path: root/notes/clph/plato.md

---
title: Plato's Laws
toc: true
---

|          | Broad       | Narrow                         |
| -------- | ----------- | ------------------------------ |
| Nomoi    | norms       | laws from a lawgiver           |
| Politeia | way of life | political system, constitution |
| Polis    | polity?     | city-state                     |

* Athens is the Polis we have the most evidence about
* Sparta too

## Theoretical and practical ship-building

* General theory
* Application:
  * In theory, drawing up the blueprint
  * Implementation, actually building the ship

## Structure of *Laws*

|            | General Theory                          | Practical Application                                               |
| --         | --                                      | --                                                                  |
| 1–2  | Virtue & education of citizens          |                                                                     |
| 3          | Constitutional theory                   |                                                                     |
| 4          | Preludes                                | The new city's location and geography                               |
| 5          | Constraints of human nature             | Grand prelude to its lawcode / division of property amongs citizens |
| 6          | Equality & inequality                   | The "offices" of that city, the politeia                            |
| 7–12 | Other theoretical matters along the way | The laws (nomoi) for those offices, and preludes to those laws      |
| 12         |                                         | The "nocturnal council"                                             |

## Some theoretical questions that are *not* the focus

* What makes something law?
* What gives law its authority?
* Why should we obey the laws?

The practical focus of *Laws* is:

> How to build a city that works, for all its citizens, and that
> will survive the test of time.

## Dialogue

### The interlocutors

| Character | Description        |
| --        | --                 |
| Athenian  | (unnamed)          |
| Cleinias  | of Knossos (Crete) |
| Megillus  | of Sparta          |

Setting: Crete, midsummer, a long walk to the cave of Zeus.

### The lawgiver's target 

* Clinas: Victory
* Athenian: Harmony

### The parable of the brothers

Athenian proposes two conditions:
* One judge who put the wicked brothers to dead and setu p better
  brothers to rule themselves
* Another judge who made the worthy brothers the rulers, and let the
  inferior ones live but made them agree to be ruled
* Another judge who take in hand this tribe at odds with itself, and
  without killing any of its members, reconcile them by establising laws
  that will secure their friendship with each other for the future.

Strauss thinks that the third option is worst <++>

> Strauss argued that Plato's myth of the philosopher king should be
> read as a reductio ad absurdum, and that philosophers should
> understand politics not in order to influence policy but to ensure
> philosophy's autonomy from politics.

### The whole of virtue

* Clinas: .. courage
* Athenian: .. + the rest of virtue

Plato tends to think of virtues as a singular thing, as opposed to
Aristotle's plural understanding of virtual.

## The divine goods

* Having virtue is being appropriately aggressive and appropriately
  restrained
* Wisdom is the right place on that spectrum
* You need both courage and moderation, to have wisdom, as far as the
  law goes.

## Spartan & Cretan education

<++>

## Institutions to cultivate virtue

Human psychology:
* Pleasures and pains
* Anticipations of pleasure and pain
* **Logismos**

## Law and reason

* Calculations of what is better or worse becomes law when it's about a
  common view of a city
* Law is a distribution of reason (or, Saunders translates it as edicts
  of reason)

## The origin of the Politeia

How does one discover the craft of politics, or the craft of law-giving?

* How do cities come to be?
* How long have *cities* been in existence?

### The flood hypothesis

* The many tales of destruction visited upon humanity, by floods,
  plagues, and many other things, after which only a small remnant of
  the human species is left behind.

### The structure of book three

* After the flood: foundations
* Sparta
  * A success story
  * The greatest ignorance
* Persia
  * The mixed constitutions
  * Moderation in Sparta (well, the value in the political culture)
* Athens

### After the flood, before the descent

* Physical items, i.e. tools and instruments, have perished
* "The craft of politics and other field of knowledge... were gone"
* The lack but the need of lawgiving
* Autocracy (dunasteia) exists
  * A single person
* How is it a politeia?
  * Rule (arche)
  * Politeia as an expansion of ancestral law
* The truest form of kingship?
  * The concept of a Basilera
  * Monarchical rule, rather than patriatrical rule
  * This primitive natural form of human society is not 

### The descent

* Isolation between settlements due to each having its own eldest member
  as ruler and their distinctive customs
* Each group would find its own norms satisfactory and prefer them to
  those of other groups
* "We have stumbled upon the origin of lawgiving, even without knowing
  it."

#### The original lawgiving

* "Jointly review various practices (nomima)
* Having the incentive to choose norms that work for the whole group
* Note that the original lawgiging is *replicated* by the introduction
  of the three interlocutors, raised under such distinguished laws.

### The third phase
... in which... every kind of political system and polity arises

* The fall of Troy
* Revolts (e.g. Achaens to Dorians)

#### The formation of Sparta

* What is a good foundation for a city?
* Reverse engineering the success stories of cities

#### The Dorian Alliance

* Argos, Messene, and Sparta.
* Swore an oath:
  * Would not make their rule more oppressive overtime.
    * *well, where's the consensus on what the rules are, and what
      oppressive means?*
  * If the above is kept, the subjects would not attempt to overthrow.
  * {Kings, people} promised to come to the defense of any {kings,
    people} who were being wronged.

#### The fall of the Dorian Alliance

* Ultimately, only Sparta survived. The others failed because of
  stupidity.
  * What is the greatest stupidity?
    * It's having the belief that something is fine or good, but hating
      it rather than loving it, and loving and welcoming something you
      think is rotten and bad.
    * Stupidity of the Dorian Kings: Overstepped the established laws,
      out of tune with what they had sworn and promised.
  * How could we prevent it?
    * Constitutions.
    * Absolute power necessarily leads to corruption

### Why did Sparta succeed

* Abide by due measure
* The Spartan constitution: A measured combination of the right elements
  * 2 kings
  * 28 elders
  * 5 ephors

### Titles to rule

* Parent over child
* Well born over commoner
* Elder over younger
* Master over slave
* Stronger over weaker (Pindar: "by nature")
* Wise over ignorant
* Lottery winner over unselected

(Sortition, hah)

### More virtues of a Politea
"The city must be free, must be wise, and must be a friend to itself"

### Persia

* Due measure of rule
* The triple goal
  * Law must not establish positions of greatand unmixed ruling
    authority
  * The city must be free, intelligent, and a friend to itself

* Two mother constitutions
  * Any political system to achieve the triple goals need a mix of
    democracy and monarchy.
  * The persians take monarchy, and the Athenians take democracy.

* The elements of a politeia
  * Monarchy  
    There is an essential connection between despoteia and douleia:
    being in servitude is being in servitude to someone, it is not
    free-form and abstract condition.
    * Despotism
    * Servitude
  * Democracy
    * Freedom
  * Persiah as total despotism, Athens has total freedom

* Persia under Cyrus: The paradox of Persian freedom
  * Allowing freedom of speech leads to friendship and communal
    intelligence.
  * Epistemic equality
  * I can make better decisions when I can draw on the advice!

> Every Athenian enjoys equality before the law, and no one who is able
> to perform good service for the city is prevented by his humble
> station from doing so.

* Persian decline
  * By taking away too much freedom and bringing too much despotism,
    they destroyed friendship and community
  * Rulers disregard the interests of their subjects and solely try to
    remain in power

* Athens in the first Persian War
  * Athenians are on the receiving end on this big geopolitical conflict
    (its attempts to take the Greek mainland into its own empire).
  * The deespotism introduced when people were conscripted to fight, it
    imbued us with a strong sense of friendship.
  * > The Spartans are free, but not in all matters, since law is their
    > despot

* What Athenian history shows:
  * Establishing complete freedom from all rule is considerably worse than
    an appropriate measure of rule by others

* Willing servitude
  * Rosseau
  * Willing servitude to the laws in effect
  * But the concept of willing servitude depends on the ability to leave
    the city and establish a life external to it
  * Being ruled is still a reduction in the autonomy of the ruled



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