And what are you selling, my dear Socrates?” Gorgias asked benevolently as he walked through the foyer of the venerable Wittgensteiner Gymnasium.

It was open house and the teachers were ready and waiting to show off their skills.

"That which nourishes the soul," replied Socrates.

"Do you know?" Gorgias asked, a little slyly, "and I hope you don't know how many flea feet a flea can jump!" At the same time he laughed out loud and tapped his feet.

"We offer ancient Greek from the upper third," added a colleague who introduced himself as Chaerephon.

"Our students learn important foreign words - simply invaluable for studying medicine," he quickly added.

"And in general, learning the ancient Greek language does not seem to be a disadvantage for a political career, as a former finance minister in Germany proved."

Chaerephon could hardly be stopped now, and Gorgias now seemed more interested again: "What else can you offer me, Socrates?" went.

But I myself don't know how to praise knowledge that one can take home in a vessel like a shopkeeper.” “And what do you know about in your thinker's retreat?” Gorgias asked patronizingly.

“First of all, I teach the students the Greek language, which can be considered a model for all European languages ​​thanks to its filigree nature and wealth of forms.”

And what is the content?

"Also l'art pour l'art," Gorgias dismissed.

"Don't we need modern answers to modernity, should our young people sink into helplessness?" "Then we want to offer them perspective with the Greek optative, my dear Gorgias.

Imagine!

A mode that's just for wishing!

Isn't it an adventure teaching students to opt in a surprise-free world of Google Analytics, in a world of buy recommendations?

Diversity and creativity, necessary for people like food – doesn't the optative give them a higher value of being?

Wouldn't the exploding consumer desires be captured beyond the realizable if they were cast in a serious form through the optative case?”

"Yes, yes, optative and vocative, but grammar isn't for everyone," Gorgias objected docilely.

"Even if glamor comes from 'grammar'?" Socrates added with a smile.

"No, no, rather tell me what the content is actually about." "Very well," said Socrates: "In Homer we experience the man who is not yet the author of his own decisions, whose consciousness is only just emerging the tragic awakens.

I, on the other hand, put people in the logical vise of the search for truth and thereby destroy their comfortable belief in perception.

A wise man once said that reality changes every ten or twenty years.”

"Autonomy!"

"Now I understand better what's on offer here," Gorgias stated irritably: "So you produce a person who, in a distanced, cheerful composure to current events, practices his ability to exile in the globalized competition.

All well and good, but does this parasitic way of life still stand up to our complex world?

You're floating in the air, Socrates!" "It's about the otium," Socrates patiently reflected, "not just about the free time of the people lying stretched out under the plane tree.

It’s about leisure as a contemplation without looking at clepsydra or the stock exchange.”

Gorgias became impatient: "Escape from the world after all?" "Autonomy!" replied Socrates.

"But how it is, that requires a long investigation." "Surely another time," said Gorgias quickly.

Having thus conversed and listened to one another, they parted, and Socrates remained silent.

The author teaches at the Institute for Classical Philology at the Goethe University and teaches as a teacher at the Lessing-Gymnasium.