Plato Common Logic And Reason Part Two

By Author: Premkumar Nadarajan
Total Articles: 32
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It must be admitted that these principles are difficult of application.
Yet a criticism may be worth making which rests only on probabilities
or impressions. Great disputes will arise about the merits of different
passages, about what is truly characteristic and original or trivial
and borrowed. Many have thought the Laws to be one of the greatest of
Platonic writings, while in the judgment of Mr. Grote they hardly rise
above the level of the forged epistles. The manner in which a writer
would or would not have written at a particular time of life must be
acknowledged to be a matter of conjecture. But enough has been said to
show that similarities of a certain kind, whether criticism is able to
detect them or not, may be such as must be attributed to an original
writer, and not to a mere imitator.Applying these principles to the case of the Laws, we have now
to point out that they contain the class of refined or unconscious
similarities which are indicative of genuineness. The parallelisms are
like the repetitions of favourite thoughts into which ...
... every one is apt
to fall unawares in conversation or in writing. They are found in a work
which contains many beautiful and remarkable passages. We may therefore
begin by claiming this presumption in their favour. Such undesigned
coincidences, as we may venture to call them, are the following. The
conception of justice as the union of temperance, wisdom, courage
(Laws; Republic): the latent idea of dialectic implied in the notion
of dividing laws after the kinds of virtue (Laws); the approval of the
method of looking at one idea gathered from many things, 'than which a
truer was never discovered by any man' (compare Republic): or again the
description of the Laws as parents (Laws; Republic): the assumption
that religion has been already settled by the oracle of Delphi (Laws;
Republic), to which an appeal is also made in special cases (Laws): the
notion of the battle with self, a paradox for which Plato in a manner
apologizes both in the Laws and the Republic: the remark (Laws) that
just men, even when they are deformed in body, may still be perfectly
beautiful in respect of the excellent justice of their minds (compare
Republic): the argument that ideals are none the worse because they
cannot be carried out (Laws; Republic): the near approach to the idea of
good in 'the principle which is common to all the four virtues,' a
truth which the guardians must be compelled to recognize (Laws; compare
Republic): or again the recognition by reason of the right pleasure and
pain, which had previously been matter of habit (Laws; Republic): or
the blasphemy of saying that the excellency of music is to give pleasure
(Laws; Republic): again the story of the Sidonian Cadmus (Laws), which
is a variation of the Phoenician tale of the earth-born men (Republic):
the comparison of philosophy to a yelping she-dog, both in the Republic
and in the Laws: the remark that no man can practise two trades (Laws;
Republic): or the advantage of the middle condition (Laws; Republic):
the tendency to speak of principles as moulds or forms; compare the
ekmageia of song (Laws), and the tupoi of religion (Republic): or the
remark (Laws) that 'the relaxation of justice makes many cities out of
one,' which may be compared with the Republic: or the description of
lawlessness 'creeping in little by little in the fashions of music and
overturning all things,'--to us a paradox, but to Plato's mind a fixed
idea, which is found in the Laws as well as in the Republic: or the
figure of the parts of the human body under which the parts of the state
are described (Laws; Republic): the apology for delay and diffuseness,
which occurs not unfrequently in the Republic, is carried to an excess
in the Laws (compare Theaet.): the remarkable thought (Laws) that the
soul of the sun is better than the sun, agrees with the relation in
which the idea of good stands to the sun in the Republic, and with the
substitution of mind for the idea of good in the Philebus: the passage
about the tragic poets (Laws) agrees generally with the treatment of
them in the Republic, but is more finely conceived, and worked out in a
nobler spirit. Some lesser similarities of thought and manner should not
be omitted, such as the mention of the thirty years' old students in the
Republic, and the fifty years' old choristers in the Laws; or the
making of the citizens out of wax (Laws) compared with the other image
(Republic); or the number of the tyrant (729), which is NEARLY equal
with the number of days and nights in the year (730), compared with the
'slight correction' of the sacred number 5040, which is divisible by all
the numbers from 1 to 12 except 11, and divisible by 11, if two families
be deducted; or once more, we may compare the ignorance of solid
geometry of which he complains in the Republic and the puzzle about
fractions with the difficulty in the Laws about commensurable and
incommensurable quantities--and the malicious emphasis on the word
gunaikeios (Laws) with the use of the same word (Republic). These and
similar passages tend to show that the author of the Republic is also
the author of the Laws. They are echoes of the same voice, expressions
of the same mind, coincidences too subtle to have been invented by the
ingenuity of any imitator. The force of the argument is increased, if we
remember that no passage in the Laws is exactly copied,--nowhere do
five or six words occur together which are found together elsewhere in
Plato's writings.In other dialogues of Plato, as well as in the Republic, there are to
be found parallels with the Laws. Such resemblances, as we might expect,
occur chiefly (but not exclusively) in the dialogues which, on other
grounds, we may suppose to be of later date. The punishment of evil is
to be like evil men (Laws), as he says also in the Theaetetus. Compare
again the dependence of tragedy and comedy on one another, of which he
gives the reason in the Laws--'For serious things cannot be understood
without laughable, nor opposites at all without opposites, if a man
is really to have intelligence of either'; here he puts forward the
principle which is the groundwork of the thesis of Socrates in the
Symposium, 'that the genius of tragedy is the same as that of comedy,
and that the writer of comedy ought to be a writer of tragedy also.'
There is a truth and right which is above Law (Laws), as we learn also
from the Statesman. That men are the possession of the Gods (Laws), is
a reflection which likewise occurs in the Phaedo. The remark, whether
serious or ironical (Laws), that 'the sons of the Gods naturally
believed in the Gods, because they had the means of knowing about them,'
is found in the Timaeus. The reign of Cronos, who is the divine ruler
(Laws), is a reminiscence of the Statesman. It is remarkable that in the
Sophist and Statesman (Soph.), Plato, speaking in the character of the
Eleatic Stranger, has already put on the old man. The madness of the
poets, again, is a favourite notion of Plato's, which occurs also in the
Laws, as well as in the Phaedrus, Ion, and elsewhere. There are traces
in the Laws of the same desire to base speculation upon history which
we find in the Critias. Once more, there is a striking parallel with
the paradox of the Gorgias, that 'if you do evil, it is better to be
punished than to be unpunished,' in the Laws: 'To live having all goods
without justice and virtue is the greatest of evils if life be immortal,
but not so great if the bad man lives but a short time.'
The point to be considered is whether these are the kind of parallels
which would be the work of an imitator. Would a forger have had the wit
to select the most peculiar and characteristic thoughts of Plato; would
he have caught the spirit of his philosophy; would he, instead of openly
borrowing, have half concealed his favourite ideas; would he have formed
them into a whole such as the Laws; would he have given another
the credit which he might have obtained for himself; would he have
remembered and made use of other passages of the Platonic writings and
have never deviated into the phraseology of them? Without pressing
such arguments as absolutely certain, we must acknowledge that such a
comparison affords a new ground of real weight for believing the Laws to
be a genuine writing of Plato. The relation of the Republic to the Laws is clearly set forth by
Plato in the Laws. The Republic is the best state, the Laws is the best
possible under the existing conditions of the Greek world. The Republic
is the ideal, in which no man calls anything his own, which may or may
not have existed in some remote clime, under the rule of some God, or
son of a God (who can say?), but is, at any rate, the pattern of
all other states and the exemplar of human life. The Laws distinctly
acknowledge what the Republic partly admits, that the ideal is
inimitable by us, but that we should 'lift up our eyes to the heavens'
and try to regulate our lives according to the divine image. The
citizens are no longer to have wives and children in common, and are
no longer to be under the government of philosophers. But the spirit of
communism or communion is to continue among them, though reverence for
the sacredness of the family, and respect of children for parents, not
promiscuous hymeneals, are now the foundation of the state; the sexes
are to be as nearly on an equality as possible; they are to meet
at common tables, and to share warlike pursuits (if the women will
consent), and to have a common education. The legislator has taken the
place of the philosopher, but a council of elders is retained, who are
to fulfil the duties of the legislator when he has passed out of life.
The addition of younger persons to this council by co-optation is
an improvement on the governing body of the Republic. The scheme of
education in the Laws is of a far lower kind than that which Plato had
conceived in the Republic. There he would have his rulers trained in all
knowledge meeting in the idea of good, of which the different branches
of mathematical science are but the hand-maidens or ministers; here he
treats chiefly of popular education, stopping short with the preliminary
sciences,--these are to be studied partly with a view to their practical
usefulness, which in the Republic he holds cheap, and even more with a
view to avoiding impiety, of which in the Republic he says nothing; he
touches very lightly on dialectic, which is still to be retained for
the rulers. Yet in the Laws there remain traces of the old educational
ideas. He is still for banishing the poets; and as he finds the works of
prose writers equally dangerous, he would substitute for them the study
of his own laws. He insists strongly on the importance of mathematics
as an educational instrument. He is no more reconciled to the Greek
mythology than in the Republic, though he would rather say nothing about
it out of a reverence for antiquity; and he is equally willing to have
recourse to fictions, if they have a moral tendency. His thoughts recur
to a golden age in which the sanctity of oaths was respected and in
which men living nearer the Gods were more disposed to believe in them;
but we must legislate for the world as it is, now that the old beliefs
have passed away. Though he is no longer fired with dialectical
enthusiasm, he would compel the guardians to 'look at one idea gathered
from many things,' and to 'perceive the principle which is the same in
all the four virtues.' He still recognizes the enormous influence of
music, in which every youth is to be trained for three years; and he
seems to attribute the existing degeneracy of the Athenian state and
the laxity of morals partly to musical innovation, manifested in the
unnatural divorce of the instrument and the voice, of the rhythm from
the words, and partly to the influence of the mob who ruled at the
theatres. He assimilates the education of the two sexes, as far as
possible, both in music and gymnastic, and, as in the Republic, he would
give to gymnastic a purely military character. In marriage, his object
is still to produce the finest children for the state. As in the
Statesman, he would unite in wedlock dissimilar natures--the passionate
with the dull, the courageous with the gentle. And the virtuous tyrant
of the Statesman, who has no place in the Republic, again appears.
In this, as in all his writings, he has the strongest sense of the
degeneracy and incapacity of the rulers of his own time.
In the Laws, the philosophers, if not banished, like the poets, are
at least ignored; and religion takes the place of philosophy in the
regulation of human life. It must however be remembered that the
religion of Plato is co-extensive with morality, and is that purified
religion and mythology of which he speaks in the second book of the
Republic. There is no real discrepancy in the two works. In a practical
treatise, he speaks of religion rather than of philosophy; just as he
appears to identify virtue with pleasure, and rather seeks to find
the common element of the virtues than to maintain his old paradoxical
theses that they are one, or that they are identical with knowledge. The
dialectic and the idea of good, which even Glaucon in the Republic could
not understand, would be out of place in a less ideal work. There may
also be a change in his own mind, the purely intellectual aspect of
philosophy having a diminishing interest to him in his old age.
Some confusion occurs in the passage in which Plato speaks of the
Republic, occasioned by his reference to a third state, which he
proposes (D.V.) hereafter to expound. Like many other thoughts in the
Laws, the allusion is obscure from not being worked out. Aristotle
(Polit.) speaks of a state which is neither the best absolutely, nor
the best under existing conditions, but an imaginary state, inferior
to either, destitute, as he supposes, of the necessaries of
life--apparently such a beginning of primitive society as is described
in Laws iii. But it is not clear that by this the third state of Plato
is intended. It is possible that Plato may have meant by his third state
an historical sketch, bearing the same relation to the Laws which the
unfinished Critias would have borne to the Republic; or he may, perhaps,
have intended to describe a state more nearly approximating than the
Laws to existing Greek states.
The Statesman is a mere fragment when compared with the Laws, yet
combining a second interest of dialectic as well as politics, which is
wanting in the larger work. Several points of similarity and contrast
may be observed between them. In some respects the Statesman is
even more ideal than the Republic, looking back to a former state of
paradisiacal life, in which the Gods ruled over mankind, as the Republic
looks forward to a coming kingdom of philosophers. Of this kingdom of
Cronos there is also mention in the Laws. Again, in the Statesman, the
Eleatic Stranger rises above law to the conception of the living voice
of the lawgiver, who is able to provide for individual cases. A similar
thought is repeated in the Laws: 'If in the order of nature, and by
divine destiny, a man were able to apprehend the truth about these
things, he would have no need of laws to rule over him; for there is no
law or order above knowledge, nor can mind without impiety be deemed
the subject or slave of any, but rather the lord of all.' The union of
opposite natures, who form the warp and the woof of the political web,
is a favourite thought which occurs in both dialogues.

lecturer at a private learning institution ( UTAR).