Roots, rites and sites of resistance

the banality of good — an introduction

Leonidas K. Cheliotis

pp. 1-11

in: Leonidas K. Cheliotis (ed), Roots, rites and sites of resistance, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2010

Abstract

Men — men and women, that is — are prone to contenting themselves with the notion that history has always been on a steady course of progress. It is no coincidence that the Greeks coined the term anthropos, deriving from ano throsko and literally meaning "looking upwards", to define humankind. Anthropos is said to be developing towards some preordained noble future, symbolized by the ethereal heights to which he or she gazes from below. This is presumably because, unlike other animals, anthropos has the natural capacity for self-knowledge, rational understanding and moral judgement — the capacity to "look up" at what is in sight in the surrounding world.¹