Thursday, September 02, 2004
Core Values
In the second chapter of Who Killed Homer? The Demise of Classical Education and the Recovery of Greek Wisdom (1998; rpt. San Francisco: Encounter Books, 2001), Victor Davis Hanson and John Heath list the following core values of the ancient Greeks:
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- Science, research, and the acquisition of knowledge itself are to remain apart from both political and religious authority.
- Military power operates under and is checked by civilian control.
- Constitutional and consensual government is a Western idea.
- Religion is separate from and subordinate to political authority.
- Trusting neither the rich nor the poor, the Greeks of the polis have faith in the average citizen (the spiritual forerunner of our faith in the middle class).
- Private property and free economic activity are immune from government coercion and interference.
- The notion of dissent and open criticism of government, religion, and the military is inherent among the polis Greeks.
