Continuing from my latest article, I would now like to address another point: the relationship between piety and expectation. More specifically, I want to examine whether expecting something from God can be understood as an expectation that turns worship into commerce, as Socrates suggests. Socratesβ critique of traditional Athenian religiosity, which served as the starting point for this series of articles, ultimately leads us to this question. To recall, he characterizes the religious attitude of those who perform sacrifices and then demand something in return from the gods as a kind of trade. If the relationship between sacrifice and petitionary prayer is conceived as one of causality, is there any other way to describe it besides commerce?
When the ruler said to the Chinese sage who had traveled a great distance to visit him, βSince you have taken such trouble, you must have brought us something useful,β the sage replied, βIf you encourage people to do only what is useful, they will learn merely to pursue their own interests.β
What do the words of the sage mean to a person whose mind is conditioned to think in terms of the abili
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