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From, A. Zimmern, Political Thought,
in R.W. Livingstone (ed.), The Legacy of Greece, Oxford University Press, 1921.
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Page 4
Let us dwell for a moment on the attitude of mind in which the Greek citizen approached political problems. He was both a Conservative and a Radical; or rather, he brought to politics the best of Conservatism together with the best of Radicalism. He was a Conservative because he reverenced tradition and recognized the power and value of custom. None of our modern Conservative writers and defenders of the existing order, not Burke himself or Bismarck or Chateaubriand, had a deeper sense than the Athenian for 'those unwritten ordinances whose transgression brings admitted shame'. Athens was a Conservative democracy. Most democracies, despite the labels of their politicians, are in reality Conservative; for the common man whose régime they represent is Conservative from the very nature of his life and occupation; it takes leisure and travel, or a wider education than any democracy has as yet bestowed on its young people, to lift the minds of the mass of men out of the rut of habit. But Athens was far more Conservative than the modern democracies with whom we are acquainted. Where the British public rebukes an awkward writer by conspiring to boycott his books, so that, unless he has private means, he is eventually silenced, where the United States, going a step farther, deny his works the privilege of the mails, Athens does not scruple to administer hemlock, and, if an élite is indignant or sorrowful, the democracy applauds. Even at the height of the recent Red Terror the United States never went so Conservative as this. This should help us to realize the rock-firm basis of tradition, of use and wont, of patriarchal sanctities, which underlay the working of fifth-century Athenian democracy as we watch its apparent vicissitudes. The citizen could use his mind as freely as he would on the material presented to him for his consideration; but there was a point at which the State, and his own instincts, cried 'Halt'; and, except in rare cases, he obeyed. It is only fair to add that the most enlightened modern opinion would entirely support the Athenian view against the discussion of 'unwritten laws' in Parliament. The difference between the Conservative Athenian democrat and the modern Liberal in such matters is, not that the one refuses, while the other demands, the discussion of life's sanctities in Parliament and law-court, but that the one appeals to custom and the other to conscience as the sanction of the unwritten law itself. Whether it be the gods or man, the law of the hearth or of the heart, that is at issue, both agree that what is private and holy has no place in the forum of common debate.
Cf. Ancient Greek History and the West * Greek is the higher life of man * Greek History Resources
Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome
A History of Greek Philosophy * Plato Home Page
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Reference address : https://www.ellopos.net/elpenor/greek-texts/ancient-greece/political-theory.asp?pg=4
