandria was founded
in 331 BC, it did not begin to function as a city until after 323. Aristotle
died in 322. The library was assembled around 297 under the direction of
Demetrius of Phaleron, a pupil of Aristotle's. Most of the books it contained
were in Greek.
Did Aristotle plagiarize Egyptian sources?
If Aristotle had stolen his ideas from the Egyptians, as James asserts,
James should be able to provide parallel Egyptian and Greek texts showing
frequent verbal correspondences. As it is, he can only come up with a vague
similarity between two titles. One is Aristotle's treatise On the Soul,
and the other the modern English name of a collection of Egyptian texts,
The Book of the Dead. These funerary texts, which the Egyptians
themselves called the Book of Coming Forth by Day, are designed
to protect the soul during its dangerous journey through Duat, the Egyptian
underworld, on its way to life of bliss in the Field of Reeds. Both Aristotle
and the Egyptians believed in the notion of a "soul." But there
the similarity ends. Even a cursory glance at a translation of the Book
of the Dead reveals that it is not a philosophical treatise, but rather
a series of ritual prescriptions to ensure the soul's passage to the next
world. It is completely different from Aristotle's abstract consideration
of the nature of the soul. James fails to mention that the two texts cannot
be profitably compared, because their aims and methods are so different.
Instead, he accounts for the discrepancy by claiming that Aristotle's theory
is only a "very small portion" of the Egyptian "philosophy"
of the soul, as described in the Egyptian Book of the Dead. On that
basis, one could claim that any later writer plagiarized from any earlier
writer who touched on the same subject. But why not assume instead that
the later writer was influenced by the earlier writer, or even came up
with the some of the same ideas independently, especially if those ideas
are widespread, like the notion that human beings have souls?
James also alleges that Aristotle's theory of matter was taken from
the so-called Memphite Theology. The Memphite Theology is a religious document
inscribed on a stone tablet by Egyptian priests in the eighth century BC,
but said to have been copied from an ancient papyrus. The archaic language
of the text suggests that the original dates from sometime in the second
millennium BC. According to James, Aristotle took from the Memphite theology
his doctrine that matter, motion, and time are eternal, along with the
principle of opposites, and the concept of the unmoved mover. James does
not say how Aristotle would have known about this inscription, which was
at the time located in Memphis and not in the Library of Alexandria, or
explain how he would have been able to read it. But even if Aristotle had
had some way of finding out about it, he would have had no use for it in
his philosophical writings. The Memphis text, like the Egyptian Book
of the Dead, is a work of a totally different character from any of
The Memphite text describes the creation of the world as then known
(that is, Upper and Lower Egypt). It relates how Ptah's mind (or "heart")
and thought (or "tongue") created the universe and all living
creatures in it: "for every word of the god came about through what
the heart devised and the tongue commanded." From one of his manifestations,
the primordial waters of chaos, the sun-god Atum was born. When Ptah has
finished creating the universe, he rests from his labors: "Ptah was
satisfied after he had made all things and all divine words."
In form and in substance this account has virtually nothing in common
with Aristotle's abstract theology. In fact, in Metaphysics Book
11, Aristotle discards the traditional notion of a universe that is created
by a divinity or divinities, in favor of a metaphysical argument. If there
is eternal motion, there is eternal substance, and behind that, an immaterial
and eternal source of activity, whose existence can be deduced from the
eternal circular motion of the heavens. The source of this activity is
what is called in English translation the "unmoved mover."All
that this theory has in common with the Memphite theology is a concern
with creation of the universe. On the same insubstantial basis, it would
be possible to argue that Aristotle stole his philosophy from the
story of creation in the first book of Genesis.
Is there a diversity of truths?
There are of course many possible interpretations of the truth, but
some things are simply not true. It is not true that there was no Holocaust.
There was a Holocaust, although we may disagree about the numbers of people
killed. Likewise, it is not true that the Greeks stole their philosophy
from Egypt; rather, it is true that the Greeks were influenced in various
ways over a long period of time by their contact with the Egyptians. But
then, what culture at any time has not been influenced by other cultures,
and what exactly do we mean by "influence"? If we talk about
Greek philosophy as a "Stolen Legacy," which the Greeks swiped
from Egyptian universities, we are not telling the truth, but relating
a story, or a myth, or a tall tale. But if we talk about Egyptian influence
on Greece, we are discussing an historical issue.
In historical and scientific discussions it is possible to distinguish
degrees, and to be more or less accurate. As a classicist, I may overemphasize
the achievement of the Greeks because I do not know enough about the rest
of the Mediterranean world; Egyptologists may be inclined to make the same
mistake in the opposite direction. We recognize that no historian can write
without some amount of bias; that is why history must always be rewritten.
But not all bias amounts to distortion, or is equivalent to indoctrination.
If I am aware that I am likely to be biased for any number of reasons,
and try to compensate for them, the result should be very different in
quality and character from what I would say if I were consciously setting
about to achieve a particular political goal.
Drawing a clear distinction between motivations and evidence has a direct
bearing on the question of academic freedom. When it comes to deciding
what one can or cannot say in class the question of ethnicity or of motivations,
whether personal or cultural, is or ought to be irrelevant. What matters
is whether what one says is supported by facts and evidence, texts or formulae.
The purpose of diversity, at least in academe, is to ensure that instruction
does not become a vehicle for indoctrinating students in the values of
the majority culture, or for limiting the curriculum to the study of the
history and literature of the majority culture. That means that it is essential
for a university to consider developments outside of Europe and North America,
and to assess the achievements of non-European cultures with respect and
It is another question whether or not diversity should be applied to
the truth. Are there, can there be, multiple, diverse "truths?"
If there are, which "truth" should win? The one that is most
loudly argued or most persuasively phrased? Diverse "truths are possible
only if "truth" is understood to mean something like "point
of view." But even then not every point of view, no matter how persuasively
it is put across, or with what intensity it is argued, can be equally valid.
The notion of diversity does not extend to truth.
Students of the modern world may think it is a matter of indifference
whether or not Aristotle stole his philosophy from Egypt. They may believe
that even if the story is not true, it can be used to serve a positive
purpose. But the question, and many others like it, should be a matter
of serious concern to everyone, because if you assert that he did steal
his philosophy, you are prepared to ignore or to conceal a substantial
body of historical evidence that proves the contrary. Once you start doing
that, you can have no scientific or even social-scientific discourse, nor
can you have a community, or a university.
Copyright © 1996 by BasicBooks All Rights
Mary Lefkowitz is the Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the
Humanities at Wellesley College. She is the author of many books on ancient
Greece and Rome, including Lives of the Greek Poets and Women
in Greek Myth, as well as articles for the Wall Street Journal
and the New Republic. She is the co-editor of Women's Life in
Greece and Rome and Black Athena Revisited.