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Dialogue

Socrates on Conservatism

Mordecai Roshwald imagines what the Athenian gadfly might have said.

(In this dialogue the writer has taken the philosophical licence of dispensing with the dimension of time, which otherwise led to blatant anachronisms. The dialogue tries to recapture the early Platonic, alias Socratic, manner and tenor of discussion, and so is an homage to an intellectual exercise which defies the vicissitudes of time in other ways.)

Constant: How good to see you, Socrates! I haven’t seen you for ages, ’though I frequently think of you. Where have you been these many days?

Socrates: As always, here, hanging around the shopping mall. Not that I come here for shopping, but I like to observe the shoppers.

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