Phillips - Six questions of Socrates: a modern-day journey of discovery through world philosophy

ARETE INTERRUPTED

I dont think that virtuewhat we call arete exists anymore.

No such thing as virtue? How can that be, in this of all places?

Im in the ancient agora of Athens, Greece, and I have just posed the question What is virtue? About twenty of us are huddled together in a tranquil spot amid the relentless bustle of this sprawling city of four million, which is readying to host the 2004 Summer Olympics. Agora typically is translated as marketplace, but I think a more appropriate translation is gathering place (in fact, the noun agora comes from the Greek verb ageiro , which means to gather). Those who converged centuries ago in this center of commercial and civic life didnt just come to barter and sell a wide range of merchandise, but also to exchange and examine ideas and ideals. The agora was situated in the heart of the Athenian polis , or city-state, the cradle of the first genuine democracy, which Pulitzer Prizewinning historian Daniel Boorstin said was responsible for the grand concepts that for the Western world would define morals, create communities, cement nations, and build empires. That so many lasting and noble achievements, says Boorstin, should have come from so fewits population was a mere eighty thousandis another miracle of classic Greece.

Most tourists milling about the area pay us no mind as we sit in the shade among the ruins of the stoa of the Greek god Zeus Eleutherios or Zeus the Delivererwhich was erected here to commemorate those whod fought to win freedom for the Greek city-states, and to honor Zeus, who Greeks at the time believed delivered them to freedom. Where were sitting, on pieces of marble that were once pillars of the stoa, is almost precisely where in the fifth century B.C . Socrates gathered with friends and acquaintances and antagonists to engage in philosophical dialogue.

All our eyes are now fixed on Maria, the woman who has just spoken. I dont seem to be the only one taken aback by this first response out of the starting gate. Before I can ask her why she believes theres no longer such a thing as virtue, or arete , another participant looks at her and says, Was there ever such a thing as virtue?

Oh yes, Maria says. Most definitely.

How so? I ask.

She does not respond right away. Maria, an artist, is a distant cousin of mine whom I met for the first time the previous day. She moved a decade ago to Athens from the volcanic island of Nissyros, part of the countrys Dodecanese Islands, from which my fathers parents immigrated to the United States in 1922. At a time when Greece, ruled by the constitutional monarchy of George II, was mired in miserable economic straits, made worse by an ongoing war with Turkey, my grandparents entered through Ellis Island, where their last name was summarily changed from Philipou to Phillips.

Look around you, Maria says now. What do you see? Magnificent ruins. You see the remains of a society that was steeped in virtue. Where were sitting now, where Socrates held court, is the most virtuous place of allan oasis of virtue.

She makes a sweeping gesture toward the breathtaking and largely intact Parthenon temple perched in the distance on the Acropolis Hill, which the Athenian ruler Pericles had ordered built as a monument to the cultural and political achievements over which hed presided. Maria says, The Parthenon, and all these ruins around us, are the product of virtue, of great minds and souls, free from illusions, soaring to heights never before or since attained. Her voice full of passion, she goes on: They make your spirit soar. They inspire you to imagine new possibilities of what it is to be a human.