Revelation, Rationality, Knowledge & Truth — Page 85
GREEK PHILOSOPHY. Most humans move like pawns, not aware of why they move and who the Mastermind is, behind the hand that moves them. Such oblivious men can neither know their obligations to their Creator nor to their fellow human beings. To impress upon man the gravity of this situation,. Socrates reminds him of life after death when he will be finally held accountable for all his deeds during his life on earth. This, the life after death, is certainly not what the secular philosophers talk about. This is the main mission and occupation of the prophets of God. We only wish that. Guthrie had remembered what he himself had written about the character of Socrates in the same book. Of particular significance are the following words he claims that Socrates uttered just before his death: 'It is probable that many, if not most, of those who disapproved of him had no wish to see him die, and would have been more than content if he could have been persuaded to leave Athens. . . . He rejected this suggestion point blank and responded by saying: “. . . that he had all his life enjoyed the benefits which the laws of Athens conferred on her citizens, and now that those same laws saw fit that he should die, it would be both unjust and ungrateful for him to evade their decision. Besides, who could tell that he was not going to a far better existence than that which he had known hitherto?". Many other highly competent scholars have also researched the true and full translation of arete. One of the most prominent among them is Gregory Vlastos who strongly rejects attempts to treat it merely as an artisan's term. Explaining the original Greek word in its various possible connotations, he emphasizes that, in Socratic usage 85