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E-Book, Englisch, 884 Seiten
Plato Laws
1. Auflage 2019
ISBN: 978-3-7481-4522-6
Verlag: BoD - Books on Demand
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark
E-Book, Englisch, 884 Seiten
ISBN: 978-3-7481-4522-6
Verlag: BoD - Books on Demand
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark
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.'
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EXCURSUS ON THE RELATION OF THE LAWS OF PLATO TO THE INSTITUTIONS OF CRETE AND LACEDAEMON AND TO THE LAWS AND CONSTITUTION OF ATHENS.
The Laws of Plato are essentially Greek: unlike Xenophon's Cyropaedia, they contain nothing foreign or oriental. Their aim is to reconstruct the work of the great lawgivers of Hellas in a literary form. They partake both of an Athenian and a Spartan character. Some of them too are derived from Crete, and are appropriately transferred to a Cretan colony. But of Crete so little is known to us, that although, as Montesquieu (Esprit des Lois) remarks, 'the Laws of Crete are the original of those of Sparta and the Laws of Plato the correction of these latter,' there is only one point, viz. the common meals, in which they can be compared. Most of Plato's provisions resemble the laws and customs which prevailed in these three states (especially in the two former), and which the personifying instinct of the Greeks attributed to Minos, Lycurgus, and Solon. A very few particulars may have been borrowed from Zaleucus (Cic. de Legibus), and Charondas, who is said to have first made laws against perjury (Arist. Pol.) and to have forbidden credit (Stob. Florileg., Gaisford). Some enactments are Plato's own, and were suggested by his experience of defects in the Athenian and other Greek states. The Laws also contain many lesser provisions, which are not found in the ordinary codes of nations, because they cannot be properly defined, and are therefore better left to custom and common sense. 'The greater part of the work,' as Aristotle remarks (Pol.), 'is taken up with laws': yet this is not wholly true, and applies to the latter rather than to the first half of it. The book rests on an ethical and religious foundation: the actual laws begin with a hymn of praise in honour of the soul. And the same lofty aspiration after the good is perpetually recurring, especially in Books X, XI, XII, and whenever Plato's mind is filled with his highest themes. In prefixing to most of his laws a prooemium he has two ends in view, to persuade and also to threaten. They are to have the sanction of laws and the effect of sermons. And Plato's 'Book of Laws,' if described in the language of modern philosophy, may be said to be as much an ethical and educational, as a political or legal treatise.
But although the Laws partake both of an Athenian and a Spartan character, the elements which are borrowed from either state are necessarily very different, because the character and origin of the two governments themselves differed so widely. Sparta was the more ancient and primitive: Athens was suited to the wants of a later stage of society. The relation of the two states to the Laws may be conceived in this manner:—The foundation and ground-plan of the work are more Spartan, while the superstructure and details are more Athenian. At Athens the laws were written down and were voluminous; more than a thousand fragments of them have been collected by Telfy. Like the Roman or English law, they contained innumerable particulars. Those of them which regulated daily life were familiarly known to the Athenians; for every citizen was his own lawyer, and also a judge, who decided the rights of his fellow-citizens according to the laws, often after hearing speeches from the parties interested or from their advocates. It is to Rome and not to Athens that the invention of law, in the modern sense of the term, is commonly ascribed. But it must be remembered that long before the times of the Twelve Tables (B.C. 451), regular courts and forms of law had existed at Athens and probably in the Greek colonies. And we may reasonably suppose, though without any express proof of the fact, that many Roman institutions and customs, like Latin literature and mythology, were partly derived from Hellas and had imperceptibly drifted from one shore of the Ionian Sea to the other (compare especially the constitutions of Servius Tullius and of Solon).
It is not proved that the laws of Sparta were in ancient times either written down in books or engraved on tablets of marble or brass. Nor is it certain that, if they had been, the Spartans could have read them. They were ancient customs, some of them older probably than the settlement in Laconia, of which the origin is unknown; they occasionally received the sanction of the Delphic oracle, but there was a still stronger obligation by which they were enforced,—the necessity of self-defence: the Spartans were always living in the presence of their enemies. They belonged to an age when written law had not yet taken the place of custom and tradition. The old constitution was very rarely affected by new enactments, and these only related to the duties of the Kings or Ephors, or the new relations of classes which arose as time went on. Hence there was as great a difference as could well be conceived between the Laws of Athens and Sparta: the one was the creation of a civilized state, and did not differ in principle from our modern legislation, the other of an age in which the people were held together and also kept down by force of arms, and which afterwards retained many traces of its barbaric origin 'surviving in culture.'
Nevertheless the Lacedaemonian was the ideal of a primitive Greek state. According to Thucydides it was the first which emerged out of confusion and became a regular government. It was also an army devoted to military exercises, but organized with a view to self-defence and not to conquest. It was not quick to move or easily excited; but stolid, cautious, unambitious, procrastinating. For many centuries it retained the same character which was impressed upon it by the hand of the legislator. This singular fabric was partly the result of circumstances, partly the invention of some unknown individual in prehistoric times, whose ideal of education was military discipline, and who, by the ascendency of his genius, made a small tribe into a nation which became famous in the world's history. The other Hellenes wondered at the strength and stability of his work. The rest of Hellas, says Thucydides, undertook the colonisation of Heraclea the more readily, having a feeling of security now that they saw the Lacedaemonians taking part in it. The Spartan state appears to us in the dawn of history as a vision of armed men, irresistible by any other power then existing in the world. It can hardly be said to have understood at all the rights or duties of nations to one another, or indeed to have had any moral principle except patriotism and obedience to commanders. Men were so trained to act together that they lost the freedom and spontaneity of human life in cultivating the qualities of the soldier and ruler. The Spartan state was a composite body in which kings, nobles, citizens, perioeci, artisans, slaves, had to find a 'modus vivendi' with one another. All of them were taught some use of arms. The strength of the family tie was diminished among them by an enforced absence from home and by common meals. Sparta had no life or growth; no poetry or tradition of the past; no art, no thought. The Athenians started on their great career some centuries later, but the Spartans would have been easily conquered by them, if Athens had not been deficient in the qualities which constituted the strength (and also the weakness) of her rival.
The ideal of Athens has been pictured for all time in the speech which Thucydides puts into the mouth of Pericles, called the Funeral Oration. He contrasts the activity and freedom and pleasantness of Athenian life with the immobility and severe looks and incessant drill of the Spartans. The citizens of no city were more versatile, or more readily changed from land to sea or more quickly moved about from place to place. They 'took their pleasures' merrily, and yet, when the time for fighting arrived, were not a whit behind the Spartans, who were like men living in a camp, and, though always keeping guard, were often too late for the fray. Any foreigner might visit Athens; her ships found a way to the most distant shores; the riches of the whole earth poured in upon her. Her citizens had their theatres and festivals; they 'provided their souls with many relaxations'; yet they were not less manly than the Spartans or less willing to sacrifice this enjoyable existence for their country's good. The Athenian was a nobler form of life than that of their rivals, a life of music as well as of gymnastic, the life of a citizen as well as of a soldier. Such is the picture which Thucydides has drawn of the Athenians in their glory. It is the spirit of this life which Plato would infuse into the Magnesian state and which he seeks to combine with the common meals and gymnastic discipline of Sparta.
The two great types of Athens and Sparta had deeply entered into his mind. He had heard of Sparta at a distance and from common Hellenic fame: he was a citizen of Athens and an Athenian of noble birth. He must often have sat in the law-courts, and may have had personal experience of the duties of offices such as he is establishing. There is no need to ask the question, whence he derived his knowledge of the Laws of Athens: they were a part of his daily life. Many of his enactments are recognized to be Athenian laws from the fragments preserved in the Orators and elsewhere: many more would be found to be so if we had better information. Probably also still more of them would have been incorporated in the Magnesian code, if the work had ever been finally completed. But it seems to have come down to us in a form which is partly finished and partly unfinished, having a beginning and end, but wanting arrangement in the middle. The Laws answer to Plato's own description of them, in the comparison which he makes of himself and his two friends to gatherers of stones or...
But although the Laws partake both of an Athenian and a Spartan character, the elements which are borrowed from either state are necessarily very different, because the character and origin of the two governments themselves differed so widely. Sparta was the more ancient and primitive: Athens was suited to the wants of a later stage of society. The relation of the two states to the Laws may be conceived in this manner:—The foundation and ground-plan of the work are more Spartan, while the superstructure and details are more Athenian. At Athens the laws were written down and were voluminous; more than a thousand fragments of them have been collected by Telfy. Like the Roman or English law, they contained innumerable particulars. Those of them which regulated daily life were familiarly known to the Athenians; for every citizen was his own lawyer, and also a judge, who decided the rights of his fellow-citizens according to the laws, often after hearing speeches from the parties interested or from their advocates. It is to Rome and not to Athens that the invention of law, in the modern sense of the term, is commonly ascribed. But it must be remembered that long before the times of the Twelve Tables (B.C. 451), regular courts and forms of law had existed at Athens and probably in the Greek colonies. And we may reasonably suppose, though without any express proof of the fact, that many Roman institutions and customs, like Latin literature and mythology, were partly derived from Hellas and had imperceptibly drifted from one shore of the Ionian Sea to the other (compare especially the constitutions of Servius Tullius and of Solon).
It is not proved that the laws of Sparta were in ancient times either written down in books or engraved on tablets of marble or brass. Nor is it certain that, if they had been, the Spartans could have read them. They were ancient customs, some of them older probably than the settlement in Laconia, of which the origin is unknown; they occasionally received the sanction of the Delphic oracle, but there was a still stronger obligation by which they were enforced,—the necessity of self-defence: the Spartans were always living in the presence of their enemies. They belonged to an age when written law had not yet taken the place of custom and tradition. The old constitution was very rarely affected by new enactments, and these only related to the duties of the Kings or Ephors, or the new relations of classes which arose as time went on. Hence there was as great a difference as could well be conceived between the Laws of Athens and Sparta: the one was the creation of a civilized state, and did not differ in principle from our modern legislation, the other of an age in which the people were held together and also kept down by force of arms, and which afterwards retained many traces of its barbaric origin 'surviving in culture.'
Nevertheless the Lacedaemonian was the ideal of a primitive Greek state. According to Thucydides it was the first which emerged out of confusion and became a regular government. It was also an army devoted to military exercises, but organized with a view to self-defence and not to conquest. It was not quick to move or easily excited; but stolid, cautious, unambitious, procrastinating. For many centuries it retained the same character which was impressed upon it by the hand of the legislator. This singular fabric was partly the result of circumstances, partly the invention of some unknown individual in prehistoric times, whose ideal of education was military discipline, and who, by the ascendency of his genius, made a small tribe into a nation which became famous in the world's history. The other Hellenes wondered at the strength and stability of his work. The rest of Hellas, says Thucydides, undertook the colonisation of Heraclea the more readily, having a feeling of security now that they saw the Lacedaemonians taking part in it. The Spartan state appears to us in the dawn of history as a vision of armed men, irresistible by any other power then existing in the world. It can hardly be said to have understood at all the rights or duties of nations to one another, or indeed to have had any moral principle except patriotism and obedience to commanders. Men were so trained to act together that they lost the freedom and spontaneity of human life in cultivating the qualities of the soldier and ruler. The Spartan state was a composite body in which kings, nobles, citizens, perioeci, artisans, slaves, had to find a 'modus vivendi' with one another. All of them were taught some use of arms. The strength of the family tie was diminished among them by an enforced absence from home and by common meals. Sparta had no life or growth; no poetry or tradition of the past; no art, no thought. The Athenians started on their great career some centuries later, but the Spartans would have been easily conquered by them, if Athens had not been deficient in the qualities which constituted the strength (and also the weakness) of her rival.
The ideal of Athens has been pictured for all time in the speech which Thucydides puts into the mouth of Pericles, called the Funeral Oration. He contrasts the activity and freedom and pleasantness of Athenian life with the immobility and severe looks and incessant drill of the Spartans. The citizens of no city were more versatile, or more readily changed from land to sea or more quickly moved about from place to place. They 'took their pleasures' merrily, and yet, when the time for fighting arrived, were not a whit behind the Spartans, who were like men living in a camp, and, though always keeping guard, were often too late for the fray. Any foreigner might visit Athens; her ships found a way to the most distant shores; the riches of the whole earth poured in upon her. Her citizens had their theatres and festivals; they 'provided their souls with many relaxations'; yet they were not less manly than the Spartans or less willing to sacrifice this enjoyable existence for their country's good. The Athenian was a nobler form of life than that of their rivals, a life of music as well as of gymnastic, the life of a citizen as well as of a soldier. Such is the picture which Thucydides has drawn of the Athenians in their glory. It is the spirit of this life which Plato would infuse into the Magnesian state and which he seeks to combine with the common meals and gymnastic discipline of Sparta.
The two great types of Athens and Sparta had deeply entered into his mind. He had heard of Sparta at a distance and from common Hellenic fame: he was a citizen of Athens and an Athenian of noble birth. He must often have sat in the law-courts, and may have had personal experience of the duties of offices such as he is establishing. There is no need to ask the question, whence he derived his knowledge of the Laws of Athens: they were a part of his daily life. Many of his enactments are recognized to be Athenian laws from the fragments preserved in the Orators and elsewhere: many more would be found to be so if we had better information. Probably also still more of them would have been incorporated in the Magnesian code, if the work had ever been finally completed. But it seems to have come down to us in a form which is partly finished and partly unfinished, having a beginning and end, but wanting arrangement in the middle. The Laws answer to Plato's own description of them, in the comparison which he makes of himself and his two friends to gatherers of stones or...
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