Page 12 - GALIET WE PERIKLES: Thyucidides IV

Galiet & Galiet
Therefore, you must forgive my future contradictions: you shall see that in my next official speech on policy, I will prohibit dissent 3⁄4 particularly after the anguish, anxiety and stress of the plague; moreover, I will ensure not to conveniently use “we” (I have suffered, I am weak, and not to blame) 3⁄4 when I state: “... your empire is now like a tyranny. It may have been wrong to take it; it is certainly dangerous to let it go” (2.63.1). O Perikles, do we hear with anxiety that freedom is slavery, o vile and cruel checkmate! O what was before a conditional freedom of speech has now become oppression, we hear: “you should not be led astray by such citizens as these (the “politically apathetic”) whom “would very soon bring a state to ruin (2.63.1); nor should you be angry with me... ” (2.64.1). O, Perikles, must you go on appealing to keep on fighting and defending the glory of Athens for she “has never given into adversity” (2.64.1). Must you condemn the politically apathetic for they “... are quite valueless in a city which controls an empire” (2.63.1). You, my citizens, seem to have forgotten what I, Perikles, have always preferred and deemed best: that “you should fix your eyes every day on the greatness of Athens as she really is, and (that) should fall in lovewithher...”(2.43.1)overandoveragain. Mydictumoflove,dutyandloyalty to authority shall haunt all of western political thought until 9-11 (unless...). Think of King Frederick’s reign: “argue as much as you like and about whatever you like but obey!”3 O, doom of dooms, for Perikles, as for Bush, freedom is obedience is safety is power is control 3⁄4 a surrender of lives for the just or unjust cause of the state! O malevolent destiny! Yes, I, Perikles, in understanding the fallacy of autonomy (I lack mirrors) during a state of emergency, am aware of the shift in the degrees of freedom which must be congruent with the decline of democratic ideals.
Thucydides (a future ostrakon) shall clarify it for you from exile. He shall say that I, Perickles, while respecting your degrees of liberty, always “held you in check”,
3 Kant, Immanuel. “An Answer to the Question: ‘What is Enlightenment?’” In Kant’s Political Writings. Edited by H. Reiss. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. 1970.
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