JUDGES AND DOCTORS - THEN AND NOW
Written by Constantine Constantinides Amphiktyon
Plato
Republic III (405) Truly, you can find no greater proof of the bad and shameful
education of citizens in a city than the need to have competent judges and
doctors. Not only for the wicked and
artisans, but also for those who pretend to have been brought up in noble ways,
as befits free people. Doesn't it seem to you a
shameful thing and the greatest proof of illiteracy to be forced to resort to
justice imposed on him by other, so to speak, judges and despots, and not to
have justice within himself. Really, doesn't what I'm
about to tell you seem even more shameful: When not only does he spend most of
his life in court, either as a plaintiff or as a defendant, but he is also so
insensitive that he believes that he should be admired for being a master of
injustice and manages to make all the maneuvers and evasions and slip like an
eel so as not to be caught by the pincers of justice.. And all this for small
and insignificant interests. How much more beautiful and
superior it is to build a life in such a way that he doesn't need any sleepy
judge. Commentary: 1/ I will start
from the last one because I have made it an act of life until now and I have
only gone to court as a witness and never as a defendant 2/ In ancient Greece,
law was unwritten but existed in people's souls as a code of values, and it was
observed with the utmost reverence. This is what Plato comments
on, namely the people who violate the code of justice and run to the judges to
find their justice, but also for some who are duplicitous. 3/In our country, despite the
noise about bad Justice, I think that our judges, despite the problems they
face (polygamy, bureaucracy, duplicitous, etc.), are intact in the majority. The system is lame in the
highest judges (Areopagus, Council of State and Prosecutor's Office) who are
appointed by the Government and therefore they say that they may be biased. 4/ It is not appropriate for
judges to decide which party is legal and which is not based on the criteria of
the party in power. 5/ In the time of Plato (424
- 348 BC) the Greeks had a developed judicial system when in other peoples
justice was awarded by the political or religious leader 6/ The pillars of
Democracy are Parliament and Justice. Without Justice there is no
Democracy. These put a barrier to the
arbitrariness of power and the powerful. And yet there are still states
such as Turkey, Albania, etc., where both pillars are under the feet of the
dictator leader, with the result that the people are oppressed. 7/ As far as doctors are
concerned, the situation is not the best because Medicine, like all sciences
and functions, has been enslaved to profit. Thus, the "envelope"
in public hospitals, although prohibited, has become almost the norm. (11/5/25)
*
Amphiktyon Major General (retd) Konstantinos Konstantinidis Author, Member of
the Society of Greek Writers amphiktyon@gmail.com
http://amphiktyon.blogspot.com/ http://amphiktyon.org Anyone who wishes to be
deleted should return this with the indication "deletion" "in
accordance with article 14 of law 2672/98
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