Prime Minister Cameron wants to fix the ‘moral collapse’ that caused the recent riots. So do we all, but how?
In a dialogue by Plato, Protagoras told the following mûthos about how man developed respect for others (aidôs) and a sense of justice (dikê). When men were first created, Prometheus gave them the knowledge of skills, so that they could develop language, agriculture, houses and so on. But living in small groups, they were vulnerable to attack from wild animals. So they began to group themselves together into cities. But lacking any of the required social skills, they at once turned to crime and fighting each other. Zeus therefore sent Hermes to instil in every one of them aidôs and dikê. As a result, genuine communities could at last be built.
The point was that aidôs allowed humans to live successfully together because it was an impulse to respect mutually agreed social norms, while dikê, in the name of those norms, enforced that respect among those who decided to ignore them.
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