Divine Law and Political Philosophy in Plato's "Laws"

Mark J. Lutz

• Publisher: Northern Illinois University Press
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781609090487
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Political Philosophy

All over the world secular rationalist governments and judicial authorities have been challenged by increasingly forceful claims made on behalf of divine law. For those who believe that reason—not faith—should be the basis of politics and the law, proponents of divine law raise theoretical and practical concerns that must be addressed seriously and respectfully. As Mark J. Lutz makes plain in this illuminating book, they have an important ally in Plato, whose long neglected Laws provides an eye-opening analysis of the relation between political philosophy and religion and a powerful defense of political rationalism.

Plato mounts his case, Lutz reveals, through a productive dialogue between his Athenian Stranger and various devout citizens that begins by exploring the common ground between them, but ultimately establishes the authority of rational political philosophy to guide the law. The result will fascinate not only political theorists but also scholars at all levels with an interest in the intersection of religion and politics or in the questions that surround ethics and civic education.

Chapter One

The Minos and the Socratic Examination of Law

According to the classical tradition, Socrates transformed philosophy by compelling it to turn away from “the heavens” and directing it toward those things that human beings take most seriously—politics, morality, and providential gods (Cicero Tusculan Disputations 5.10–11; also Aristotle Metaphysics 987b1–2; Xenophon Memorabilia 1.1.11–16).1 But the remaining, fragmentary writings of pre-Socratic philosophers such as Antiphon, Empedocles, and Heraclitus show that Socrates was not the first philosopher to investigate political, moral, and religious matters.2 Writings such as these support the report in Plato’s Laws that the pre-Socratic, natural philosophers looked into the non-philosophers’ beliefs about politics, morality, and the gods and concluded that their beliefs about these things are based on convention rather than nature. According to such thinkers, it is natural that the strong should wish to dominate the weak: consequently, the strong always make laws that compel the weak to serve their selfish interests. But because the strong wish to conceal how they use law to dominate the weak, they call their exploitation “justice” and assert that the weak have a moral obligation to obey every law. Because different factions are strong in different places, the laws and what the laws establish as just vary from place to place and are always disputable (Plato Laws 889e–90a; Republic 358c, 359c; also Antiphon fragment 44; Aristophanes Clouds 94–101, 1399–1400, 1420–24; Heraclitus fragments 33, 102; Xenophanes fragment 33; also Kelly 1992, 14). Similarly, what most citizens call “noble” or “moral” is noble only by convention and does not reflect what is truly noble by nature (e.g., Plato Gorgias 483a). In addition, the early natural philosophers are said to have reached one of three conclusions regarding the gods: some believed that there are no gods at all, some believed that the gods are indifferent to human affairs altogether, and some believed that the gods are indifferent to justice and injustice (Plato Laws 885b, 889c; Republic 362c, 364d–65a; also Heraclitus fragment 128; Thrasymachus fragment 8; Thucydides 5:105; Xenophanes fragment 23). Whatever their disagreements regarding the gods may be, many taught that the justice, nobility, and providential gods in whom most citizens believed are products not of nature but of a political art that tends to conceal and distort what is natural (Plato Laws 889d–90a).

The same classical tradition also tells us that Socrates breaks with his philosophic predecessors by inquiring into politics, morality, and the gods in a new way and with a new seriousness. According to Plato’s Phaedo, Socrates’s new interest in the study of justice, the noble, and the providential gods in whom the citizen believes came as a result of certain problems that emerged from his youthful pursuit of natural philosophy.3 He says that when he was young he had a great passion for the study of nature and that he thought it was a great thing to know the causes of all the ­beings (Plato Phaedo 96a6–10). But he found that he could not find a single, comprehensive account of the causes of everything that comes into being, persists, and passes away (Plato Phaedo 96b5–c2; 97b1–7, 99c1–d2). Having failed to find such a decisive account, he says that he sought to learn about a different kind of cause, namely, the “look” or the “form” (idea) of the beings (Plato Phaedo 100b3–c6, 101c2–5).4 Instead of inquiring into nature by studying atoms or elements or other causes that are ordinarily unobserved by non-philosophers, Socrates inquires into nature by considering how the beings present themselves in everyday life and what is said about them in everyday speech. Socrates examines speeches (logoi) because speeches reflect something of what each of the beings is (Plato Phaedo 99e4–100a3).5

Having turned away from natural philosophy in order to examine the beings through speeches, Socrates recognizes that he does not have at his disposal a comprehensive account of the whole and thus that he cannot dismiss out-of-hand what the non-philosopher says about the beings, especially about beings such as justice, nobility, and the gods (Plato Apology 21b–c). In order to examine these things more carefully, he asks non-philosophers questions such as “what is virtue?” and “what is piety?” Socrates’s interest in these questions is not merely theoretical; in taking these matters seriously, he finds that he must give new weight to claims that he, like all human beings, has serious civic, moral, and sacred responsibilities to other people and to the gods. This is especially important because he must answer the charge that the philosophic attempt to know the causes of the beings is intrinsically impious, base, and unjust (Plato Apology 18b–c; Laws 821a; Aristophanes Clouds 1507–9; Hesiod Works and Days 54–55).6 He recognizes that he needs to examine these claims and to consider whether he can justify his way of life in light of them (Plato Apology 23b). According to his fellow citizens, the highest authority regarding justice, the noble, and the gods is the law. The Socratic philosopher is thus especially concerned with examining what law is, what authority it possesses, and what it demands of him.

The Significance of the Minos

The Minos is the only dialogue in the Platonic corpus in which Socrates specifically asks “what is law?” Because it shows us how Socrates raises this question in conversation with one of Socrates’s fellow citizens, it seems an excellent starting point for studying Plato’s overall account of law. In addition, the Minos attracts our attention because it makes arguments that have been called the starting point for the tradition of natural law.7 Finally, the Minos also appears to be the introduction to Plato’s lengthier treatment of law in the Laws (Chroust 1947; Strauss 1987, 67).8 But the Minos has fallen into relative obscurity because many classical scholars have cast doubts on whether it was written by Plato himself. This judgment on the Minos is relatively new. For centuries, leading Platonists such as Alexander Aphrodisiensis, Aristophanes of Byzantium, Clemens of Alexandria, Ficino, Maximus Tyrius, Plutarch, Proclus, Servius, and Stobaeus regarded the Minos as one of Plato’s important political dialogues (Burges 1891, 447–48; Grote 1888:94–98).9 But in the nineteenth century scholars questioned whether it, along with many of Plato’s shorter dialogues, could have been written by Plato himself. Influential figures such as Beockh, Heidel, Schleiermacher, Souilhe, and Stallbaum argued that the Minos’s style and substance are not fully consistent with those writings that are universally accepted as Plato’s (Burges 1891, 447–48; Morrow 1960, 35).10 At present, many prominent scholars still question the authenticity of the Minos, although recently some have treated it as a Platonic work (e.g., Benardete 2000; Best 1980; Bruell 1999; Cobb 1988; Lewis 2006; Morrow 1960; Strauss 1987). In the Cambridge History of Greek and Roman Political Thought, Christopher Rowe nicely summarizes the contemporary view of the Minos among classical scholars. Rowe allows that the dialogue is “attractive,” “accomplished, and, at times, ingenious,” and yet he also finds it a “strange mixture.” It is strange because it “is written in a manner that strongly resembles the ‘Socratic’ dialogues that Plato wrote in his early period,” and yet “its subject-matter is more akin to that of the Politicus [Statesman] and the Laws” (Rowe 2000a, 307). This unusual mixture raises numerous questions about whether it should be considered a Socratic dialogue and whether Plato would have or could have composed such an amalgamation.

According to some scholars, Plato and Xenophon wrote certain dialogues that reflect the manner and thinking of the historical Socrates (see, e.g., Guthrie 1971; Irwin 1979; Kahn 1998; Kraut 1984; Vlastos 1991). In Plato’s case, these Socratic dialogues are considered by these scholars to be his “early” works and are distinguished from the “middle” and “late” dialogues that are said to reflect subsequent developments in Plato’s own thought. The Socratic dialogues tend to be short and to show Socrates examining a companion regarding some aspect of virtue. Socrates typically asks a “what is?” question, such as “what is noble?” or “what is piety?” or “what is courage?” Having drawn out his companion’s response, Socrates shows that it is contradictory and inadequate, and both Socrates and his companion find that they have no answer to the question (e.g., Penner 1992, 125). Because the Minos has these characteristics, numerous scholars have called it “Socratic” (e.g., Best 1980; Morrow 1960; Mulroy 2007; Sinclair 1952). But the Socratic dialogues are also said to be linked by the consistency of the substance of their arguments. In these dialogues, Socrates tends to argue, for example, that knowledge is virtue and that no one voluntarily harms him or herself (Penner 1992, 125–31; and 2000). But in the Minos, Socrates makes arguments about law that are not obviously compatible with what is said about law in Socratic dialogues like Plato’s Apology of Socrates and Crito. In the Minos, Socrates argues that an unjust law is not a law, but in the Apology Socrates continues to speak of unjust Athenian laws as “laws” (Plato Apology 37a7–b2). And the whole tenor of the Crito suggests that Socrates thinks that the laws of Athens are substantial and obligatory laws even when they do Socrates a grave injustice. Similarly, Xenophon’s Socrates speaks as if laws remain lawful even if they change and become unjust (Xenophon Memorabilia IV. 4. 12–15; but contrast Xenophon Memorabilia I. 2. 40–46 and Plato Hippias Major 284c–e). Moreover, in the Minos, Socrates raises questions about the limits of law that are more consistent with the arguments associated with “late” Platonic dialogues. For example, he contrasts the rule of law with the rule of an expert and questions whether law can do justice to each of the individuals whom it rules (cf. Statesman 294a–96c and Minos 316c–18d; also Laws 875a–d). For reasons such as these, Socrates’s account of law in the Minos does not seem to be consistent with any simple account of law that might be found in the so-called “early” Socratic dialogues.11

Yet if the content of the Minos is not Socratic in this respect, it is Socratic in other important ways. The Socrates of the Minos is moved by many of the same concerns that moved Socrates to undertake the Socratic turn. He shares the Socratic philosopher’s insight that philosophy must be justified before the city and the city’s gods and that it must be justified using the terms that are used by the city and its gods. He asks what law is because he recognizes that he must examine the phenomenon “law” as it presents itself in everyday speech rather than in “philosophic” or “scientific” terms. He examines what a non-philosophic citizen of Athens knows about law because he wants to know if such a citizen has recognized something that eludes the grasp of the philosopher who relies solely on reason. He asks if law is known through reason or through divination because he recognizes that divine law poses the greatest challenge to reason’s authority. And he ends the dialogue with an extensive praise of the laws of Minos because he recognizes that one cannot know what law is or how it is known until one has undertaken a careful and respectful examination of a divine code of law. The Minos is not Socratic in the sense that it helps us to distinguish what the historical Socrates thought about law from what Plato thought about it. Its discussion of law and the limits of law is not obviously consistent with what is said in the early dialogues. But the dialogue is Socratic in that it helps us to distinguish the classical political philosophy that Socrates set in motion from pre-Socratic natural philosophy and, in principle, from any form of rationalism that assumes the authority of reason and that dismisses claims made on behalf of the city and divine law. The Minos indicates that the same questions and insights regarding the relation between reason and divine law that led Socrates to make his famous turn continue to animate Plato and his students.

The Minos’s association with the late dialogues such as the Laws may lead one to conclude that it is also late (e.g., Cobb 1988, 188). But it is precisely this association with the Laws that may cause some to wonder if Plato could have written the Minos. Since the Minos refers to passages in the Laws, it seems unlikely that the Minos was written before the Laws (but see Morrow 1960, 37). But if the Laws was Plato’s final work, it would seem that Plato could not have written the Minos after he worked on the Laws, either.12 This argument would dispose of the possibility that Plato wrote the Minos if we knew with certainty that Plato always wrote dialogues one at a time and that he never went back to revise his earlier works. But it is possible that Plato sometimes worked on more than one dialogue at once. As Melissa Lane observes, it is difficult to establish an exact chronology for the dialogues especially since some works may have been “in progress” for years (Lane 2000, 157). Christopher Bobonich says that because the Laws is the longest of Plato’s dialogues, “it is reasonable to think that its composition overlapped with some of his other late works” (2008, 329). Thus, Plato may have decided to take a break from the lengthy Laws in order to write a short dialogue like the Minos. Alternatively, Plato could have composed the Minos before writing the Laws but later decided to revise it, adding references to the Laws to underscore that it is an introduction to the longer dialogue. Far from our having evidence that Plato always published his dialogues serially and never re-edited them, we have several ancient sources who report that Plato continually reworked the Republic.13 Thus, if Plato either composed more than one dialogue at a time or sometimes revised his works, it is possible that he composed or revised the Minos while working on the Laws.

At the same...