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Pakaluk
only one accepted religion—or none, as some would argue.
Pakaluk: What does this matter The beliefs themselves were inherently
religious.
Andrew: What do you mean by this
Pakaluk: Come now, Andrew, we both know what religion is.
Andrew: On the contrary, my dear Pakaluk, religion is the slipperiest of
concepts. As a Religious Studies concentrator, I have attended several
seminars that have attempted to reach a satisfactory definition, and none
has come close.
Pakaluk: I am not interested in splitting semantic hairs. Religious,
superhuman, spiritual—call it what you will. But the fact remains that, at
least in the Euthyphro, Apology, and Crito, Socrates makes repeated reference
to gods, daimons, and oracles. By what definition are these phenomena
not religious
Andrew: I see your point. Yet these three dialogues have something else
in common, something more basic: they are all apologetic devices. Is it
not widely agreed that Plato wrote these with a mind toward exonerating
Socrates on charges of impiety
Pakaluk: It is.
Andrew: Then we should be surprised only if we did not find this
characterization of Socrates paying homage to the state religion.
Pakaluk: Admittedly, we can never know how much the Socratic dialogues
represent the man himself—but if we are not going to at least consider
the face value of the text, we might as well leave now. In fact, that sounds
like a great idea—
Andrew: Granted, we should look to the texts as they are. And when we
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