Sócrates, USA y The Economist

La entrada es de la edición de navidades de la prestigiosa publicación del UK: aquí, pero sin garantías de acceso :-(; se titula: Socrates in America - Arguing to death

Extracto introductorio:

"Socrates throws down a gauntlet from antiquity to America and all other democracies. How could Athens, which prided itself on its freedoms and had for decades not only tolerated but delighted in the stings of the man who described himself as its “gadfly”, turn on its greatest mind and condemn him to death when he was 70 years old? Had Socrates exposed a terrible flaw in democracy? Or had democracy responded to a mortal threat from the likes of Socrates?..."

El tema rodea pues la relación entre el individuo que se expresa y cuestiona su sociedad (aquella donde vive), y el gobierno de esta sociedad que puede resistir su voz o no puede resistirla y d e c i d e entonces callarla mediante la condena a muerte.... Pero se trata también de los perdidos significados de conversación y dialéctica:

"Socrates’s alternative was “good” conversation or dialectic. To converse originally meant to turn towards one another, in order to find a common humanity and to move closer to the truth of something. Dialectic, in other words, is decidedly not about winning or losing, because all the conversants are ennobled by it. It is a joint search... On a good day, Socrates’s conversations bore all the marks of dialectic. There was little long-winded monologue and much pithy back-and-forth. The conversation often meandered and sometimes Socrates contradicted himself. In the “Protagoras”, for example, he argues that virtue cannot be taught but in the “Meno” that it can. The conversations were at times humorous and invariably surprising. He hoped to bring all involved to a higher state of awareness..."

Y de la educación del "hombre público":

"Because Socrates wanted to win converts to this conversational culture he often chose young and malleable men who appeared tempted by the eristic rhetoric he believed democracy encouraged. For instance, Socrates tried hard to educate Alcibiades, the hedonistic and ambitious young man whose guardian Pericles was Athens’s greatest statesman. He also went for a long walk in the countryside of Athens (which he hated leaving) with a young man named Phaedrus in order, very gently, to make the youth see the hollowness of a rhetorician he admired..."

Léanse el resto y notarán qué poco ha cambiado el mundo (al menos el occidental) en 2.500 años; más aun, qué poco lo que en verdad somos capaces de inventar (el resto de los mortales) una vez la filosofía ha extendido su discurso sobre éste (sobre el mundo): el extenso - en el tiempo y el espacio - poder de los grandes filósofos :-); más aun, que campea aún, y sin pérdida de alientos, el ¿dilema? de la co-existencia y el co-desenvolvimiento de lo "público" y lo privado...

PS: nunca hay que tomar muy en serio lo que se publica en los períodicos y revistas; menos aún si son ediciones de fin de año; y muchísimo menos aún si aquéllo se usa para generar entradas en un blog :-) :-) :-)