Tags: #socrates #filosofia
Li este texto na internet e mesmo sem ter certeza da procedência, mas por pensar de forma bem parecida, resolvi publicar:
“If you have problems in understanding the substance of Free Software, read the following dialogue between Socrates and Antiphon (Xenophon, Memoires A, 6).
ANTIPHON: I believe that you are a fair man. I do not consider you wise, though. I even think that you know this yourself, since you do not receive any money for your teaching. Your clothes, however, or your house, or any other of your possessions, which you think that may be of value, you would not give it for free or for a lower price than what it’s worth. It is, thus, obvious that if you consider your teaching of value, you should have been receiving some money. You might therefore be fair, because you do not deceive anybody out of greed, but you cannot be wise because you know things with no value.
SOCRATES: Antiphon, I find selling one’s beauty or wisdom a foul deed. Because, if one sells his beauty to whoever wants it, then we call him a prostitute, but if one meets somebody who is beautiful in body and soul and befriends him, then we call him a wise man. This is exactly what happens with wisdom. The ones selling it to those who want it are called Sophists*. Whoever, though, understands that somebody is clever and teaches him something good and makes him a friend, we believe that he is a good and virtuous citizen.
The same way, then, that somebody is pleased to have a good horse or a dog (tangible goods), so am I, and much more, when I have good friends and if I know something good I teach and I recommend it to others, which I think will benefit when it comes to virtue. And I study together with my friends the treasures written in the books of the old wise men and if we find something good we say it and we consider it to be a big profit if we become friends through this.
*Socrates, greatly averse to the Sophists who were paid for the classes they gave mainly to young rich Athenians, compares them to prostitutes (of knowledge).”