Posted on 08/22/2003 10:59:42 PM PDT by Destro
The Real Ten Commandments
By Richard Carrier
I keep hearing this chant, variously phrased: "The Ten Commandments are the foundation of Western morality and the American Constitution and government." In saying this, people are essentially crediting Moses with the invention of ethics, democracy and civil rights, a claim that is of course absurd. But its absurdity is eclipsed by its injustice, for there is another lawmaker who is far more important to us, whose ideas and actions lie far more at the foundation of American government, and whose own Ten Commandments were distributed at large and influencing the greatest civilizations of the West--Greece and Rome--for well over half a millennia before the laws of Moses were anything near a universal social influence. In fact, by the time the Ten Commandments of Moses had any real chance of being the foundation of anything in Western society, democracy and civil rights had all but died out, never to rise again until the ideals of our true hero, the real man to whom we owe all reverence, were rediscovered and implemented in what we now call "modern democratic principles."
The man I am talking about is Solon the Athenian. Solon was born, we believe, around 638 B.C.E., and lived until approximately 558, but the date in his life of greatest importance to us is the year he was elected to create a constitution for Athens, 594 B.C.E. How important is this man? Let's examine what we owe to him, in comparison with the legendary author (or at last, in legend, the transmitter) of the Judeo-Christian Ten Commandments. Solon is the founder of Western democracy and the first man in history to articulate ideas of equal rights for all citizens, and though he did not go nearly as far in the latter as we have come today, Moses can claim no connection to either. Solon was the first man in Western history to publicly record a civil constitution in writing. No one in Hebrew history did anything of the kind, least of all Moses. Solon advocated not only the right but even the duty of every citizen to bear arms in the defense of the state--to him we owe the 2nd Amendment. Nothing about that is to be found in the Ten Commandments of Moses. Solon set up laws defending the principles and importance of private property, state encouragement of economic trades and crafts, and a strong middle class--the ideals which lie at the heart of American prosperity, yet which cannot be credited at all to Moses.
Solon is the first man in history to eliminate birth as a basis for government office, and to create democratic assemblies open to all male citizens, such that no law could be passed without the majority vote of all. The notion of letting women into full political rights would not arise in any culture until that of modern Europe, but democracy never gets a single word in the Bible. Solon invented the right of appeal and trial by jury, whereby an assembly of citizens chosen at random, without regard for office or wealth or birth, gave all legal verdicts. Moses can claim nothing as fundamental as these developments, which are absolutely essential to modern society. The concept of taking a government official to court for malfeasance we owe to Solon. We read nothing of the kind about Moses. The idea of allowing foreigners who have mastered a useful trade to immigrate and become citizens is also an original invention of Solon--indeed, the modern concept of citizenship itself is largely indebted to him. There is nothing like this in the Bible. And like our own George Washington, Solon declined the offer to become ruler in his country, giving it a Constitution instead--unlike Moses who gave laws yet continued to reign. And Solon's selfless creation of the Athenian constitution set the course which led to the rise of the first universal democracy in the United States, and it was to Solon's Athens, not the Bible, that our Founding Fathers looked for guidance in constructing a new State. Moses can claim no responsibility for this. If we had Solon and no Moses, we would very likely still be where we are today. But if we had Moses and no Solon, democracy might never have existed at all.
So much for being the impetus behind our Constitution. The Ten Commandments of Moses have no connection with that, while the Constitution of Solon has everything to do with it. But what about ethics? Let us examine the Ten Commandments offered by each of these men and compare their worth and significance to Western society. Of course, neither man's list was unique to him--Moses was merely borrowing ideas that had already been chiseled in stone centuries before by Hammurabi, King of Babylon (and unlike the supposed tablets of Moses, the Stone of Hammurabi still exists and is on display in the Louvre). Likewise, Solon's Ten Ethical Dicta were a reflection and refinement of wisdom that was already ancient in his day. And in both cases the association of these men with their moral precepts is as likely legend as fact, but the existence and reverence for their sayings in their respective cultures was still real--and we can ask three questions: Which list of Ten Commandments lies more at the heart of modern Western moral ideals? Which contains concepts that are more responsible for our current social success and humanity? And which is more profound and more fitting for a free society?
The Ten Commandments of Moses (Deuteronomy 5:6-21, Exodus 20:3-16) run as follows--and I am even going out of my way to leave out the bounteous and blatantly-religious language that actually surrounds them in the original text, as well as the tacit approval of slavery present in the fourth commandment, none of which is even remotely suitable for political endorsement by a free republic:
1. Have no other gods before me [the God of the Hebrews].
2. Make no images of anything in heaven, earth or the sea, and do not worship or labor for them.
3. Do not vainly use the name of your God [the God of the Hebrews].
4. Do no work on the seventh day of the week.
5. Honor your parents.
6. Do not kill.
7. Do not commit adultery.
8. Do not steal.
9. Do not give false testimony against another.
10. Do not desire another's wife or anything that belongs to another.
Now, we can see at once that our society is entirely opposed to the first four, and indeed the last of these ten. As a capitalist society, we scoff at the idea of closing our shops on a choice market day. And our very goal in life is to desire--desiring is what drives us toward success and prosperity. The phrase "seeking the American Dream," which lies at the heart of our social world, has at its heart the very idea of coveting the success of our peers, goading us to match it with our own industry, and we owe all our monumental national success to this. Finally, our ideals of religious liberty and free speech, essential to any truly civil society, compel us to abhor the first three commandments. Thus, already half of Moses' doctrines cannot be the foundation of our modern society--to the contrary, they are anathema to modern ideals.
Of the rest, it can be assured that shunning adultery has never contributed to the rise of civil rights and democratic principles (despite much trying, there is no Adultery Amendment). It is naturally regarded as immoral--but then it always has been, by all societies, before and since the time of Moses, for the simple reason that it, like lying, theft, and murder, does harm to others, and thus these commandments are as redundant as they are unprofound. They can be more usefully summed up with just three words: do no harm. These words comprise the first commandment of another Greek moralist whose contribution to society lies at the very heart of modern reality: the founder of scientific medicine, Hippocrates. (who was anti-abortion too)
Finally, we are left with only one commandment, to honor our parents. This of course has been a foundational principle of every society ever since such things as "societies" existed. Yet the greatest advances in civil rights and civic moral consciousness in human history occurred precisely as the result not of obeying, but of disobeying this very commandment: the social revolutions of the sixties, naturally abhorred by conservatives and yet spearheaded by rebellious teenagers and young adults, nevertheless secured the moral rights of women and minorities--something unprecedented in human history--and by opposing the Vietnam war, our children displayed for the first time a massive popular movement in defense of the very pacifism which Christians boast of having introduced into the world, yet are usually the last to actually stand up for. It can even be said that our entire moral ethos is one of thinking for ourselves, of rebellion and moral autonomy, of daring to stand up against even our elders when our conscience compels it. Thus, it would seem that even this commandment does not lie at the heart of our modern society--it is largely an anachronism, lacking the essential nuances that a more profound ethic promotes.
Let us now turn to the Ten Commandments of Solon (Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, 1.60), which run as follows:
1. Trust good character more than promises.
2. Do not speak falsely.
3. Do good things.
4. Do not be hasty in making friends, but do not abandon them once made.
5. Learn to obey before you command.
6. When giving advice, do not recommend what is most pleasing, but what is most useful.
7. Make reason your supreme commander.
8. Do not associate with people who do bad things.
9. Honor the gods.
10. Have regard for your parents.
Unlike the Commandments of Moses, none of these is outdated or antithetical to modern moral or political thought. Every one could be taken up by anyone today, of any creed--except perhaps only one. And indeed, there is something much more profound in these commandments. They are far more useful as precepts for living one's life. Can society, can government, prevail and prosper if we fail to uphold the First Commandment of Moses? By our own written declaration of religious liberty for all, we have staked our entire national destiny on the belief that we not only can get by without it, but we ought to abolish it entirely. Yet what if we were to fail to uphold Solon's first commandment? The danger to society would be clear--indeed, doesn't this commandment speak to the heart of what makes or breaks a democratic society? Isn't it absolutely fundamental that we not trust the promises of politicians and flatterers, but elect our leaders and choose our friends instead by taking the trouble to evaluate the goodness of their character? This, then, can truly be said to be an ideal that is fundamental to modern moral and political thought.
Now, two of the commandments of Solon are almost identical to those advocated by Moses: do not speak falsely, and have regard for your parents. Of course, Solon does not restrict his first injunction to false accusations or testimony against others, as Moses does. Solon's commandment is more profound and thus more fundamental, and is properly qualified by the other commandments in just the way we believe is appropriate--for Solon's rules allow one to lie if doing so is a good deed (no such prescription to do good appears in the Ten Commandments of Moses). And whereas Moses calls us to honor our parents (in the Hebrew, from kabed, "to honor, to glorify"), Solon's choice of words is more appropriate--he only asks us to treat our parents in a respectful way (in the Greek, from aideomai, "to show a sense of regard for, to have compassion upon"), which we can do even if we disobey or oppose them, and even if we disapprove of their character and thus have no grounds to honor them.
In contrast with Moses, Solon wastes no words with legalisms--he sums up everything in three words: do good things. This is an essential moral principle, lacking from the commands of Moses, which allows one to qualify all the others. And instead of simply commanding us to follow rules, Solon's commandments involve significant social and political advice: temper our readiness to rebel and to do our own thing (which Solon does not prohibit) by learning first how to follow others; take care when making friends, and stick by them; always give good advice--don't just say what people want to hear; shun bad people. It can be said without doubt that this advice is exactly what we need in order to be successful and secure--as individuals, as communities, and even as a nation. The ideals represented by these commandments really do rest at the foundation of modern American morality and society, and would be far more useful for school children whose greatest dangers are peer influence, rashness and naivete.
There is but one that might give a secularist pause: Solon's commandment to honor the gods (in the Greek, timaô, "to honor, to revere, to pay due regard"). Yet when we compare it to the similar First Three Commandments of Moses, we see how much more Solon's single religious commandment can be made to suit our society and our civic ideals: it does not have to restrict religious freedom, for it does not demand that we believe in anyone's god or follow anyone's religious rules. It remains in the appropriate plural. Solon asks us to give the plethora of gods the regard that they are due, and we can say that some gods are not due much--such as the racist gods and gods of hellfire. In the end, it is good to be respectful of the gods of others, which we can do even if we are criticizing them, even if we disbelieve in them. This would remain true to our most prized American ethic of religious liberty and civility. Though it might better be rendered now, "Respect the religions of others," there is something fitting in admitting that there are many gods, the many that people invent and hope for.
It is clear then, that if anyone's commandments ought to be posted on school and courthouse walls, it should be Solon's. He has more right as the founder of our civic ideals, and as a more profound and almost modern moral thinker. His commandments are more befitting our civil society, more representative of what we really believe and what we cherish in our laws and economy. And indeed, in the end, they are essentially secular. Is it an accident that when Solon's ideals reigned, there grew democracies and civil rights, and ideals we now consider fundamental to modern Western society, yet when the ideals of Moses replaced them, we had a thousand years of oppression, darkness, and tyranny? Is it coincidence that when the ideals of Moses were replaced with those of Solon, when men decided to fight and die not for the Ten Commandments but for the resurrection of Athenian civil society, we ended up with the great Democratic Revolutions and the social and legal structures that we now take for granted as the height and glory of human achievement and moral goodness? I think we owe our thanks to Solon. Moses did nothing for us--his laws were neither original nor significant in comparison. When people cry for the hanging of the Ten Commandments of Moses on school and court walls, I am astonished. Solon's Ten Commandments have far more right to hang in those places than those of Moses. The Athenian's Commandments are far more noble and profound, and far more appropriate to a free society. Who would have guessed this of a pagan? Maybe everyone of sense.
"Those who intellectually contributed to the Constitutional convention were the Founding Fathers. .... Back then church membership was a big deal. In other words, to be a member of a church back then, it wasn't just a matter of sitting in the pew or attending once in a while. This was a time when church membership entailed a sworn public confession of biblical faith, adherence, and acknowledgment of the doctrines of that particular church.
Of those 55 Founding Fathers, we know what their sworn public confessions were. [excerpted]: HERE
Specifically, the 55 Framers (from North to South):
John Langdon, Congregationalist (Calvinist)
Nicholas Gilman, Congregationalist (Calvinist)
Elbridge Gerry, Episcoplian (Calvinist)
Rufus King, Episcopalian (Calvinist)
Caleb Strong, Congregationalist (Calvinist)
Nathaniel Gorham, Congregationalist (Calvinist)
Roger Sherman, Congregationalist (Calvinist)
William Samuel Johnson, Episcopalian (Calvinist)
Oliver Ellsworth, Congregationalist (Calvinist)
Alexander Hamilton, Episcopalian (Calvinist)
John Lansing, Dutch Reformed (Calvinist)
Robert Yates, Dutch Reformed (Calvinist)
William Patterson, Presbyterian (Calvinist)
William Livingston, Presbyterian (Calvinist)
Jonathan Dayton, Episcopalian (Calvinist)
David Brearly, Episcopalian (Calvinist)
William Churchill Houston, Presbyterian (Calvinist)
Benjamin Franklin, Christian in his youth, Deist in later years, then back to his Puritan background in his old age (his June 28, 1787 prayer at the Constitutional Convention was from no "Deist")
Robert Morris, Episcopalian, (Calvinist)
James Wilson, probably a Deist
Gouverneur Morris, Episcopalian (Calvinist)
Thomas Mifflin, Lutheran (Calvinist-lite)
George Clymer, Quaker turned Episcopalian (Calvinist)
Thomas FitzSimmons, Roman Catholic
Jared Ingersoll, Presbyterian (Calvinist)
John Dickinson, Quaker turned Episcopalian (Calvinist)
George Read, Episcopalian, (Calvinist)
Richard Bassett, Methodist
Gunning Bedford, Presbyterian (Calvinist)
Jacob Broom, Lutheran
Luther Martin, Episcopalian, (Calvinist)
Daniel Carroll, Roman Catholic
John Francis Mercer, Episcopalian (Calvinist)
James McHenry, Presbyterian (Calvinist)
Daniel of St Thomas Jennifer, Episcopalian (Calvinist)
George Washington, Episcopalian (Calvinist; no, he was not a deist)
James Madison, Episcopalian (Calvinist)
George Mason, Episcopalian (Calvinist)
Edmund Jennings Randolph, Episcopalian (Calvinist)
James Blair, Jr., Episcopalian (Calvinist)
James McClung, ?
George Wythe, Episcopalian (Calvinist)
William Richardson Davie, Presbyterian (Calvinist)
Hugh Williamson, Presbyterian, possibly later became a Deist
William Few, Methodist
William Leigh Pierce, Episcopalian (Calvinist)
William Houstoun, Episcopalian (Calvinist)
William Blount, Presbyterian (Calvinist)
Alexander Martin, Presbyterian/Episcopalian (Calvinist)
Richard Dobbs Spaight, Jr., Episcopalian (Calvinist)
John Rutledge, Episcopalian (Calvinist)
Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, III, Episcopalian (Calvinist)
Abraham Baldwin, Congregationalist (Calvinist)
And don't confuse the modern-day "pop-culture" mainline Presbyterian, Episcopalian, Congregationalist churches with the ones extant in the days of the Founders. Today's mainline churches have been co-opted by the Marxist left.
Madison was a Calvinist:The Political Philosophy of James Madison by Garrett Ward Sheldon
... "Sheldon argues that it was a fear of the potential 'tyranny of the majority' over individual rights, along with a firmly Calvinist suspicion of the motives of sinful men, that led him to support a constitution creating a strong central government with power over state laws." (editorial review)
THE RELIGIOUS FAITH OF OUR FOUNDING FATHERS all but calls Madison a Calvinist.
Gracchus -- Charles Laughton says Julius Ceaser -- John Gavin as they are leaving the Senate and buying some white doves to sacrifice to the temple.
Paraphrasing:
Julius Caesar -- John Gavin: Sacrifice to the Gods? You don't believe in any of them.
Gracchus -- Charles Laughton: In private my dear boy, I believe in none of them, In public I believe in all of them.
If he were right about our society being entirely opposed to the first four and last commandment, the Roy Mooore affair would never have happened, and in fact Carrier wouldn't have seen a need for this article. Or perhaps "our society" means something other than America.
Also, he seems to lack reading comprehension. The last Commandment prohibits not desire in general (these are not Buddhist commandments), but desiring what your neighbor has, which precedes theft, or adultery in the case of your neighbor's wife. Surely theft and adultery aren't the basis of capitalism. And "Thou shalt have no other gods before Me" doesn't imply "and kill those who do." Unless he thinks you can't hold a position about religious matters without wishing to persecute those with other positions, in which case he has no business claiming free speech as "our" ideal.
And Solon's "ten commandments" read like the first ten entries in an ancient Life's Little Instruction Book.
In the course of Western Civilization, there have been two trials ending in a sentence of death imposed upon two individuals later deemed grossly unfair and unjust by the verdict of history. One trial was that of Jesus Christ, the other that of Socrates.
Of course, it can be said with justification that each man steered a course that ended with a fatal termination from the power structure of the time.
It was Jesus' destiny.
It was Socrates' choice.
Both philosophers and theologians, by defining proper moral conduct, carry a political message, a message apt to rub the ruling power structure's nose in its own mess. Honesty is a dangerous double-edged sword wielded by a messenger of truth speaking to power. Christ defined and built a new moral order. All Socrates ever accomplished was questioning and probing the democratic beliefs of his day. He refused to define proper behavior and what should be done by government. Socrates built nothing, wrote nothing; instead he strove to destroy the legitimacy of free men ruling themselves, brown-nosed to concepts of authoritarian rule, and thus was never more than a moral vandal and graffitti-tagger to the social-order Parthenon of fifth century Athens, perhaps the most brilliant civilization ever seen on this planet.
Both Christ and Socrates were killed at the orders of lesser men for what they said. The story of Jesus Christ and the world in which he lived are well known. Now let us look at Socrates, the world's first "intellectual" and the stage he acted upon.
Fifth Century B.C. Athens was the world's first and most brilliant democracy. From being governed by kings, one of them the legendary hero Theseus, it had gradually opened the franchise from an oligarchy of nobles and rich landowners to where even poor men could serve on the Council of 500 or on the jury. Every citizen was expected to govern and perform military service for his city. Athens also had a middle class, the backbone of all democracies, who were expected to arm themselves and serve as hoplites, heavy infantrymen in a phalanx. This middle class carried arms and underwent military training, both to proctect their government and their rights.
Late in the sixth century, the Persians in trying to expand their empire came in contact with the Greeks. The Greeks, loving their freedom, helped their cousins living in Asia Minor resist the Persians. The Persians tried to conquer and punish the Athenians and Spartans who had interfered in their goals of empire.
Both the Athenians and the Spartans successfully resisted the Persians and in a number of battles on land and at sea eventually drove the Persians out of Europe and back to Asia Minor. Athens was not able to grow enough grain to feed her people. So the population grew olives and grapes and exported their wares and silver all over the known world. Thus Athens became a trading maritime, then a sea power.
Sparta, on the other hand, was a militaristic state, ruled by principles opposite to those of Athens. The land was fertile. The Spartans enslaved the non-Dorian population and made them grow food for the Spartans. In order to guard against slave revolts, Sparta became a police state, and the free citizens were trained in the arts of war from the age of seven. At 30, a Spartan citizen was allowed to live in his own house, but his male children belonged to the state, to train a new generation as soldiers.
Thus Sparta was not a trading state. Its coins were made of iron. Its soldiers were the best in Greece. Sparta did not produce a single poet, writer, or artist. In order to keep some of its slaves docile, no man could live free.
When the Athenians and Spartans faced a common enemy, they were allies. Once the Persians were driven from the scene, both city-states, unable to understand the other, became first rivals and then enemies. Out of alliances between the various city-states forged during the Persian wars, came the bloody fraternal conflict known as the Peloponnesian War (431-404 B.C.)
The Athenians were in charge of the naval organization known as the Delian League. The Spartans led the armies of Peloponnesian League. Picture the Peloppesian War as equivalent to a naval America in conflict with a land-based Russia, or a Great Britain at war with Germany. It would be an apt comparison, because that is the way the war was fought; politically, economically, and morally for 27 years.
And Socrates lived in Athens, was a citizen there, and in every utterance he is recorded to have said, openly preferred the tyranny of the Spartans over the democracy of the Athenians, much in the same way socialist "intellectuals" without intellect live among us today, sucking up to the notions of a dictatorship of the proletariat, a dictatorship that will make common cause with the intellectuals to rule the common herd of common man.
Socrates was a moral and intellectual traitor. He lived and died to destroy the country which gave him birth.
It took a while for easygoing Athens to get Socrates' number. Socrates was the town character, as mentioned in Aristophanes's "The Clouds." While a member of the middle class, he was on good terms with Pericles, the ruling aristocrat voted the first strategos (general) for over 30 years. Socrates, the perfect snob, surrounded himself with the gilded aristocratic youth of Athens.
But there is a limit to even the most patient of governments. When a legitimate government is strong, it can afford to ignore pinpricks of ridicule. But after Athens lost her empire by losing the Peloponnesian War and had undergone two oligarchic reigns of terror at the hands of the gilded, Socratified rich kids, her patience with Socrates ended.
Socrates was charged in 399 B.C. with "impiety against the gods of the city" and with "corrupting the young." He was guilty on all counts.
On the count of impiety against the gods of the city, the charges pertained not to bad-mouthing Zeus, but to Socrates' love for dictatorship and disdain for democracy. After having fought wars against tyrants -- foreign and domestic -- Athens felt that she had to protect herself from the contaminating sources of bloodshed, death, and poverty. And lest we condemn Athens, was it not Abraham Lincoln who protested against "shooting the 16 year old deserter" and then "not harming a hair on the head of the wily old agitator" who egged him on?
Socrates' basic premise of government -- according to Xenophon's "Memorabilia" -- was "that it is the business of the ruler to give orders and of the ruled to obey." So the ruler should have total, unaccounted power.
And who should the rulers be? "Kings and rulers are not those who hold the scepter." Scratch conventional monarchy. Certainly not "those who are chosen by the multitude." Ick, not nowhere near a democracy. Shudder, elitist shudder, to think of the "herd" trying to rule themselves. "Nor on those whom the lot falls." Athens chose by lot from out among the democratic herd those who served on the expediting committees of a given day. Socrates did not like Athenian democracy at all, not even when tempered by chance. "Nor those who owe their power to force or deception." So much for traditional musclebound tyrants. The best form of government is by "kings and rulers," "those who know how to rule."
After hearing this, it's not too difficult to figure out where Plato got his notions of rule by "philosopher-kings." Absolute rule by so-called intellectuals who know what is best for the rest of us, over we who are nothing but sheep to be used for the good of the elites who would rule us.
Socrates was the world's first killer intellectual, the world's first proponent of "dictatorship of the proletariat," the first apologist for for Leninism, and the first colonist of the nasty lot of moral squatters on free soil who infiltrate and destroy the social order of free men.
Athens would have spared herself a lot of trouble if she had bestirred herself to write Socrates' name on broken potsherds -- the ostracism -- branded the Spartan equivalent of the hammer-and-sickle and a swastica on his butt, and given him a no-expenses paid, free, ten-year trip to Sparta where he could have enjoyed the life of a menial helot under a system he supposedly admired.
But no, the Athenians, a relatively decent lot, got tricked into indulging Socrates' death wish, and Socratic intellectuals have been whining up the sad fate of this moral criminal ever since.
The second charge against Socrates, that he had corrupted the youth of Athens, was even more damning. The foremost examples of the gilded youth he led astray was Alcibiades and Critias, although Socrates' effect on the rich young aristocratic fops was already mentioned in Aristophanes' "The Birds," written in 414 B.C., fifteen years before he was called to account:
Why, till ye built this city in the air, _____ line 1280 All men had gone Laconian-mad; they went __ [Spartan-mad] Long-haired, half-starved, unwashed, Socratified, With scytales in their hands; but Oh the change! They are all bird-mad now, and imitate ____ line 1284
Aristophanes made fun of the dandies with their Spartan habits, dress, and even carrying their little Spartan secret police short clubs about town, but this was before the rich kids turned mean. When he mentions the intellectual beliefs of the Athenian "Spur Posse" as being "Socratified" he refers to their instilled beliefs that they were better than everyone else and that the poor and middle class were disposable human beings they could use with impunity.
One rich kid named Alcibiades was a relative of Pericles and raised in Pericles' own household. Brilliant, handsome, rich, and of noble birth, Alcibiades had it all, except for a good character. As a general, he betrayed Athens, fled to Sparta, knocked up a Spartan king's wife and was kicked out of Sparta as a troublemaker, ran back to Athens, got elected general again, betrayed Athens again and was kicked out, then fled to Persia where he was killed upon the orders of another Athenian rich kid named Critias who set up a dictatorship backed by the Spartans. The Athenians loved Alcibiades, but nobody could trust him.
Alcibiades was Socrates' favorite pupil. Socrates saved his life on a battlefield. But the lesson Alcibiades learned from Socrates was that the rulers have no duty to their country; that their ambitions and desires come ahead of the common herd's well-being and lives. Alcibiades was a Socratified "superman."
The other pupil of Socrates mentioned in this indictment was Critias. Critias was Plato's uncle and Plato wrote a dialogue about him. In 411, an aristocratic over-throw of the Athenian democracy occurred and Athens lived in a state of terror for four months until they were able to restore a democracy. In 404, Athens lost the Peloponnesian war and the Spartans installed a puppet government of the aristocratic "Socratified" element.
The leader of The Thirty, Critias, was the Athenian Robespierre. He killed and murdered as many Athenians from the middle and poor classes as the Spartans had killed in battle over the last ten years of the war. The democratic element fled Athens and waged a civil war and retook the city the next year. To have it said that you had stayed in the city was thereafter a mark of reproach.
But a mark of reproach was all it was, because Athens did one thing not done before or since -- it forgave. An amnesty was offered. Even the aristocrats were offered amnesty without an acre of their lands being confiscated or a copper obol of their money seized. They were not loved, they were not respected, but they were allowed to live in peace.
Critias and another leader of The Thirty, Plato's uncle Charmides, a man Socrates urged to go into government, didn't live to see the armistice. Before they were overthrown, like Nazis seeking refuge in South America, the Thirty carved out a temporary refuge in the small village Eleusis, where they murdered 300 of the male citizens under color of law, having forced an Athenian assembly to vote in a death sentence without trial. Soon afterwards, Critias and Charmides were killed in battle and the amnesty declared.
The aristocrats left for Eleusis and used their money to buy mercenaries to attack Athens. The alarmed Athenians executed the ringleaders, but still extended the amnesty to the rest. Finally, in 401 B.C., two years before Socrates' trial and death, a weary, tired peace came to Athens, who had lost a war, her empire, and many of her citizens.
Socrates remained in Athens and kept his mouth shut when mildly threatened by his Socratified pupils of The Thirty.
Plato does not allude to these matters for some reason. He was 25 years old, military age, and was urged to share in his uncle's and first cousin's government, but like so many "intellectuals," he wussed out. He preferred government by "philosopher-kings" in a book, but never did anything to actually attain it.
So now Athens is as whupped as a cut dog. Her walls have been torn down by order of the victorious Spartans and she has no navy. A civil war between rich and poor has weakened her social cohesion and confidence among her populace. And here comes Socrates, an intellectual Bourbon having remembered everything and learning nothing, preaching the gospel and glories of Spartan style despotism and wanting to teach a new generation of rich kids to despise their elders and their social order.
Athens had had enough.
Athens put Socrates on trial in 399 B.C. when he was 70, a ripe old age considering the times. If Socrates had put on a defense of demanding that Athens live up to its high ideals, perhaps he might have only been ostracized for ten years, a fate that had happened to both good and bad men before him. But instead, in accordance with his wanting to destroy the moral legitimacy of a free government by using its judicial system to fulfill his death wish, he baited both the jury to find him guilty and to punish him with death.
Socrates, who always said that he knew nothing while he asked his destructively critical questions boasted about how the Oracle at Delphi declared that Socrates was the wisest, most free, just, and prudent man in the world. In other words, "I am a fool, but I know I'm a fool and that makes me smarter than you." The jury convicted him on both counts. Then Socrates asked that his penalty be that he be declared a civic hero and fed at the public table for life! That did not go over too well. The jury, incensed, gave out the death penalty.
One of Socrates' disciples suggested a jailbreak and escape, with the tacit connivance of the authorities who just wanted him gone, but Socrates refused. So he drank the hemlock while he put on the airs of a martyr. After all that he had done for democratic Athens, this is the thanks he got! Christ wept over Jerusalem, but Socrates shed not a tear for Athens.
Socrates' most famous pupil, Plato, figured out the heat was on, so he traveled abroad for 12 years, living on his inherited money. Then when the stink cleared, he gave up his notions of becoming a playwright and instead wrote up numerous books about his leading man, Socrates. He formed an academy, wherein his most gifted student, Aristotle, studied. Of course, Aristotle formed his own conclusions, most of which differed from Plato's.No philosopher kings for Aristotle! Aristotle's royal pupil was Alexander the Great.
Read Plato, Aristotle, Xenophon, Aristophanes yourself to judge how a man like Socrates acted upon the Athenian stage. Fifth century Athens was possibly the brightest and most beautiful civilization that ever graced this planet. Fourth century Athens did not shine as brightly, and afterwards Athens did not produce any more great men or institutions. Athenians became like the Mayans, living in stone huts outside the splendid ruins of their ancestors. Socrates should bear some of the blame for this.
But let this article close with the judgement of another man of Socrates' generation, the Greek playwright Euripides, "the philosopher of the stage," as he was known by his contemporaries. Euripides wrote with feeling and humanity about the tragic follies of powerful people who forgot to act with decency and the punishment the gods brought down on them for their misconduct. Character determined destiny. With Euripides began Western Civilization's worthy portrayal of women and the poor. Euripides, while of noble family, was a democrat in the best, most responsible sense of the word.
In one of his lost plays, The Auge, Euripides has one character say in the few lines which survive:
"Cursed be all those who rejoice to see the city in the hands of a single man or under the yoke of a few men! The name of a freeman is the most precious of titles: to possess it is to have much, even when one has little."
Yes, cursed be Socrates, Plato, and all the "intellectual" petty Hitlers, Stalins, FDRs and other big-government butt kissers since.
Sorry I've never heard of this guy before neither do i want to and moses is not the lawmaker God himself laid down the laws Moses carried them down to the people in Gods name not In his own!
To follow this solon would be simple IDOLETRY.
How sad I am for your ignorance. Not your fault, the left is doing all it can to remove the DEAD WHITE MEN whose wisdoms are the foundation of our Western Civilization.
No, they don't. Moses brought the tablets down from Sinai at least 600 years before this guy. There aren't many that knew this guy and the founders were not much aware of him either.
"The Athenian's Commandments are far more noble and profound, and far more appropriate to a free society.
The commonality is mostly that they are a list of ten.
2. Do not speak falsely. (Thou shalt lie)
10. Have regard for your parents. (Honor your father and mother.)
9. Honor the gods. ( The greek gods were made up out of thin air as these "commandments" are)
3. Do good things. (The 10 commandments and what is written in the Bible ID and define what is good, these don't. These leave it open.)
The rest are contained in the Book of Wisdom. That book contains much more and predates this.
1. Trust good character more than promises.
4. Do not be hasty in making friends, but do not abandon them once made.
5. Learn to obey before you command.
6. When giving advice, do not recommend what is most pleasing, but what is most useful.
7. Make reason your supreme commander.
8. Do not associate with people who do bad things.
These have no prohibition on theft, murder, covetousness, adultery. They are worthless and so are the folks pushing them as worth something more than the 10 commandments.
Did Moses pay Hammurabi any royalties?
There is no genius in being so etherial the statement has no meaning whatsoever. The legalisms are important. Thou shalt not kill, steal, covet, lie, or break your promise(adultery).
No freaking kidding--it was a joke. By the way even as a God fearing Christian to say the laws of Moses are best because God said so is not a valid argument. That is not how the Church Fathers went about explaining Christian thought.
and which Abraham and his family left, taking the central idea of a single, all powerful, God with him. He also took with him a notion from En Heduanna, Sargon's daughter (Sargon was one of Hamurabai's predecessors) and priestess of the moon goddess En (since morphed into Allah, according to a lot of fundamentalist sources) of a personal relationship with the deity (she is also credited with being the first named author in history). And from Abraham and his "legitimate" child the Jewish nation was born. And they have the begats to back that up...
In the meantime he left behind his oldest (but illegitimate) son, Ishmael, and Ishmael's mother, who was his wife's slave. Folklore has it that the Arabs are all descended from Ishmael (what happened to everyone else, I wonder?), and that is their claim to "ownership" of the one we know as God, Jehovah, Yahweh, etc.
However, the descendants of Ishmael showed scant concern for that God until around the year 700, when an illiterate gigolo (pbuh) had a hallucinatory vision in a cave. He had his wife's scribes take parts of the holy writings of others (particularly Jews and Christians) and said "they got it wrong," and changed the things he didn't like to make himself the all powerful voice of god. He had anyone who disagreed with him killed. And he particularly hated the Jews, because they represented the line of Abraham which had spurned his ancestor. They had to acknowledge him as the one true voice of god, renounce the Torah, or die. He gave them 3 chances. When they refused ("let us considert this" they said) he had his followers start killing them, and they've been killing the Jews, and their Christian "heretics," for 1300 years. And His followers still pray to a big black rock in a city on the Arabian peninsula and to a moon god, 5 times a day.
Hatfields and McCoy's got nothing on this family feud.
Hey, Mr. Rushdie, you got room for another person to hide out with you? I feel a fatwah coming on...
"I drank what?"
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