Chapter 1 - Entrepreneurship: Definition, Theory and Methodology
Definition. From Darwin to Dawkins, species, genes and memes. The practice of freewill, individual empowerment and the invention of writing for trade and ideas. The discovery of Humanism. The Iliad of the casket, entrepreneurship as a vessel of evolution. Methodology: Agile and Triunes – Montesquieu explained for the first time. The end of History: blood, toil, tears and sweat? “God does not play dice!”
Excerpt from Entrepreneurship, the Art & Craft of Innovation
The Iliad of the Casket, Entrepreneurship as a Vessel of Evolution
The practice of freewill through the institution of citizenship that the Greek polis had developed did not only produce the most formidable warriors of ancient history, as it will once again after the evolutionary trajectory of individual empowerment resumes its course, it produced also the most compassionate societies in humanity’s recorded history. The spread of Hellenic Humanism, the cognitive shift from divine authority to that of humans and its universal and empirical outlook attained unprecedented reaches in the hands of the man that would forever alter the course of history, Alexander the Great. Alexander carried the concepts produced by the revolution of Hellenic Humanism with him and to the lands he conquered. As Alexander brought proto-historical empires to their knees one after the other, leading a multi-ethnic army of citizens so mighty that a single warrior could easily overpower ten slave soldiers, he did not spread havoc amongst the people of the nations he conquered, his army did not spill the blood of innocents. For the first time in human history non-combatants were spared, women and children were spared, the shrines and gods of conquered nations were spared. Why?
The Greeks developed the polis and the concept of a shared ownership of the matters of the state through the practice of citizenship, as a means to fend off Persian armies and the constant threat of being subjugated into slavery. Just like Moses had led the Israelites away from Pharaoh’s slavery in Biblical memory, so the Greeks dreaded the prospect of falling into servitude of the Persians. There were important distinctions in how the Greeks perceived their freedom. Unlike the tribes of Israel, who descended from a powerful civilisation and had according to the Bible brought slavery upon themselves by disobeying divine covenants, the Greeks were just simple farmers and herders when they first worried how to defend themselves from Persia. They neither had the illustrious lineage of Judaism nor its idea of Original Sin, stemming from having lost the power and glory of the past. They did not claim divine descendance, nor the providence of being elected by a divine power to fulfil the task of fighting for their freedom. The will to be free was their only driving force. Thus they believed what proved true in their own empirical experience to hold universal value, as they viewed themselves neither superior nor inferior to other humans. What they did have that Moses could not have witnessed in Mount Sinai, is the evidence of more advanced civilisations that preceded them. The Greeks started speculating about political structures that would ensure their defence from Persian invasions at the end of the Mycenaean Dark Age, a period of technological setback ensued from the sudden and still unanswered collapse of the Minoan and Mycenaean civilisations. The Greeks lived amongst the ruins of these past civilisations and knew that something ominous had happened to them. In Aeschylus’ Agamemnon, Clytaemestra, his wife expresses this concern in the opening of the play, evocating Christ’s Golden Rule delivered centuries later as the Sermon on the Mountain, “Do unto others as you would have them do to you.” Early into the play after the return of the Achaean fleet, and the destruction of Troy, Clytaemestra says with a deep sense of foreboding:
Only if they shall respect the gods and shrines of the vanquished, the victors will be spared the same fate.
The Iliad is the story of this concern that permeated Hellenic culture. In fact, unlike the other great epics of the ancient world, the Iliad does not merely tell the story of the origins and rise of a people through their victorious achievements, well on the contrary it sings the glory of the vanquished who fought with nobility until the end. One would be mistaken to think that the Iliad is about the victory of the Achaeans, the feats of the capricious demigod Achilles, the cunning Ulysses and the headstrong Agamemnon. On the contrary the Iliad is a hymn to the greatness of the fallen Troy, the humanity of its defeated king Priam and the heroism of his son Hector. As Ugo Foscolo would recall in the Sepulchres three millennia after the fall of Troy:
And you, Hector, will have your meed of mourning
Wherever men hold holy and lament
The blood shed for the homeland, while the Sun
Continues shining over human grief.
Alexander knew the Iliad all too well. Aristotle, an Athenian who had sought service in the house of his father King Philip of Macedonia, had been his tutor. Alexander carries Aristotle’s teachings with him throughout his lifetime and wherever he went. Next to his dagger, he kept a casket under his pillow that came to be known as the Iliad of the Casket for it contained a copy of the Iliad revised with Aristotle’s commentary. Alas the Iliad of the Casket and Aristotle’s commentary treasured by the young conqueror are yet to be rediscovered, but the legacy of Aristotle's influence has forever altered the course of human evolution. The entrepreneurial spirit of a martially trained philosopher who sought to sell his services as an educator to a foreign monarch, changed not only the course of history through his contributions to knowledge and science, but also the very nature of interaction amongst people and nations by raising an emperor that would forever change the scope of political conflict, introducing compassion for the vanquished. Entrepreneurship in human evolution has not merely fuelled our technological progress it has also enabled our social development and allowed for compassion to define our political outlook.
Copyright © Carmelo Pistorio 2020