In response to my previous posting of a portion of Pericles’ Funeral Oration I received the following comment.
Ahem. when I last checked, the proportion of slaves to citizens in Periclean Athens was eleven to one, women did not have a vote, were clad in what we would call bourkas and had few rights. The Athenians were also ruthless colonists, killing anyone that stood in their way and enslaving their women and children.
Check out Thucydides on Melos, which source of Putinesque principle that
"The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must"
The original Greek is:
ο ισχυρός επιβάλλει ό,τι του επιτρέπει η δύναμή του και ο αδύνατος υποχωρεί όσο του το επιβάλλει η αδυναμία του.
Which google translates as:
"The strong imposes what his strength allows him and the weak retreats as much as his weakness imposes it."
There is indeed a long way to go before and truly democratic society is achieved. The social contract between citizens, like any contract, is continuously in need of improvements. The basic premise was put very succinctly by Lincoln – “…government of the people, by the people, for the people…”
On the assumption that duty of care and the rule of law is established, then the implementation of various clauses is a means of reenforcing the basic principles. Thus certain penalty clauses have been introduced to cover transgressions such as slavery, assault, theft, offenses against the person, racist, religious and sexual discrimination, problems that individuals can encounter across the globe. In effect, a civilizing of humanity, by means of certain do’s and don’ts which may, in time, become engrained in the ordinary citizen’s haviour. It’s part of the concept of duty of care quite apart from being just good manners. It is rather a simple notion and probably very naïve to think that it could ever be achieved.
In any event contracts are arrived at in many different ways. Some ways are better than others and negotiations can be exacting:
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