Plato, Minos

Through this introduction to the life of Socrates through the shorter Platonic dialogues, I begin to get the feeling that Plato is guiding us from a love of what we think we know (authoritative opinion) to a love of the truth. Whatever else may be said for Bruell's take, I have to admit it's rather wonderful. The medievals held that the short dialogues are the best gateways into Platonic philosophy (though what that itself is is a matter of some dispute, and I claim provisional ignorance), and the Straussians tend to agree. I at least am finding the order of dialogues he recommends perfect: dialogues 'on' gain, law, and justice (among other things). Most incredible is the way Plato effortlessly illustrates thoughtful popular opinion on these things, and how similar a man in 21st century America might have the same opinions on gain, law, and justice as a 4th century BC Athenian.

Never have I read a dialogue where I was more invested in the outcome than in the Minos. Socrates asks a nameless companion, "What is law, for us?" Socrates immediately presses the issue towards defining law as something not entirely up to us ("a discover of what is), but he is initially unsuccessful. His companion's final definition of the law is as following: Law is the official opinion of the city; that is, political opinion. Opinion, and not knowledge. Here begins my difficulty: this is precisely my definition of law: customarily accepted political opinion. But if it is mere opinion, not knowledge, why ought it to be respected and heeded? Why should the philosopher, who has knowledge, not be above the law? I react with some horror at the implication of my own view, for widespread disrespect for the law would be devastating to the city. Plato, it seems to me, is trying to raise the reader up from such a vulgar view of law, and so I was hoping very much to find a persuasive argument that was not intended to be ironical.

Unfortunately, I did not find it. Socrates links justice and law very closely when he gets his companion to agree that the lawful are just and the lawless unjust. But is this true? That there could be unjust law I have no doubt: laws which defraud the poor and vulnerable, laws which treat political equals unequally, or worse offenses. If the law may be unjust, then are not the unlawful just and the lawful unjust? Yet this returns to disrepecting the law, for if the view that in some cases the unlawful is just is promulgated, one will simply call all laws which moderate one's vulgar desires unjust and himself just when he is unlawful - surely a great disgrace.

Through linking the law with justice, Socrates persuade his companion that "Law is true opinion", and therefore that "Law wishes to be the discovery of what is", like the other arts: medicine, agriculture, gardening, cooking, etc. The companion raises a difficulty: if this is so, why do cities everywhere not use the same laws, as they all use the same medicines, etc? (a similar impasse might be raised against the proposition that certain things are true) And Socrates' response is most unconvincing: professing ignorance that this is indeed the case. And after the companion enlightens him with a description of contrary laws and customs (like Herodotus, a bit), Socrates avoids his clear, eloquent speech and instead moves into being a sophist to produce agreement. His response is quite puzzling. After the companion pleads that he wishes to be convinced (as did I - I longed, positively longed to be convinced), but that "when I consider that we never stop changing the laws, I can't be persuaded", Socrates says, "Perhaps you do not perceive that these things, being moved like droughts pieces, remain the same" - which I don't understand at all.

Further, the argument progresses on the assumption that law is some sort of techne: as the heavy is heavy in Athens and Sparta alike, and the healthy is as well, etc. law will be the same everywhere. He uses four examples: medicine, agriculture, gardening, and cooking. How do these illustrate the nature of law? Medicine seems accurate enough: the causes of health in a man can be approximately codified, and doctors, whether in Athens or Lycaea, will use similar means to induce health. Agriculture is similar, but seldom relies on written "laws" - most often tradition and experience (though I suppose these are similar in practice to the 'laws' of medicine) to produce bountiful crops. But gardening? What is the aim of gardening? And cooking? These seem far more dependent upon private whim and fancy than they do with a written law, intending to be the discovery of what is (also, in the Gorgias, Socrates uses cooking as a negative example to illustrate rhetoric). Perhaps Plato did not intend to undermine Socrates' argument that law is the discovery of what is, or that I'm missing something crucially important, but Socrates did not convince me that the lawful are always just, and that therefore law is the discovery of what is; if Plato did not intend that, he sure came close.

I have seldom been in a position of wishing to be convinced, and yet being unconvinced. It is rather unpleasant. Is law nothing more than authoritative political opinion, whose justice is entirely accidental? Are justice and law completely separate things? I don't want to hold either of those opinions, but till I work something out (perhaps Aquinas' Treatise on Law, which I have completely forgotten, would help), that is unfortunately where I linger: in the shadow of vulgar opinion.

"What else would law be, Socrates, except those things that are lawfully accepted?"