Socrates: A Man for Our Times Read Online Free PDF

the fertile and fascinating dialogue named after Protagoras. This reveals him as urbane and reasonable and Socrates as unworldly and reasonable, the two philosophers competing to proclaim “progressive” views, Protagoras being particularly innovatory. He sets forth the view that criminal justice should not be guided by revenge or retribution: The aim of any punishment ought to be to deter the criminal and others from committing further crimes. This was a theme Socrates was to develop with huge historical consequences, as we shall see. This dialogue is one of the best Plato records. I do not want to anticipate Socrates’ methods of arguing and teaching, which I will come to later. But Protagoras posed him an unusual problem, for unlike most of the clever men Socrates met and debated with, Protagoras was highly rational, moderate and what Jane Austen would have called “a sensible man.” His worldliness, though distasteful to Socrates, bringing forth his most biting irony, was displayed with a disarming veneer of common sense as well as considerable acumen. That was exactly the combination Pericles valued. He ordered him to give public lectures on progress and, in 443 B.C., to draw up a working constitution for the new Athenian colony of Thurii.
    It was Pericles’ view, reflecting a deep-rooted Athenian conviction, that the civilized life of a polis was a whole, and that the sensible citizen should, as a matter of duty to his city and to himself, participate in every aspect of it. Greek cities were planned, perhaps the first in history to be arranged in an intelligent and purposeful fashion. By the fifth century B.C., the Greeks had adopted the grid structure developed in parts of the Middle East, and this made planning easier. The defensive core of the city, like the Acropolis of Athens, might be dictated by geography and geology. But within certain limits, the city could be made rational. All the facilities—assembly room, theater, lyceum (for music), the various gymnasia or schools, the stadium, and the agora or shopping center—were placed in convenient relationship to one another. And all were usually capable of accommodating the entire adult male citizenship.
    Athens was a mobile society, upward and sideways. A young slave called Pasion, born when Socrates was forty, worked hard and intelligently at the bank where he ran errands, won his freedom, later parlayed his way into getting citizenship from the Assembly, or possibly bought it, and ended up the richest man in Greece, becoming unpopular enough to merit angry speeches from Demosthenes and Isocrates (his famous Trapeziticus or “Speech Against the Banker”). Again, in Socrates’ time, a champion wrestler became a well-known philosopher. Playwrights and historians became generals; and generals, historians. Poets became statesmen, and politicians wrote plays. An architect might found a colony, and a man who made lamps might rule the city. Plato nearly devoted his life to poetry. Socrates thought seriously about going into public life before rejecting the idea at a sign from heaven “which coincided with my reason.” Athens in the fifth century B.C. was unique in history in making it so easy for men of talent to cross professional and vocational boundaries.
    It was also unique, at least in Pericles’ heyday, in blending democracy, empire, and cultural triumph, indeed triumphalism. The secret was money. The Delian League, originally formed to fight Persia, became the basis for an Athenian empire of allies and colonies, each of which contributed to a common treasury held in Athens. Some rebuilding had taken place in the city to make good the damage inflicted by the Persian sacking. But Pericles, once installed in power, formed a scheme to use the common funds to rebuild Athens, especially its Acropolis, in the most splendid manner. The centerpiece was the erection of the Parthenon at the highest point of the Acropolis to house a gigantic gold and ivory statue