The discussion of the financing of higher education in my recent Newsletter (below) elicited an incisive comment from Richard Seaford:
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“An country with the wealth of the USA can certainly provide financial support for its students. As a student I received a small grant that was enough to support me. True, there were fewer students then, but also less wealth being produced.
The problem is not lack of money but, as Solon put it, 'those who have most wealth are eager to double it'. The control of such people was the creation of the Athenian polis. The difference between the USA (and UK) and Athens is that now the increasingly very wealthy have no serious opposition. Ancient Greece was a culture of limit (economically, politically, ethically, psychologically, aesthetically), whereas free-market capitalism is a culture of the unlimited: this was the theme of my Presidential address to the British Classical Association in 2009, entitled 'Ancient Greece and Global Warming'.
By controlling unlimited wealth and so defusing the violent opposition to it, Athens was able to produce all the cultural glories of democracy. But societies in which everything is commodified, including health care and education, are condemned to anomie, near-universal mental disturbance, political disintegration, and eventual self-destruction.”
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Richard Seaford is Emeritus Professor of Ancient Greek at the University of Exeter and author of numerous books and articles on various aspects of Greek antiquity from Homer to the New Testament.
A version of his presidential address to the British Classical Association appeared in 2009 in the Times Literary Supplement “World without Limits: The Greek Discovery that Man Could Never Be Too rich.”
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“An country with the wealth of the USA can certainly provide financial support for its students. As a student I received a small grant that was enough to support me. True, there were fewer students then, but also less wealth being produced.
The problem is not lack of money but, as Solon put it, 'those who have most wealth are eager to double it'. The control of such people was the creation of the Athenian polis. The difference between the USA (and UK) and Athens is that now the increasingly very wealthy have no serious opposition. Ancient Greece was a culture of limit (economically, politically, ethically, psychologically, aesthetically), whereas free-market capitalism is a culture of the unlimited: this was the theme of my Presidential address to the British Classical Association in 2009, entitled 'Ancient Greece and Global Warming'.
By controlling unlimited wealth and so defusing the violent opposition to it, Athens was able to produce all the cultural glories of democracy. But societies in which everything is commodified, including health care and education, are condemned to anomie, near-universal mental disturbance, political disintegration, and eventual self-destruction.”
--
Richard Seaford is Emeritus Professor of Ancient Greek at the University of Exeter and author of numerous books and articles on various aspects of Greek antiquity from Homer to the New Testament.
A version of his presidential address to the British Classical Association appeared in 2009 in the Times Literary Supplement “World without Limits: The Greek Discovery that Man Could Never Be Too rich.”