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Comparing Pericles's And Socrates Essay

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To answer the question, I will be comparing Pericles’s and Socrates’s beliefs about whether to think ourselves as friends or strangers. Pericles conceptualize political communities largely as associations of friends. Pericles believe that participation in democracy, it is in a way, what makes Athenians great warriors and in a sense of friendship and communal beliefs. Friendship and community are integral to democracy. Pericles said, a man who is private has no business in Athens. The idea of Democracy is that citizens get the opportunities to participate in the state affairs and help to make certain decisions. Athens is a democratic city, they give equal opportunities to their citizens to participate and let their citizens’ voice be heard. …show more content…

The political community in Athens is a very much closed, since you have to be wealthy enough to be labelled as a citizen and he said democracy is something someone born into. The Athenian citizens makes their political community isolated from rest of the people who do not qualified to be a citizen. These are the people who are always agreeing with one another, and there is never a much room for someone else to come in and disagree with them, because in order to voice your opinion to these individuals you have to a citizen. This is not ideal, we as citizens always looking for ways to improve out city. So in this case Pericles definition of a citizen Socrates does not qualified to be one in Athens, but Socrates has a different idea. He said “a great and well born horse who is rather sluggish because of his great size and needs to be awakened by some gadfly”. He is comparing the “great and well-born” horse to these citizens and he is the gadfly who is here to wake them up from their laziness. He as a stranger is here to open their eyes to new possibilities, rather than having these people who have the same set of minds having the answers and solutions. Everything and everybody is always looking for a way to improve and with Socrates’ idea of us thinking ourselves as strangers allows more people to voice their opinions and allow us to innovate and improve the

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