> > did the slave owning ancient greeks consider freedom to be a virtue?
>
> Not as such. Plato's "The Laws" contains a rather interesting
> logical path that indicates the slavery is "good for the slave,"
> and given the beliefs at the time, makes perfect sense.
>
> The Greek idea of "Freedom" is way different from the modern
> idea; American "Freedom" doesn't exist in lands ruled by kings.
>
> -b.
I'm afraid this is shallow scholarship. One may as well say that
Jefferson did not believe in freedom as a virtue because he also believed
that some humans were more fit for (would be happier as) slaves than as
free men. For both Plato and Jefferson, the men fit for freedom deserve
freedom and those not fit for it should not have it, for their own good.
I'm not sure what to make of the claim about "American" freedom not
existing in lands ruled by kings. The argumentative place of the claim
seems to indicate that Brandon thinks that either Plato's *Laws* or
ancient Greek society had kings at their head. Neither is true. The type
of society that Plato *seems* to recommend in *Laws* has ultimate power
invested in a (rather secretive) council of citizens; the ancient Greek
societies that have had the most influence on our own (primarily Athens
and Sparta) were aristocratic democracies of a sort.
In any event, one could easily argue that the first clear statement and
defense of "American" freedom was given in Locke's *Two Treatises of
Government*---it would be hard to think of any sort of freedom Americans
care about (freedom of speech, religion, press and congregation, protected
suffrage, due process of law, equal treatment under the law, etc.) not
delineated and defended in those works, which were written, recall, in the
late 17th century under the rule of a king---and they defended all these
freedoms as proper social structures that *should* exist under a king.
E
--
Erik Curiel
almost web-engineer/would-be philosopher
"The affairs of human beings are not worthy of great seriousness,
and yet we must take them seriously."
---Plato, *The Laws*
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