Social Essentialism and Sociological Reductionism Concerning Greece in Comparison to China

Given the role of the Greek tradition, a non-essentialist understanding of how the Greeks came to establish their particular tradition is most crucial. G.E.R. Lloyd and Nathan Sivin have advanced what we call an ‘agora debate’ thesis concerning Greek intellectual developments in comparison to China. A single social factor, namely, the presence of free agora debate in Greece, is argued to be what accounts for a series of scholarly achievements attained by, and supposedly only by, the Greeks, which the Chinese are said to lack due to the presence of an ‘inhibitory’ factor, namely, the supposed lack of free debate. It is shown that each and every one of Lloyd’s and Sivin’s claims is empirically false. Lloyd’s and Sivin’s theses constitute a classic case of both social essentialism and sociological reductionism, hence, critiquing it is of paradigmatic value.