The Laws

PLATO’S LIFE AND WORK

Plato was born in 427 BC into an aristocratic and well-connected Athenian family. His father’s name was Ariston, his mother’s Perictione; he had two brothers and one sister. When he was no more than a boy his father died, and his mother married Pyrilampes, who had been on friendly terms with Pericles (died 429), the leader of the Athenian democracy. Plato himself never married; of his appearance, habits and character we know little. He was probably wealthy, and after a long career devoted largely to philosophy and politics, died in 347.

In the half-century before his birth Athens had reached the peak of her wealth, influence and renown. With Sparta, she had taken the leading part in the repulse of the Persian invasions in 490 and 480–479; she had become the dominating power in the Delian League, which the Greek states formed in 478–477 to protect themselves against further Persian attacks; and by the late fifth century the richness and variety of her political, commercial and especially cultural life entitled her to be called, in the striking expression put into Pericles’ mouth by Thucydides,² the ‘school of Greece’. But her highly democratic constitution and increasingly aggressive and arrogantly imperialist policies brought her into inevitable conflict with Sparta. Sparta was the antithesis of Athens – oligarchic, conservative, deriving her wealth from a rigidly repressed class of serfs, and hostile to experiment, especially in the arts: she preferred to cultivate the narrow excellences of military efficiency. Each state sensed the other as a dangerous rival, and eventually, in 431, the Peloponnesian War broke out between them and their respective allies. The course of the war we need not trace: suffice it to say that after long and bitter years of fighting Athens went down to final defeat in 404. Plato himself probably saw military service when he reached the age of 18 in 409.

The Peloponnesian War was one of the two major formative influences on Plato in his youth and early manhood. He can hardly have failed to sense and share the bitterness and despair felt in Athens at the collapse and defeat of so many high ideals. Yet he was never an admirer of the Athenian democracy, and the policies and actions of the democratic leaders during the war certainly offered a handle for plenty of criticism, especially to a man probably predisposed by upbringing to antidemocratic sympathies. In his later political writings he gives qualified approval to democracy in principle,³ but he seems never to have had much time for the democracy he actually experienced in Athens during the war and later; like many other Athenians, he felt that Athens’ defeat was the defeat of laxity and incompetence by Spartan discipline and good order. Yet the Thirty Tyrants, installed at Athens in 404 at Spartan instigation, disgusted him equally by their reign of terror against the democrats.⁴ After various sanguinary episodes the democracy was restored in 403; and four years later there followed an episode that seems to have confirmed Plato in his dislike and even hatred of the Athenian democracy – the execution of Socrates.⁵

Socrates ( born 470) was one of the leading personalities of the day, and the second major formative influence on Plato. For our knowledge of Socrates, who wrote nothing, we depend on the memoirs of Xenophon, the comedies of Aristophanes, occasional remarks by Aristotle and the dialogues of Plato himself. The reports of these writers differ widely in many ways for many reasons, and the credibility of each is a matter of dispute. But we can safely say that Socrates impressed Plato as a man of deep piety and seriousness, strong courage and prodigious intellectual acumen. According at any rate to Plato, his intellectual achievement was twofold:

(i) He put ordinary practical knowledge – of politics, rhetoric, ship-building, architecture, physics, astronomy – firmly in its proper place by insisting that ‘true’ knowledge was moral knowledge, the knowledge of how to be virtuous. This brought him into conflict with the Sophists, a heterogeneous body of freelance teachers ranging from charlatans to serious and formidable intellects, who met the rising demand for education, particularly in oratory, politics, ethics and philosophy. Socrates considered that the Sophists were superficial thinkers who merely adopted and reflected the prejudices of society at large. This in turn brought him at odds with democratic opinion, for he made no secret of his view that the democratic leaders were influenced more by popular pressures and prejudices than by true political wisdom.⁶

(ii) He perfected the tool of verbal cross-examination. He subjected his interlocutors to a razor-sharp series of questions which invariably revealed the shaky and ill-thought-out foundations of their opinions. He reduced his opponents to a state of aporia (a state of ‘not knowing where to turn next’); he never claimed to know the answer himself, but showed the importance of thorough analyses of concepts and definitions of terms. How Plato developed this side of Socrates’ teaching will be described below.

In 399, Socrates was tried on a charge of impiety and of corrupting the youth of Athens. His accusers were certain democratic politicians acting from motives of political spite: the real point at issue was his propagation, especially among the young, of views unflattering to democracy. At his trial, Socrates was absolutely unrepentant and refused to be bullied into a promise to ‘behave himself’; he was found guilty and sentenced to death. It would probably have been easy for him to escape from prison and to flee from Athens, but he preferred to die (as Plato saw it) a martyr to philosophy.

In the early years of the fourth century Plato founded in Athens the Academy, a philosophical school-cum-research-institute. We do not know much about its internal organization; contact was maintained with philosophers all over Greece, and Plato himself probably travelled widely, notably to Egypt. The Academy gained a considerable reputation for expertise in political, legal and constitutional studies, and its members were retained as advisers to a number of communities existing and projected.⁷

When visiting southern Italy in 388 Plato was invited to the court of Dionysius I of Syracuse in Sicily. The moving spirit behind the invitation was Dionysius’ brother-in-law, Dion, a young and intelligent aristocrat of somewhat haughty demean-our. Dion was no liberal, but he seems to have been attracted to Plato’s teaching and anxious to mitigate the harsh absolutism of Dionysius’ rule and to reform his court and kingdom. Plato advised the abandonment of political intrigue, the adoption of constitutional government and observance of a code of laws. His advice had virtually no effect on Dionysius, but he left Sicily having struck up a lasting friendship with Dion, who still awaited an opportunity of putting Plato’s political principles into practice in Sicily.

In 367, Dionysius I died and his successor, Dionysius II, seemed to Dion likely to prove amenable to Plato’s teaching, and with considerable misgivings Plato was persuaded by them both to visit Sicily again. Dionysius, however, did not prove a good learner; he was of an autocratic and jealous temperament, and certain suspicions he entertained of Dion’s loyalty soon extended to Plato. Dion was then forced to leave Syracuse, and Plato returned to Athens. In 361, however, he was persuaded to return to Syracuse yet again on the strength of Dionysius’ promise to consult Plato’s wishes in regard to Dion, but Dionysius neither kept his promise nor progressed in his studies. Eventually Plato, under Dionysius’ severe displeasure, managed with difficulty to return to Athens. In 357 Dion attacked Syracuse and expelled Dionysius, only to be assassinated in 354 by his political enemies. Plato’s Letter VII was written by way of advice to Dion’s party in Syracuse a year or two later.⁸ Much of it is taken up with a history of Plato’s political philosophy and a justification of his attempts to influence Dionysius.

Plato reached a wider public by means of his dialogues, all of which have come down to us. They vary widely in subject-matter and treatment. The question of their chronology and the development of Plato’s thought is a mine-field, and here I can do no more than indicate the three major classes into which the dialogues are customarily divided.⁹ First we have the early ‘Socratic’ dialogues, in which Socrates is typically portrayed subjecting an individual to cross-examination on some opinion or concept; the individual is discomfited, but no positive conclusion is reached. Next there are the dramatic and exciting dialogues of the ‘middle’ period; Socrates is still commonly the leading character, and propounds doctrines that go beyond anything the historical Socrates is likely to have taught. Finally came the late dialogues, written in roughly the last twenty years of Plato’s life; usually someone other than Socrates is the main speaker. In these late productions philosophical analysis and exposition far outweigh dramatic interest. The Laws, the longest dialogue of all, belongs to this period; I describe its contents, style and structure later in this introduction.

PLATO’S POLITICAL THOUGHT

We have already seen that Plato was no lover of the Athenian democracy and sympathized with Socrates’ impatience with it. But this is a somewhat negative point, and it is time we turned to Plato’s distinctive contribution to political theory. The essence of his view is this: that society can never be reformed by gradual and conventional means, but only if it is governed according to philosophic principles. To understand what these principles were, we shall have to examine Socrates’ philosophical method more closely.

Socrates was concerned to discover the essential common element present in all members of a particular class of actions. He would ask ‘What is piety?’, or ‘What is justice?’, and insist that the proper answer lay not in an -enumeration of a list of individual just or pious actions, but in a statement of the general ‘piety’ or ‘justice’ that permeated each particular action and accounted for its being pious or just. His interlocutors, he discovered, were invariably unable to give an answer that would stand up to cross-examination: in other words, they did not know what piety or justice (or whatever) was.¹⁰ Socrates’ general suspicion of democracy was thus confirmed: many people claimed to know the good in politics, but as their opinions never stood up to examination, their actions were likely to be wrong, being based on ignorance. In effect, Socrates turned questions of morality and politics into questions of knowledge; he was convinced that if only we knew the answers to his questions we could avoid moral confusion and error, because no man who really knew what piety was would ever, in the nature of the case, voluntarily commit an impious action; impiety stems from ignorance. This approach to moral problems also accounts for the two paradoxes attributed to Socrates by Plato: ‘Virtue is knowledge’, and ‘No one does wrong willingly.’¹¹ Further than this the historical Socrates probably did not go (if indeed he went so far), and it was left to Plato to adopt and develop his teaching. Plato believed that the moral definitions Socrates was asking for had, in some sense, a real and independent existence of their own; he called them , ‘Ideas’ or ‘Forms’. He held that an individual moral action was never perfectly ‘moral’ but always ‘fell short’ of absolute morality, and was moral only in so far as it ‘partook’ of that norm;¹² and that the central problem of politics and government was therefore to ensure that society was organized and controlled by persons who really knew what the norms were, so that the moral standards of the state reflected the absolute values to the greatest possible degree. In short, he thought the only salvation for society lay in removing government from the untutored hands of the ordinary man in order that the state could be directed according to the findings of philosophy.¹³

THE REPUBLIC

A society governed by philosophers is described in the Republic (written probably in the 380s and/or 370s). The population is divided into three classes: the Perfect Guardians, the Auxiliary Guardians and (for the want of a better term) the ‘Third Class’.¹⁴ The Perfect Guardians undergo a long and rigorous training in philosophy; they, if anyone, really know the moral norms that society must obey.¹⁵ They have absolute and untrammelled power over the rest of the state; in their hands lies the making of such rules and regulations as are necessary.¹⁶ The Auxiliary Guardians assist their superior colleagues in administration and keeping order, and undertake the defence of the state.¹⁷ Their education is more limited than that of the Perfect Guardians; they have only a partial understanding of the reasons for the laws they administer, and do not appreciate their metaphysical basis.¹⁸ The Third Class consists of the rest of the state – farmers, traders, artisans and so forth; their education is confined to the instruction they need in order to perform their own individual tasks efficiently. The essential features of such a state are that the few who really know the absolute moral standards rule the many who do not, and that such control is willingly exercised and willingly accepted.¹⁹

In the Republic Plato is hardly concerned with the detailed structure of society or with the minutiae of laws and regulations: he assumes that such details can be formulated easily enough by anyone with knowledge of the eternal moral verities.²⁰ In fact, he gives us not so much the description of a particular utopia as an analysis of those general features of society that will ensure its moral salvation. The Republic is thus the extreme statement of Plato’s central ideas about moral and political problems.

THE STATESMAN (‘POLITICUS’)

The Statesman, which probably belongs to the middle or late 360s, forms a bridge between the Republic and the Laws. Although Plato reaffirms the ideal of the absolute ruler entitled to govern unhampered by law, he expresses strong doubts about the possibility of such a paragon ever appearing. Accordingly he attaches vastly increased importance to a code of law as an instrument of government. (Perhaps ‘code of conduct’ would be a better term: the Greeks thought of ‘law’ as something which affected all aspects of life, not merely as a list of crimes and punishments.) The ideal instrument, in Plato’s view, is the ruler with knowledge of moral truths, who can react to every situation in the proper way and deal with it as it ought to be dealt with, using laws if he must; but in his absence the best instrument available is a good code of laws – the best instrument, but a blunt instrument nevertheless, because no law can be so precise as to provide for all possible contingencies: it can only lay down general rules that may prove inadequate or unfair in a given situation. (Hence the philosopher-ruler should never be bound by his own laws if they prove to encumber him.) However, Plato’s lack of confidence in the possibility of an ideal ruler was not accompanied by any great trust in the political abilities of the man in the street; the existing laws of actual states he regarded as no more than the crude blunderings of laymen without the required expert knowledge of true morality.²¹ His order of preference in the Statesman has been well summed up as follows:

Thus a free operation of the art of government is best; legal prescription by the expert statesman, variable at his discretion, is admirable; but where there is no such statesman, the best legal codes are those which preserve the ‘traces‘ (Statesman 301e) of a philosophical statesman’s insight, and any established code is to be upheld as giving a better hope of sound government than no code at all.²²

THE LAWS

We now come to the Laws, Plato’s last and longest sermon to the world. It was written in the 350s and early 340s, though some passages may conceivably be earlier. Here the importance of law overshadows all, and the ideal ruler with his expert knowledge of moral values is barely mentioned. Plato now sees law as the supreme, though essentially imperfect, instrument for the moral salvation of society: he calls it the ‘dispensation of reason’ (714a), and the entire life of the community must accordingly be governed by a detailed code of laws which will express as far as possible the philosopher’s vision of the true good. But in so far as the true good never changes, and the code’s expression of the philosopher’s vision will be the best attainable, any change in the laws can only be for the worse. And that brings us back to the first of the two quotations with which we opened: the impassioned advice never to change the laws of the state in the minutest particular, even as regards something so apparently trivial as children’s games. Change the games and you change the children: they will grow up with a taste for novelty, and will then wish to change the laws and customs of the state. That is the way to moral relativism and the abandonment of the absolute standards to which Socrates’ questioning had, for Plato, pointed the way.²³

THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE REPUBLIC AND THE LAWS

The reader of the Republic who picks up the Laws is likely to have difficulty in believing that the same person wrote both. The obvious explanation of the apparent vast difference of approach between the two works is that as Plato grew older and wiser his optimism turned to pessimism, and his idealism into realism; and that in the Statesman we can see in him the act of changing horses. What makes this explanation so irresistible is of course the way in which the alleged doctrinal development matches the chronological sequence of the dialogues concerned: we feel in our bones that realism must come later than idealism. But this charmingly simple account of the development of Plato’s political theory really will not do, because it confuses attainable ideals with unattainable ideals. Only if we take the Republic as an attainable ideal does it make sense to argue that Plato abandoned it in favour of something more realistic; but to suppose that Plato ever thought that the Republic was attainable would be to suppose him capable not merely of optimism or idealism but of sheer political naïveté. It makes much better sense to think of the Republic as an extreme statement, designed to shock, of the consequences of an uncompromising application of certain political principles – in fact, as an unattainable ideal – and to suppose that even when Plato wrote the Republic, he had some realistic practical programme, which may well have been more or less what we find in the Laws.²⁴ (I grant, however, that Plato’s advancing years and political disappointments probably stimulated him to commit his political programme to writing for the benefit of his successors.) In short, Plato could perfectly well have written the Laws when he wrote the Republic and the Republic when he wrote the Laws, for they are the opposite sides of the same coin. The Republic presents merely the theoretical ideal, and – a point which is often ignored – explicitly and emphatically allows for some diminution in rigour if it were to be put into practice.²⁵ The Laws describes, in effect, the Republic modified and realized in the conditions of this world. It is therefore both true and not true to say, as H. D. P. Lee does, that ‘those who have read the Republic have read all the essential things Plato has to say on the subject’ (politics).²⁶ It is true that he will have read the basic principles, but he will not have read the methods by which Plato, if he had had the chance, would have put those principles into practice by abating their rigour. Yet it would be equally one-sided to say, with T. D. Weldon, that ‘those who want to know what Plato thought about politics would do well to study the Laws rather than the Republic’.²⁷ I should prefer to plead that the one should not be read without the other.

MAGNESIA: THE NEW UTOPIA

Plato’s new utopia is to be named Magnesia. As we have seen, its guiding principles will be:

That certain absolute moral standards exist.
That such standards can be, however imperfectly, embodied in a code of law.
That most of the inhabitants of the state, being innocent of philosophy, must never presume to act on their own initiative in modifying either their moral ideal or the code of laws which expresses it: they must live in total and unconditional obedience to the unchanging rules and regulations laid down for them by the legislator.

How do these principles dictate the structure and organization of the new state?²⁸

(a) Size and Situation

Magnesia is to be a small state, nine or ten miles from the sea, in country which will afford a decent, but not a luxurious, standard of living. Its relatively small size will encourage intimacy and friendship among its inhabitants; its modest living standards will ensure sobriety and moderation, and discourage excess and debauchery; and its remote situation will deter visitors from abroad, such as sailors and traders, who are potential sources of innovation and discord.

(b) Population and Occupations

There are to be precisely 5,040 citizens,²⁹ of whom some, at least, will own slaves. There will in addition be a class of resident aliens, each restricted to a sojourn of twenty years. Every citizen will own a farm capable of providing himself and his family (and slaves, if any) with a livelihood. Extreme wealth and extreme poverty must be avoided, so as to prevent civil strife. The wealthier citizens could probably expect to see most of their manual work performed by slaves; certainly all trades and handicrafts – occupations which debase the soul by encouraging a desire for excessive profit – are to be in the hands of the resident aliens, whose moral corruption is of little moment; a citizen has enough to do in pursuing a life of virtue by caring for his own farm and family and by playing his proper part in the running of the state. Each farm is inalienable from the holder’s family, and on his death must be handed on to one of his sons; this prevents the enrichment of some citizens at the expense of impoverishing others.

(c) Education

There is to be a comprehensive programme of state education, both physical and cultural; it is to start in a child’s earliest years, and its overriding purpose is to train him in the correct moral standards and in obedience to the laws. The whole curriculum is closely supervised by a Minister of Education assisted by a corps of subordinate officials; their duties are to maintain standards and exercise a strict control over the literary, musical and artistic works put before the young, to prevent the infiltration of undesirable ideas and standards. All young men (and to some extent women too) must also undertake a programme of military training – not for purposes of aggression, but simply to ensure the defence of the state.

(d) Religion

Plato treats religion as a bulwark of morality. He goes to great lengths to refute certain contemporary theories about the status of the gods and nature of the world, which in his view lead to moral relativism; he proves to his own satisfaction that the gods exist and are the cosmic guarantors of the eternal moral standards expressed in the law of Magnesia. All Magnesians are therefore required to subscribe to the three ‘articles’ of the state religion: (i) that the gods exist, (ii) that they are concerned for our welfare, (iii) that they are incapable of being persuaded by our prayers and sacrifices to ignore our misdeeds. The converse theses constitute three ‘heresies’, which Plato deals with by some of the most scrupulous and rigorous provisions of his penal code. Traditional pieties and religious practices are encouraged, but all worship must be at public shrines; private shrines are forbidden, because of the way in which private devotions can encourage incorrect religious beliefs – notably the belief that sacrifices and prayers can influence the gods.

(e) Law

When Magnesia has been founded, it will doubtless be necessary to modify its laws slightly in the light of experience; but thereafter, Plato seems to think, they will remain virtually unaltered for ever. Nevertheless he allows, but does not explain in detail, a procedure for improving them as a result of the inquiries and researches of the ‘Nocturnal Council’.

Much as Plato believes that each citizen must give the laws wholehearted and unconditional obedience, he sees that Magnesia will founder if that obedience is not given willingly. Thus each section of laws is prefaced by a persuasive ‘preamble’ whose avowed purpose is in effect to make the positive prescriptions of the law redundant: far better to be convinced of the wrongness of a crime and to refrain from it than to commit it and need to be punished.

The detailed provisions of the laws are in general based on those of contemporary Athenian law,³⁰ though other codes too, now almost completely unknown to us, may have exercised some influence. Naturally, Plato has to adapt contemporary law to suit the special conditions of the new utopia. The same is true of the legal procedure: many of the institutions and forms of Athenian law are found in Magnesia, suitably modified and in some respects fundamentally reformed – as for instance in the provision for a supreme appeal court to review the verdicts of the popular courts. I cannot do better than quote Morrow’s admirable summing-up:

The pattern he lays down is in the main the procedure of Athenian law, with its freedom of prosecution and its rich variety of actions and remedies; but it is Athenian law modified at many points in directions, we may say, that are suggested by that law itself. In giving to the presiding magistrates power to control the pleading and prevent the introduction of irrelevant and misleading matter, in introducing something like inquisition of witnesses and principals, in excluding the opportunities for rhetorical jousting afforded by the archaic challenge to the oath and the challenge to the torture, in enlarging the range of competent witnesses and enforcing a litigant’s right to compel their assistance, in eliminating the oath of witnesses and principals, in relying at all stages upon written documents, and in invoking the power of the state to assist a litigant in enforcing a judgment obtained in court – in all these provisions Plato’s law, while still essentially Attic in character, embodies a conception of the judicial process broader and more enlightened than ever characterized Athenian practice at its best.³¹

The penology underlying the legal code shows Plato, at first sight, in his most radical and reforming mood. He upholds the Socratic paradox ‘No one does wrong willingly’, and asserts that all crime is involuntary, in the sense that the criminal has been ‘conquered’ against his ‘real’ wishes, by ignorance or anger or bad education or pernicious environment: ‘cure’ rather than punishment is therefore indicated. In fact only rarely do the penalties Plato lays down differ in kind (flogging, fines, etc.) from those of contemporary law. However, it remains true that their purpose is reform, not vengeance, and to that extent Plato achieves some advance on contemporary ideas about the nature and purpose of punishment. On the other hand, he provides for the death penalty, particularly where the security and fundamental assumptions of the state are concerned, with revolting frequency (on the grounds that the criminal is ‘incurable’).

(f) Government and Administration

The constitution is to be mixed, in the sense that it should combine authority and freedom, oligarchy and democracy. There is a vast range of officials elected by the whole citizen body, and the day-to-day administration of the state is to a considerable degree in the hands of the citizens themselves. The stultifying effects of rigid control from the top are to be avoided; the ordinary citizen must feel that he has a ‘stake in the country’. His discretion, however, is far from unlimited: the general lines of policy he must observe are laid down by higher authority, notably the board of Guardians of the Laws. The Guardians, whose tenure and powers make them tolerably independent of popular pressures, should themselves obey the laws in all things, and interpret them when necessary in the spirit in which they were framed. Yet even they are not exempt from the general rule that every official must be accountable for his conduct: to scrutinize their record and that of all other officials, there is a powerful board of Scrutineers – who can themselves be called to account if occasion arises. One authority must check another; firm government must not be allowed to degenerate into tyranny.

Over and above all the other authorities stands the Nocturnal Council, composed in part of the most senior and distinguished officials of the state, each with a younger protégé; it is not an elected body, except in so far as some of its members belong to it by virtue of having been previously elected to some high office. The Council’s duties will be (i) to pursue philosophical studies to the highest level of which its members are capable, so that they gain some understanding of the real reasons for the laws they observe and the policies they administer; (ii) to carry on research – partly by contact with philosophers abroad – with the aim of improving the institutions and laws of Magnesia; (iii) to make sure, through those of its members who hold office, that its insights into philosophy and law are understood and put into practice by the state at large. In so far as the members of the Nocturnal Council will come nearest to knowledge of the real immutable moral standards, as distinct from their inevitably imperfect expression in the legal code, they will be Magnesia’s nearest approach to the Perfect Guardians of the Republic.

PLATO AND TOTALITARIANISM

Plato offers a very easy target to modern political philosophers and in recent years three fundamental and related aspects of his political ideas have come under heavy and repeated bombardment: (i) his basic assumption, (ii) his method and (iii) his programme.

(i) Plato assumes that politics is an exact science. The shepherd or shoemaker has a clearly defined sphere in which he operates (looking after sheep, shoemaking), an obvious set of objects on which he exercises his skill (sheep, leather, etc.), and specified results at which he aims (healthy sheep, good shoes). A statesman, Plato believes, proceeds or should proceed similarly. In his own field of operation (the state), the statesman has a definite result (virtue) to produce in the objects of his skill (the citizens). Now the chief objection to this idea centres on the question of results: whereas in the case of the shoemaker there is, within limits, a universally known set of criteria by which his work can be assessed, there is no such set of universally known aims in the case of statesmanship, because the term ‘political virtue‘ has different meanings for different people. For these and other reasons the analogy between statesmanship and (say) shoemaking is attacked as illegitimate.

(ii) Plato’s method is to set up a blueprint of an ideal society and then put it into effect by whatever means lie to hand; in other words, his methods are utopian. The obvious objection is that this method, if it is to succeed, will usually call for an unpalatable degree of coercion.

(iii) Plato’s programme envisages a ‘closed’ society largely cut off from the outside world and fundamentally hostile to freedom of thought and inquiry. An illiberal orthodoxy is laid down from above, and heterodoxy is suppressed by brutal measures which convict Plato of a total lack of humanitarian feeling.

Clearly (i) is crucial: once you believe that you can isolate some sort of ‘absolute’ moral aim, your great temptation will be to make a root-and-branch reform of society whatever opposition you encounter, and refuse to tolerate other views, which, ex hypothesi, are wrong. And even from my necessarily very summary account of Plato’s political thought it will be obvious that the three accusations have a great deal of truth in them. Although we have to discount some of the more extreme of the detailed charges brought against Plato, which have been shown to depend on fevered misinterpretations of what he actually said, the modern liberal attack on him has, in my view, a solid core of justification.³²

THE MODERN REACTION TO PLATO

Yet however censorious we feel, it is important to be clear just what it is we really want to censure. Do we wish to blame Plato for accepting and approving certain institutions and customs of his day, simply because we find them repellent? Slavery, which is fundamental to the whole structure of Magnesia, is a case in point. We reject it utterly; yet it was as completely taken for granted in the ancient world as the employer–employee relationship today (which may itself in time come to be regarded with as much distaste as slavery is regarded now). Plato simply never questioned the legitimacy of the institution, though he had strong views on contemporary abuses of it: he saw its value in the kind of state he wanted, and built it into Magnesia’s social and economic structure with a number of hard-headed but sensible and even humane recommendations.³³ Let us by all means censure Plato for accepting slavery: but let us also condemn the entire ancient world, and not single out Plato for special mention. ‘Now that is all very well,’ I can hear an objector saying, ‘but is it not the case that in some ways Plato goes out of his way to emphasize the status of the slave, and gratuitously treats him more severely – as for instance when punishing him – than the free man?’ We have to agree that this is so,³⁴ and a partial answer is of course that the ancients were less squeamish than we and held life cheaper: by the standards of his own time Plato has done nothing very shocking. But with the word ‘gratuitously’ we come to the heart of the controversy. This rough treatment of slaves, as well as Plato’s approval of slavery itself and of many other institutions we find objectionable, spring from passionately held and carefully argued philosophical tenets (or, less formally, a certain characteristic way of looking at reality) – tenets that in themselves are morally neutral. The fundamental one – that the world and society are imperfect expressions of some sort of order and structure in the ‘ideas’, a grand system of subordination in which reason strives to control unreason – is clearly not the kind of belief that leads its holder to question slavery: he will see a slave as a menial and unthinking person who needs firm rational control from above and a correspondingly greater degree of brute force in his punishments.³⁵ Yet that same tenet is at bottom responsible for Plato’s hatred of anarchy and his insistence on law and order in society, as well as many other related points in his political thought that we should wish to approve. A critic of Plato should therefore concentrate his attention on the validity of the philosophical assumptions that led Plato to his particular political institutions, and the cogency of the reasoning by which the latter are derived from and supported by the former.³⁶ Of course, it would be absurd to suggest that when Plato proposes something to which we object, he can be defended by the simple argument that he had reasons; I merely point out that an attack on his reasons is an attack at the roots of his political ideas, and that is the only really effective place to strike.³⁷ Merely to disapprove of particular doctrines often means only ‘Thank Heaven we don’t live in the fourth century BC, in Magnesia.’ With this I should be in general agreement, and it is a valid and important level of response; but as an answer to Plato’s arguments it will not do.

I have laboured these none-too-original points because it seems to me that modern criticism of Plato all too often moves on a quite superficial level: ‘Plato proposed x, x does not measure up to twentieth-century standards, therefore Plato is a pernicious political philosopher.’ Yet we think we do well to examine the reasons for our political choices – and that means we have to continue to examine both the reasons and the choices of political philosophers of the past, including Plato.

But even if we are content merely to consider particular institutions, the case against Plato is by no means an ‘open and shut’ one. In particular, we must not ignore (i) the important role the utopian can play in the long-term erosion of accepted political programmes and the influence he can exert on subsequent political thought, and (ii) the vast amount of what is in effect ‘piecemeal’ reform contained in the Laws. The concrete proposals Plato makes for the reform of the institutions of his day frequently contain political wisdom of a high order for which he is rarely given credit. Some of these insights and proposals I have already mentioned: the complex arrangements for a ‘mixed’ constitution, the reforms of legal procedure, the enlightened theory of punishment, the persuasive legal preambles and the provision for a continuing review of the legal code by a specially trained body, the Nocturnal Council. Not all these proposals are wholly original to Plato; but taken together with countless measures of lesser moment they constitute an impressive programme for the reform of society by the rule of law, informed by the insights of research and philosophy.

COMPOSITION AND STRUCTURE OF THE LAWS: SUMMARY

The Laws is traditionally supposed to have been Plato’s last work, left unrevised on his death in 347 BC. Precisely what it owes to Philip of Opus, who is said to have ‘revised’ or ‘copied’ the work, is not very clear, but he probably confined himself to stitching it together in accordance with Plato’s wishes, known or inferred. It is not likely that he altered the actual text much, if at all: it contains inconsistencies of detail and irregularities of syntax which an editor bent on rewriting would hardly have allowed. The argument lurches from topic to topic, and Wilamowitz had some justification for his description of the Laws as a ‘wunderliches Chaos’. Nevertheless, taken as a whole, the work is a unity with a fairly clear structure.

Books One and Two contain a preliminary review of two famous legal codes, the Cretan and the Spartan, and some elementary lessons on the nature of education and how it is affected by the arts. Book Three considers what history has to teach us about legislation and government. The description of Magnesia gets under way in Book Four; first we hear of its site and population, then the correct method of composing its legal code. After some miscellaneous moral lessons, Book Five describes the procedure for founding the new state and distributing the land. Book Six deals in detail with administration and the election of the various officials, and then discusses the question of marriage. This topic naturally leads in Book Seven to a long discussion of education, which in turn leads in Book Eight to a treatment of sport and military training; then after an examination of problems of sex, we pass to economics and trade. Book Nine introduces the criminal law and contains an important digression on questions of legal responsibility. A discussion of various crimes of impiety leads to a long excursus on religion, which occupies most of Book Ten. Book Eleven resumes the criminal code, which continues into Book Twelve; we read a long series of miscellaneous offences, in the middle of which we find two digressions, one on the law of the family, the other on the Scrutineers. The last topic discussed is, appropriately enough, the Nocturnal Council, the ‘anchor’ of the state.

There is thus a clear overall plan in spite of detailed confusion. It is Plato’s habit to let one topic launch him into a discussion of another, even when he has not finished the first, which then has to be resumed later. Some digressions are better organized, as for instance the discussion of responsibility in Book Nine, which is clearly relevant to its context.

The Laws lacks the dramatic power of some of the earlier Platonic dialogues. Three old gentlemen – an Athenian Stranger (in effect Plato himself), Cleinias a Cretan, and Megillus a Spartan – meet at Cnossos in Crete and walk to the cave and sanctuary of Zeus on Mount Ida.³⁸ They address each other with grave courtesy; the Athenian is authoritative and loquacious, his companions naive and slightly overawed. Much of the Laws resembles a formal lecture by the Athenian rather than dialogue, and even what conversation there is, is rather wooden.³⁹ There is a great deal of ‘As I said before’, and ‘Now let’s examine the next point’, and similar humming and hawing and clearing the throat. However, as dialogue it is no worse than many other works of Plato (even the Republic consists largely of Socrates’ exposition peppered with formal expressions of assent from his interlocutors), and there are several flashes of life and humour, as well as a lot of elephantine punning and other kinds of word-play, usually impossible to reproduce in English.

NOTES

1. As H. D. P. Lee puts it, ‘You have only to be sufficiently determined to realize heaven on earth to be sure of raising hell’ (Introduction to the Penguin Republic, p. 46; revised edn, 1974, p. 55).

2. II, 41.

3. Statesman 303; Laws 693, 756. ‘Democracy’, however, is a protean term, and we should beware of thinking that Plato meant by it exactly the same range of social and political features as we do. See 701a–c, and cf. G. R. Morrow, Plato’s Cretan City (Princeton, 1960), pp. 528–30. In the Republic (555 ff.), however, only tyranny is worse than democracy.

4. Letter VII, 324–5.

5. Letter VII, 325.

6. See, for example, Gorgias 521–2.

7. The evidence is assembled in Morrow, Plato’s Cretan City, pp. 8–9. For a more sceptical view on this issue, see P. A. Brunt, Studies in Greek History and Thought (Oxford, 1993), pp. 282-342.

8. See Appendix.

9. A fuller summary may be read in I. M. Crombie, An Examination of Plato’s Doctrines (London, 1962), vol. I, pp. 9 ff.

10. See, for example, Euthyphro, especially 5–6, Meno 70 ff. and the first book of the Republic.

11. Meno 77–8; Protagoras 352, 357–8; Gorgias 466–8, 509; Laws 860 ff. For an analysis of these paradoxes, see G. Santas, Socrates (London, 1979), pp. 183–94.

12. Phaedo 74–5, 100. Plato’s ‘Theory of Ideas‘ embraced not only moral concepts but the whole of reality: for instance, ‘tableness‘ was thought to be a kind of perfect exemplar to which individual tables approximated.

13. Republic 473, 487, 499, 501, 540; Letter VII, 325–6.

14. Republic 412 ff., 440–41.

15. Their training is described in Books V-VII of the Republic, especially 473 ff.

16. Republic 484, 519–20, 540.

17. Republic 414 ff., 440–41.

18. Republic 428, 430, 537 ff.

19. Republic 431–2, 442.

20. Republic 425, 484 ff. But does a metaphysical insight into moral values necessarily confer a technical ability to frame or administer laws embodying them in specialized fields? Plato seems to assume that it does.

21. Statesman 293–300 contains the substance of this paragraph.

22. J. B. Skemp, Plato’s Statesman (London, 1952), p. 49.

23. Cf. Republic 424–5.

24. For further on this topic, see Appendix.

25. Republic 472–3.

26. Lee, Penguin Republic, p. 18 (modified in revised edn, 1974, p. 21).

27. T. D. Weldon, The Vocabulary of Politics (London, 1953), p. 15.

28. A glance at the list of contents will readily show the sections of the Laws on which the following paragraphs are based.

29. The number 5,040 is chosen because it is divisible by any number from 1 to 12, except 11, and is therefore highly convenient for purposes of administration. Cf. 746d and note (27).

30. There are innumerable specialized studies; the fullest general account is Morrow, Plato’s Cretan City.

31. Morrow, Plato’s Cretan City, pp. 295–6.

32. See especially R. H. S. Crossman, Plato Today (2nd edn, London, 1959); K. R. Popper, The Open Society and its Enemies, vol. 1, The Spell of Plato (5th edn, London, 1966). The most detailed and penetrating reply is by R. B. Levinson, In Defense of Plato (Cambridge, Mass., 1953).

33. See 777b-778a.

34. E.g. law no. 47ABDF. Sometimes, however, it is the free man who comes off worse than the slave; but I cannot here go into the fascinating complexities of Plato’s penology.

35. Cf. Republic 431; Letter VII, 331, and Aristotle, Politics I, 3–7.

36. Which is another way of putting the point I have made before, that the Republic and the Laws should be read side by side: neither is fully intelligible without the other.

37. The best of the modern controversialists have in fact done precisely this. See note 32 above.

38. See map, p. 493.

39. In Lucian’s Icaromenippus (24), Zeus grumbles that he is so neglected by mankind that his altars are ‘colder than the Laws of Plato’.