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Comment by rfrey | Hacker News Reader

Beautiful comment. There might be some parallels between the entrepreneurial culture of the Valley (drop out of school to go conquer the universe, etc.) and the warrior culture of Sparta and Athens. The spirited youth that Socrates seduced were bent on fame and fortune on the battlefield, and had little time for long-haired hippie freak philosophers.

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Socrates recommends in the Republic that youth spend time in military service and business, and hold off on doing philosophy until they are around 40 and know a bit more about how the world works.

Yet he takes two aspiring young warriors, and converts them to philosophy. Socrates' philosophy was not at all dependent on knowing anything about how the world works: in fact, those shadows were considered harmful.

That's true that he convinces the youth of the value of philosophy. But, that doesn't mean there wasn't any value to the rest of life. In fact, it may give the rest of life more value, since the rest of life can be lived in light of the importance of philosophy. Socrates himself served in combat, and was noted for his bravery (recounted in Symposium). If memory serves, he attributed this bravery to his interest in philosophy.

Actually, Plato paints a very conservative society in the Republic, and even more so in the Laws. However the general picture from the Socratic dialogues isn't so clear cut; Socrates' interlocutors are mostly young people (Phaedrus, Alcibiades, and the likes), and for a part stubborn older people, rhetors, politicians, etc. not really as eager to learn as the young :)

Quite true. Socrates is often saving young people from either being practicality oriented people who can't think like Cephalus, or philosophers who don't matter or are evil like the sophists.

I don't think Athens was known for its "warrior culture".

What about about the Peloponnesian wars? They went on for decades! Of course, the Athenians were known for other things too.

They defeated the Persians in one of the most important battles in the history of western civilisation.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Salamis

From antique on and indeed today. Any civilization worth mentioning in history had a warrior culture. Indeed a man that was not a trained warrior was deemed unfit to perform any kind of public service.

Some cultures being known as more war like, in my opinion only signals their relative cultural poverty on other areas.

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