Modern Moral Reality
In the last two thousand years since the early Roman Empire brought civil law and Hellenistic philosophy into world civilisation, there have been several "enlightenments". Before this era, we have some idea of the great impact Socrates, Plato and Aristotle had, and through Alexander the Great, how much of these ideas pervaded the ancient world. With the Roman empire, we have some idea of the rule of law, and inspite of the deitification of the Roman emperors and the impact of this on developing thought, we have some reason to thank them for propagating fundamental beliefs in the rights of citizens, fidelity to the state, etc. For a while in the fifth century when Latin began to replace Greek as the language of commerce and thought, we saw the first semblence of the growth of new ideas and philosophies. During the monastic period with Bernard of Clairvaux, Christian doctrines saw some development, which since the time of the first councils convoked by Constantine, we began to ...