“When Science Returns to the Hellenic Worldview: Empathy and Consciousness Redeemed”
Friedrich Nietzsche, in his work The Antichrist, denounces Paul as the inventor of Christianity and an enemy of Rome’s grandeur. But perhaps Nietzsche himself misunderstood what Paul truly fought against. Rome may have been the aching tooth, but Greece was its root. And Paul - not as a scientific dentist (for he knew nothing of science, of course) - but more like the last illiterate barber in the neighborhood, he grabbed the pliers and performed a full extraction on the tooth that tormented him.
In other words, he overturned an entire worldview along with all its values. He didn’t merely denounce authority; he uprooted what made it human. He didn’t fight Rome; he fought Greece, the source of Rome’s inspiration: philosophy, tragedy, aesthetics, personal freedom, the beauty of the body. He fought proportion, prudence, aidṓs, and freedom as relational consciousness. And in their place, he brought guilt, fear, obedience, salvation as isolation with monasticism and black depression.
Saul–Paul didn’t just question the world - he reconstructed it in reverse. And to be fair, he wasn’t alone, so we shouldn’t cast all blame on him as a scapegoat. Stoicism, with its harsh ethics and inner discipline, paved the way. As a system, Stoicism was Rome’s official choice. It was her roll of the dice at the Rubicon. Rome adopted Stoicism not to inspire, but to control. Epictetus’ Handbook became the blueprint of Christian morality. Not through dialogue, but through imitation. Not by reference, but by plagiarism.
Paul’s Christianity wasn’t born of Revelation; it was born of the sterilized, paralyzed, and ossified version of Greek thought that Stoicism offered him. Stoicism didn’t remove the Hellenic worldview - it anesthetized it. It numbed it and sealed it. The tooth remained in place - existent, yes, but inactive. It didn’t ache. It didn’t resist. It didn’t feel. It was there, like a monument to a once-living thought that now merely functioned.
Man became a self-contained unit of logic. Not a person in relation. The human mind, once a meeting place of feeling and critical thought, became a brain without nerves. A stone-mind. Hard. Apathetic, Indifferent. It didn’t ache. It didn’t rejoice. It didn’t relate. It was simply there - functional, but hollow, like a turtle’s carcass.
There, in Damascus, the Voice didn’t simply tell Paul to believe. It “revealed” a command:
"Stoicism had numbed the ‘troublesome tooth.’ It sealed it with virtue, fatalism, discipline, and duty. You, now Paul, run swiftly to Rome, complete the work, and extract it from the root."
Thus, Greece in Rome through Stoicism wasn’t fought - it was stripped bare. Its vitality and vigor were removed, and only its outline remained. And upon this hollow shell, a new form of power was born. That, indeed, was the bitterest irony.
Christianity wasn’t merely faith; it was a branch of a system - a new architecture of authority designed to sever body from soul, to separate experience from ethics, to turn relationship into blind obedience. Phronesis - the practical wisdom - became the Voice of command. And so, man lost his freedom. He was no longer a person, but a shape. A shape that replaced prosopon — literally “in Greek prosopon means: “that which stands before the eyes.” This faceless shape became an abstract, lifeless form, a role, a mere outline. And this replacement became religion. Man was replaced by another kind - faceless, no longer present, but eternally awaited. Something like that Beckett play with Godot.
Paul didn’t merely invent a theological system. He redefined the human being. And Rome, already prepared to embrace any “authority,” welcomed him with open arms. Thus, was born the Man of Hearing, who fully replaced the Man of Sight and Representation.
The Man of Hearing is one who does not see, but only hears. He does not understand, but obeys. He does not act, but executes. He does not empathize, and endlessly repeats - like a broken phonograph:
"Someone spoke, and I heard and followed. Not because I understood - but because I had to. I don’t need to see. It’s enough to repeat. I don’t trust the image. Shades don’t move me. I don’t want forms - they frighten me. They are vague. Contradictory. Dangerous. I want clear words. Clear commands. To know what is permitted. What is forbidden. And if a gaze meets mine, I turn my head toward the Word that absolves me. I’m not to blame. I don’t think. I don’t act. I was told."
"I am the Man of Hearing. I have a conscience, filled with others’ words - not my own experience. I didn’t see the other in pain. But I learned that ‘I must not cause pain; and that’s enough for me. Yet, if the Voice commands me to cause pain, I might do it."
"I feel no shame. No emotion. I have no face - I have Logos. I repeat well. And I want… to be heard. Not to be answered, but to be validated."
"Now I speak to you. Because I must. I was heard - therefore I exist. I never saw the eyes of the other. I never needed to. Silence never moved me. I don’t trust it."
"They told me to be good - and I became. Not because I understood what it means. But because I had to. Because the Voice said so. The one that has always been heard - and always will be. Without contradiction."
"I do not look. I do not search. I do not judge. I do not recognize. I do not touch. I hear. I execute. I repeat. I take pride."
"And please: do not interrupt me with your gaze. Be quiet. I want to be heard. That’s all. I don’t want to be seen or to be - I want to repeat what the Voice said."
The Man of Hearing is the product of a culture that fears ambiguity, image, body, and emotion. He seeks commands, not questions. He wants to be heard, not to see. He wants to exist because he was told to - not because he looked at the other and recognized him.
Standing opposite him is the Man of Sight and Representation, whispering in monologue:
"We heard the man of the Voice, yes - but we also saw him. And we saw that he was alone. Not because others didn’t speak to him, but because he never looked at them."
"For me, hearing is not enough. I must see. I was not born to obey commands - but to choose with prudence. I do not feel shame because 'I was seen' - I feel shame because I failed to be worthy of others and of the social covenant of my city. I do not ask forgiveness from a voice - I ask for pardon through the gaze, and from the gaze."
"I am the Man of Sight and Representation. And yes: I do not fear the image - I honor it. I do not reject vision - I cultivate it. I am not seduced by beauty - I understand it, because: ‘I love beauty with simplicity and philosophize without softness.' It is not enough for someone to tell me what is good - I want to see it, feel it to my marrow, and act upon it."
"For me, virtue does not dwell in the voice, but in the posture of the body and the emotion stirred in the depths of my being. Prudence is not whispered to me - it is revealed in the gaze of the other. My shame is not a mechanism of guilt - it is an act of empathy."
"I feel shame when I hurt. When I fail to empathize. When I understand what I did and see what it meant - and how much it hurt."
"I do not need a God who judges and punishes. I need a Polis - City that is present. A child who looks at me and asks: 'Dad, were you just today?' And I sweat - not because I 'broke a law,' but because I failed to stand upright in my humanity."
"I do not reject the Logos. But I say clearly: Any Logos without Representation is hollow - a sound in an empty can. I do not deny the inner voice of conscience. But I remind you: even the silence of a gaze teaches with greater clarity."
"I am the Man of Sight - and I coexist. I am not dominated, and I do not dominate. I see the other - and that is why I exist. And when I feel shame, it is not because I violated a prohibition. It is because I betrayed our shared boundary of what it means to be human. That humanity we shared before we ever spoke."
"This is my Word. It does not shout - it stands. It does not obey - it coexists. It does not impose - it appears, was, is, and will be. And I do not feel shame simply because 'I was seen.' I feel shame because I betrayed the gaze of the city that trusted me."
The Greek never answered to an internal voice of imposition. He answered to the gaze of other people who compose him as a citizen. And who are these others? The elder in the agora who looks at him with silent sorrow. The statue of Hermes that once smiled at him friendly. The child who watches and is shaped by the actions of their parents.
Aidos — that unique Greek word — is neither fear nor guilt. It is the shiver of responsibility to be a person among persons. Prosopon among prosopa.
"I feel shame because I committed hubris against nature and my city."
And if that is not ethics born of mind, knowledge, and courage - and not of command - then what is?
The Greek sense of shame is not an ethics of fear and guilt. It is the biological memory of coexistence. It is the remembrance that we hurt and rejoice together, we exist together, we shape the world - together.
"I feel shame because I failed to empathize." That is meta-sensation. It is ethical knowledge with a consciousness of otherness. Hence the etymology of the Greek word syneidisi - conscience. Not because “a voice sounded within me” accusing me, but because I looked the other in the eyes and saw him in pain. And then I understood that the other is a mortal being - just like me.
Shame does not come from the divine. It comes from the earthly, the everyday, the simple gaze of the other. It comes from the fact that we are bound not by rules, but by heart, by mind, and by knowledge.
This - whether one likes it or not - is the core of the Man of Sight and Representation. Not because he loves the image, but because he recognizes the face as truth. For only what is visible can give rise to both empathy and judgment. And that which “appears” becomes “being” - and gives meaning to existence.
Guilt speaks of me and myself. But shame - the Greek aidos - speaks of us. Of those who built cities with theaters, who created letters, philosophy, arts, and sciences. A civilization that did not demand obedience, but offered presence. That did not impose meaning, but bestowed life and existence - to whatever could be seen, touched and understood.
And here, precisely, begin the fireworks of the Hellenic worldview, when the most “dangerous” of Greek philosophers emerges: EΠΙΚΟΥΡΟΣ! Not because he provoked - but because he did not obey. For all those who ground their faith in the denial of experience and in obedience to voices, to salvations in nonexistent worlds, the epistemology of Epicurus’ Canon was catalytic: he taught that experience, the senses, emotions, and shared judgment are the only valid criteria of truth. That from the visible and the evident, we can - through analogy - approach the hidden and the unseen. That no ineffable claim is believable unless it is substantiated through the present and the perceptible.
And this sober, simple, earthly and courageous Greek spirit… was enough to make him a target. In the Talmud, the term apikorsim (אפיקורוס) - meaning “Epicurean” in Hebrew - became synonymous with heretic, atheist, dissenter.
Because the Hellene Epicurus, did not obey. He did not seek explanation from voices. He observed carefully and thought clearly, without fear. And that, for some, was unforgivable.
Thus, Epicurus ruined the recipe of the idealistic “soup”: he did not propose another dogma, but the absence of dogma. He did not ask for faith - he asked for prudence. He did not shout or “reveal.” He looked at the world - and stood within it bravely, saying: “Image is not deceptive. Sensation is not the enemy of prudence. Vision is not the excuse of falsehood, but the possibility of critique and questioning”.
Epicurus, in the Hellenistic era, within a Garden - as a friend among friends, not merely a teacher among students - made the deviation of deviations. They did not seek the spectacle of the imaginary - they sought the truth of the tangible real. They did not build a system - they highlighted the natural and the shared of experience. Thus, separating wheat from chaff, they offered the essence of the entire Hellenic worldview: the body as carrier of experience, sensation as source of knowledge, emotion as indicator of truth, the face as relationship, knowledge as transmission, and freedom as syneidénai — conscious awareness.
Humanity is rediscovered in action. Not in “the act of executing commands,” but in acts of spontaneity, care, and concern: in help given without applause, in presence where none was requested, in the initiative to see the other before being told how to see him.
When man begins to see, to touch, to act - he is reborn. He becomes a person again. Not a carrier of voice, but a voice with a face. Hence the etymology of the deeply Greek word ánthrōpos: from anēr and ōps — “he who has the face of a human» and that means: not obedient, but present. Not an executor, but a participant. Experience is not surplus. It is the only form of understanding that includes the body - and nothing is more sacred than the body. Prudence is not repetition of commands. It is a right and conscious act of existence based on the natural, the visible, and the tangible.
The historical defeat of the Man of Sight and Representation was not merely philosophical - it was ontological. It was the retreat of experience before the command of authority. It was the withdrawal of critical thought and questioning before the rhetoric of obedience. It was the moment when the thinker fell silent and the voices of the “delivered” multiplied.
The loss of that vision cost us: empathy, judgment, freedom - the gaze that meets another gaze without asking for explanations. The look was replaced by directives. Action by interpretations. Empathy by systems. And thus, the quietest tragedy occurred: Man ceased to see the Other.
Once, when man faced the world, he had eyes not to interpret commands, but to see the other. The Greek saw Man first: in the naked body of the Kouros, in Achilles’ proud gaze, in Odysseus’ tear of nostalgia. He did not wait to be told what the body, friendship, pleasure, pain meant - he lived them, looked at them, felt them.
The sense of sight was not surface. It was a space of approach to the other. It was the gaze that meets. But today…man no longer sees the other. He hears him through definitions. Through attributes. Through imposed labels.
He does not see him cry - he categorizes him. He does not see him hunger - he separates him. He does not see him ask for help - he silences him with rules.
He who obeys without judgment ceases to relate to the other. He becomes a docile instrument of foreign speech, not of his own heart and discernment. Indoctrination does not seek empathy. It seeks conformity. It does not want you to see the other - it wants you to hear the phrase, the slogan that brings profit. And somewhere there, Man ceased to be a person and became a role. Judged by what “was said about him,” not by what his eyes reflected.
We entered an era of voices without gaze, and thus we traded empathy for discipline. Human presence became absent in relation. The simple word “compassion” was lost. And so, we arrived here - in the age of obedience without mercy!
But it is not too late…
Because science, united with philosophy, will always return to the place that gave birth to it. Not as a pilgrimage to marble ruins, but as a search for meaning.
Because whenever all is lost, whenever humanity loses the thread of the Cosmos - whenever we become estranged from our own bodies and forget our relation to the Other - we will look again toward the Hellenic worldview. Not to idealize it, but to understand it deeply. For in Greek thought, the human being is not an individual, but a prosopon - a person with face. Not a unit, but a relationship. Not a role, but an existence. And one is never saved alone - one is saved through others.
And there, at the heart of this Greek thought, Epicurus will always stand tall! Not as a mystic, but as a forerunner of science. For Epicurus neither deified nor demonized anything. He constructed no absolutes, imposed no dogma, demanded no obedience. He offered freedom. He proposed understanding, presence, participation and friendship. And for that reason, the 21st century needs him more than ever. Because science, when united with philosophy, will always return to him: to the empirical observation of Nature, to inner balance free from fear, to empathy as a biological and evolutionary function, to ethics as a consciousness of otherness.
No matter how far science advances, it will return to where knowledge was born not as power, but as care. To the Hellenic worldview - where the gaze of the Other is not a threat, but a mirror of our humanity. Where the stranger becomes the guest. Where aidos is neither fear nor guilt, but the shiver of responsibility to be human among humans.
And this is because: before every voice, there was relationship. Before every command, there was presence. Before every morality, there was the gaze and the touch of the other. And before every science, there was the consciousness of the Cosmos as our shared home.
Just as the Epicurean Diogenes of Oenoanda wrote centuries ago, in his great inscription: “…while the various parts of the Earth give people different homelands, the whole world gives all a common homeland - the Earth - and a common house - the Cosmos.”
This Cosmos is not a reflection of some imaginary idea of a perfect world. It is not a shadow, not a copy. It is experience. It is relationship. It is our only real field of encounter. And philosophy, when it is true, does not save man from the world - it returns him to it. It brings him back, freed from the chains of Lethe (oblivion), whenever he himself has placed them upon his own being. For in Greek, truth - alētheia - is precisely that which escapes oblivion.
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Note to the Reader: In this text, certain Greek terms are preserved in their original form to honor their philosophical depth and relational significance. Below is a glossary offering brief translations and interpretations of the most important terms that are mentioned or have been translated from the Greek language throughout the essay.
ἀλήθεια — alētheia: truth as the unveiling of what escapes oblivion; the presence that resists forgetfulness
αἰδώς — aidṓs: the shiver of responsibility to be human among humans
ἄνθρωπος — anthrōpos: the one who bears the face of a human.
ἐλευθερία — eleuthería: freedom as shared responsibility and conscious participation
ἐμπειρία — empeiria: experience as the foundation of knowledge
ἡδονή — hēdonē: pleasure as natural and relational fulfillment
κατήχηση — katēchēsē: imposed instruction without relational depth or understanding
κόσμος — cosmos: the ordered, relational totality of existence; our common home
λόγος — logos: reason, speech, meaning, and relational intelligence
παράσταση — parástasē: representation as presence through image and form
παρουσία — parousía: presence as ethical proximity and attentiveness to the other
πόλις — polis: the shared space of dialogue, presence, and social coexistence
πρόσωπο — prósōpo: the human face as presence-in-relation; not an individual, but a being revealed through encounter
σχέση — schésē: relationship as the essence of being; nothing exists alone
συναίσθηση — synaisthēsē: empathy as a biological and ethical function
συνειδέναι — syneidénai: the act of knowing-with, born through relationship
φρόνησις — phronēsis: practical wisdom grounded in lived experience
10th November 2025