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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Jacob Snyder who wrote (82575)	3/16/2003 11:01:40 PM
From: Bilow	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

Hi Jacob Snyder; Re Acibiades, here's some crib notes: ... Socrates: Consider then and be ready to say, to what does "better" refer in maintaining peace and in warring with whom it is necessary? Alcibiades: But in considering I am not able to understand. SO. Don't you know, when we make war, with what suffering we charge each other when we go into warring, and what we name it when we go? ALC. I do, that someone deceived or violated or cheated. SO. You have it; how are each of these suffered? Try to say, what is the difference between one or another. ALC. Do you mean by this, Socrates, justly or unjustly? SO. The same. ALC. But this is the whole difference and all of it. SO. So what then? On which are you counseling the Athenians to war, those doing the unjust or the just? ALC. This you are asking is tricky; for even if someone decides that it is necessary to war on those doing the just, he would not admit it. SO. For this is not lawful, as is fitting. ALC. Of course not; nor does it seem to be beautiful. SO. Then will you make your speeches along these lines also? ALC. Necessarily. SO. So what else, the better which I was just now asking in reference to warring or not, and with whom it is necessary and with whom it is not, and when it is and when not, happens to be the more just? or not? ALC. It appears so. ... SO. So what then? Do the many seem to you to differ on what is stone or wood? And if you asked them, would they not agree on the same things, and do they go after the same things when they want to get stone or wood? Just as also with every such thing; for what I pretty much understand that you mean by knowing how to speak Greek is this; or is it not? ALC. Yes. SO. Then on these things, as we said, they agree with each other and with their own selves in private, and in democracy the states do not disagree with each other on these, and they do not affirm others? ALC. They do not. ... SO. But what if we wanted to know, not only what people are, but which are healthy or diseased, then would the many be adequate teachers for us? ALC. Of course not. SO. And *would you have proof that they are bad teachers of these things, if you saw them differing? ALC. I would. SO. But what then? Now about just and unjust people and business do the many seem to you to agree on these themselves or with each other?* ALC. *Not in the least by God, Socrates.* SO. But what? Do they differ very much about these? ALC. Much. SO. Then I think you *never yet saw nor heard people differing so seriously about health and lack of it, so as to fight because of these things* and kill each other. ALC. Of course not. SO. But about justice and injustice I know that, even if you have not seen it, you have heard at any rate from many others and Homer. For you have heard both the Odyssey and the Iliad. ALC. Most certainly, Socrates. SO. Then are these poems about a difference of just and unjust? ALC. Yes. SO. And the battles and the deaths occurred because of this difference between the Achaeans and the other Trojans, and between the suitors of Penelope and Odysseus. ALC. You speak the truth. SO. And I think also at Tanagra when Athenians and Lacedaemonians and Boeotians died, and later at Coronea, in which also your father met his end, and concerning the former no other difference than about the just and unjust produced the deaths and the battles. Did it not? ALC. You speak the truth. SO. So are we to say these are knowledgeable, about what they differ on so seriously, so as to go opposing each other to their very last extremity? ALC. It does not appear so. SO. Then are you referring to such teachers, whom you admit yourself do not know? ALC. It is likely. SO. *So how is it likely that you know the just and the unjust, about which you go astray so and appear not to have learned from anyone nor discovered yourself?* ... san.beck.org