"At this point, the whole radicality of today's dispute over ethics and
conscience, its center, becomes plain. It seems to me that the parallel in the
history of thought is the quarrel between Socrates-Plato and the sophists in
which the fateful decision between two fundamental positions has been rehearsed.
There is, on the one hand, the position of confidence in man's capacity for
truth. On the other, there is a worldview in which man alone sets standards
for himself. The fact that Socrates, the pagan, could become in a certain respect
the prophet of Jesus Christ has its roots in this fundamental question. Socrates'
taking up of this question bestowed on the way of philosophizing inspired by
him a kind of salvation-historical privilege and made it an appropriate vessel
for the Christian Logos. For with the Christian Logos we are dealing with liberation
through truth and to truth. If you isolate Socrates' dispute from the
accidents of the time and take into account his use of other arguments and terminology,
you begin to see how closely this is the same dilemma we face today. Giving
up the idea of man's capacity for truth leads first to pure formalism in the
use of words and concepts. Again, the loss of content, then and now, leads to
a pure formalism of judgment. In many places today, for example, no one bothers
any longer to ask what a person thinks. The verdict on someone's thinking is
ready at hand as long as you can assign it to its corresponding, formal category:
conservative, reactionary, fundamentalist, progressive, revolutionary. Assignment
to a formal scheme suffices to render unnecessary coming to terms with the content.
The same thing can be seen in more concentrated form, in art. What a work of
art says is indifferent. It can glorify God or the devil. The sole standard
is that of formal, technical mastery.
We now have arrived at the heart of the matter. Where contents no longer count,
where pure praxeology takes over, technique becomes the highest criterion. This
means, though, that power becomes the preeminent category whether revolutionary
or reactionary. This is precisely the distorted form of being like God of which
the account of the fall speaks. The way of mere technical skill, the
way of sheer power, is imitation of an idol and not expression of one's
being made in the image and likeness of God. What characterizes man as man is
not that he asks about the "can" but about the "should"
and that he opens himself to the voice and demands of truth. It seems to me
that this was the final meaning of the Socratic search and it is the profoundest
element in the witness of all martyrs. They attest to the fact that man's
capacity for truth is a limit on all power and a guarantee of man's likeness
to God. It is precisely in this way that the martyrs are the great
witnesses of conscience, of that capability given to man to perceive the "should"
beyond the "can" and thereby render possible real progress, real ascent."
-- Joseph Cardinal
Ratzinger (now Pope
Benedict XVI)
Lee Harris, "Socrates or Muhammad? Joseph Ratzinger on the destiny of reason", Weekly Standard 12:3 (10/02/2006): <http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/012/736fyrpi.asp?pg=2>.
Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, "Conscience and Truth", Presented at the 10th Workshop for Bishops February 1991 Dallas, Texas: <http://www.ewtn.com/library/curia/ratzcons.htm>.
Romano Guardini, The Death of Socrates (New York: Sheed & Ward, 1948). <http://books.google.ca/books?id=992pUj7Z2B0C>.
Peter Kreeft, Philosophy 101 by Socrates (Ignatius Press, 2002).
Michael Pakaluk, Review of Mark L. McPherran, The Religion of Socrates, in Bryn Mawr Classical Review (97.12.11): <http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/bmcr/1997/97.12.11.html>.
Victor
Davis Hanson, "Delium"
The entire ensemble might cost a citizen-soldier well over a hundred drachmas.
That was the equivalent to about three months’ wages. Later in the war,
small factories — like the shield-works in Athens run by the family of
orator Lysias — could turn out the standard wooden elements of the panoply
en masse. As the war became more desperate in its second and third
decades, the old idea of hanging up inherited ancestral arms over the hearth
was becoming passé; the state armed thousands of the poor, regardless
of their particular social status.
György Németh,
Kritias und die Dreissig Tyrannen
To be a member of the hoplite class, a citizen must have been able to purchase
a set of armour. But once purchased, what further was required in order to maintain
the status? Németh continues to speak of the number of citizens who could
"afford" a set of armour, but this overlooks the fact that the purchase
was likely a one-time event. If a hoplite already had a set of armour, and the
census status of being a hoplite, why would he need cash? Also, we cannot dismiss
the possibility that armour could be loaned or that the money to purchase armour
could be loaned by family and friends, to be repaid at a later date.
