giovedì 22 settembre 2016

The sirens

The sirens undermine the sailors with their song and the listener is bound to crashing against the rocks. But because death strikes the listener? Because it is the terrible punishment of the gods for those who have the presumption, arrogance, the hybris of wanting to hear what is reserved to the deity. Mortals do not have access to the divine knowledge, on pain of death. Even Socrates was put to death, punished for his hybris, revealing publicly in defense oration, which tells of the response of the Pythia of Delphi, "Socrates is the wisest of men." But this response is not enough to Socrates, he attempts to show that God is wrong and that, therefore, he is wiser than God.