History of ecophilosophy, lecture 4: Ecological philosophy of history in the antiquity. Part 1
The historians of antiquity, people like Moses and Hesiod, saw history in a completely other way than most historians do today. We today mostly see history as a linear development from worse to better, while Moses and Hesiod saw it as a gradual fall from a paradisic state. Both thought in ages, Moses thought about "the age of innocence in the paradise", then the age from Adam to Noah, "the age of the first decline", then the age from Noah to Abraham, "the age of the rebuilding of the world", then the age from Abraham to Moses, "the age of the circumcision covenant", then the age of Moses, "the age of Law". Five ages. Hesiodos also thought in five ages; the golden age, the silver age, the bronze age, the age of Heroes and the iron age. Perhaps those two historians, Moses and Hesiod, had more in common than most historians want to admit.
This antique attitude to history is deeply ecological, and reflect man's close ties to nature in antiquity. For them the fall of nature is also the fall and decline of man and history and civilization, because for them man is linked closely to nature, nature's prosperity is man's prosperity. In our time, it does not matter for the historians that nature is dying right in front of our eyes, if only civilization can prosper. They call it progress if only their civilization is thriving, even though everything else is dying. It is because modern man has cut the ties to nature that was there before, i.e. to reality itself, because nature is reality itself, and become evil and psychotic at the same time.
All thinkers of antiquity (for example you can find this view in Ovid's work) thought like Moses and Hesiod about history. The modern view was unthinkable for them, and then we have to remember that nature was in a very, very much better shape in their time than in ours. We do not grasp the signals of decline even though nature is screaming and dying right in front of our eyes, because we love too much our "progress", our evil development, we have invested so much in our false righteousness, that we cannot see the truth here.
