Complete Works

by Plato, Cooper, John M. , Hutchinson, D. S.

  [b] We come next, after these matters of religion, to cases of political subversion. We should treat as the biggest enemy of the entire state the man who makes the laws into slaves, and the state into the servant of a particular interest, by subjecting them to the diktat of mere men. This transgressor of the law uses violence in all that he does and stirs up sedition. Second in the scale of wickedness, in our estimation, should come the holder of some high state office, who while not an accessory to any such crimes, nevertheless fails to detect them and exact the vengeance of his fatherland [c] (or, if he does detect them, holds back through cowardice). Every man who is any good at all must denounce the plotter to the authorities and take him to court on a charge of violently and illicitly overthrowing the constitution. The court should consist of the same judges as for robbers from temples, and the procedure of the entire trial should be the same as it was for them, a majority vote being sufficient for the death penalty.

  As a rule, penalties and disgrace incurred by a father should not be [d] passed on to any of his children, except where a man’s father, grandfather and great-grandfather have all in turn been sentenced to death. The state should deport such cases to the state and city from which their family originally came; and they should take their property with them, apart from all the basic equipment of their farm. Next, sons of citizens who have more than one son over ten years of age should be nominated by their father or grandfather on either the mother’s or the father’s side. Ten of them should be chosen by lot, and the names of those whom the lot selects [e] should be reported to Delphi. The god’s choice should then be installed as heir to the abandoned property—and he, we hope, will have better luck.

  CLINIAS: Splendid.

  ATHENIAN: The same regulations about the judges that should try the case, and the procedure to be followed at the trial, will apply in yet a third instance, when a man is brought to court on a charge of treason. In the [857] same way, a single law should apply to all three cases and decide whether the children of these criminals (traitor, temple-robber, and the violent wrecker of the laws of the state) should remain in their fatherland or leave it.

  Again, a single law and legal penalty should apply to every thief, no matter whether his theft is great or small:

  42. (a) he must pay twice the value of the stolen article, if he loses the day and has sufficient surplus property over and above his farm with which to make the repayment.

  (b) if he has not,

  he must be kept in prison until he pays up or persuades the man who has had him convicted to let him off.

  43. If a man is convicted of stealing from public sources, [b]

  he shall be freed from prison when he has either persuaded the state to let him off or paid back twice the amount involved.

  CLINIAS: How on earth can we be serious, sir, in saying that it makes no odds whether his theft is large or small, or whether it comes from sacred or secular sources? And what about all the other different circumstances of a theft? Shouldn’t a legislator vary the penalties he inflicts, so that he can cope with the various categories of theft?

  ATHENIAN: That’s a good question, Clinias: I have been walking in my sleep, and you have bumped into me and woken me up. You have reminded [c] me of something that has occurred to me before, that the business of establishing a code of law has never been properly thought out—as we can see from the example that has just cropped up. Now, what am I getting at? It wasn’t a bad parallel we made, you know, when we compared all those for whom legislation is produced today to slaves under treatment from slave doctors.1 Make no mistake about what would happen, if one of those doctors who are innocent of theory and practice medicine by rule of thumb were ever to come across a gentleman doctor conversing with [d] a gentleman patient. This doctor would be acting almost like a philosopher, engaging in a discussion that ranged over the source of the disease and pushed the inquiry back into the whole nature of the body. But our other doctor would immediately give a tremendous shout of laughter, and his observations would be precisely those that most ‘doctors’ are always so ready to trot out. ‘You ass,’ he would say, ‘you are not treating the patient, but tutoring him. Anybody would think he wanted to become a doctor rather than get well again.’ [e]

  CLINIAS: And wouldn’t he be right to say that?

  ATHENIAN: Perhaps he would—if he were to bear in mind this further point, that anyone who handles law in the way we are now, is tutoring the citizens, not imposing laws on them. Wouldn’t it be equally right to say that?

  CLINIAS: Perhaps so.

  ATHENIAN: However, at the moment, we are in a fortunate position.

  CLINIAS: How do you mean?

  ATHENIAN: I mean the lack of any necessity to legislate. We are simply [858] carrying out our own review of every kind of political system and trying to see how we could put into effect the absolutely ideal kind, as well as the least good sort that would still be acceptable. This is particularly true of our legislation, where it looks as if we have a choice: either we can examine ideal laws, if we want to, or again, if we feel like it, we can look at the minimum standard we are prepared to put up with. So we must choose which course we want to take.

  CLINIAS: This is a ridiculous choice to give ourselves, my friend: it’s not [b] as if we were legislators forced by some irresistible necessity to legislate at a minute’s notice, without being allowed to put the business off till tomorrow. We, God willing, can do as bricklayers do, or workmen starting some other kind of erecting. We can gather our materials in no particular order and then select—and select at leisure—the items which are appropriate for the forthcoming construction. Our assumption should be, therefore, that we are constructing something, but not under any constraint; we work at our convenience and spend part of the time preparing our material, part of the time fitting it together. So it would be quite fair to [c] describe our penal code as already partially laid down, while other material for it lies ready to hand.

  ATHENIAN: At any rate, Clinias, this will be the more realistic way to conduct our review of legislation. Well then, may we please notice this point that concerns legislators?

  CLINIAS: What point?

  ATHENIAN: I suppose literary compositions and written speeches by many other authors are current in our cities, besides those of the legislator?

  CLINIAS: Of course they are.

  ATHENIAN: To whose writings ought we to apply ourselves? Are we to [d] read the poets and others who have recorded in prose or verse compositions their advice about how one should live one’s life, to the neglect of the compositions of the legislators? Or isn’t it precisely the latter that deserve our closest attention?

  CLINIAS: Yes, it certainly is.

  ATHENIAN: And I suppose the legislator, alone among writers, is to be denied permission to give advice about virtue and goodness and justice? Is he alone to be prevented from explaining their nature and how they should be reflected in our conduct, if we aim to be happy?

  CLINIAS: No, of course not.

  [e] ATHENIAN: Then is it really more scandalous in the case of Homer and Tyrtaeus and the other poets to have composed in writing2 bad rules for the conduct of life, but less so for Lycurgus and Solon, and all others who have turned legislator and committed their recommendations to writing? The proper view, surely, is this: a city’s writings on legal topics should turn out, on being opened, to be the finest and best of all those it has in [859] circulation; the writings of other men should either sound in harmony with them, or provoke ridicule by being out of tune. So what is the style in which a state’s laws ought to be written, in our opinion? Should the regulations appear in the light of a loving and prudent father and mother? Or should they act the tyrant and the despot, posting their orders and threats on walls and leaving it at that? Clearly, then, at this stage, we must decide whether we are going to try to talk about laws in the right spirit. Succeed or no, we shall at any rate show our good intentions. If we take [b] this course and have to face some difficulties en route, th
en let’s face them. Good luck to us, and God willing, we shall succeed.

  CLINIAS: You’ve put it splendidly. Let’s do as you suggest.

  ATHENIAN: In the first place, we must continue the attempt we’ve just made: we must scrutinize our law about robbers of temples, theft in general, and every variety of crime. We should not let it daunt us if in the full spate of our legislation we find that although we have settled some matters, [c] our inquiry into others has still to be completed. We are still aiming at the status of legislators, but we haven’t achieved it yet; perhaps eventually we may succeed. So now let’s look at these topics I’ve mentioned—if, that is, you are prepared to look at them in the way I have explained.

  CLINIAS: Certainly we are prepared.

  ATHENIAN: Now, on the whole subject of goodness and justice, we ought to try to see quite clearly just where we agree, and where there are differences of opinion between us. Again, how far do ordinary men agree? What differences are there between them? (Naturally, we should claim that we wanted there to be at least a small ‘difference between’ us and ordinary men!) [d]

  CLINIAS: What sort of ‘differences between us’ have you in mind when you say that?

  ATHENIAN: I’ll try to explain. When we talk about justice in general—just men, just actions, just arrangements, we are, after a fashion, unanimous that all these things are ‘good’. One might insist that even if just men happen to be shocking in their physical appearance, they are still preeminently ‘good’ because of their supremely just character. No one would think a man was talking nonsense in saying that. [e]

  CLINIAS: Wouldn’t that be right?

  ATHENIAN: Perhaps. But if everything that has the quality of justice is ‘good’, we ought to note that we include in that ‘everything’ even the things done to us, which are about as frequent, roughly speaking, as the things we do to others.

  CLINIAS: What now, then?

  ATHENIAN: Any just action we do has the quality of being ‘good’ roughly in proportion to the degree to which it has the quality of justice.

  CLINIAS: Indeed.

  ATHENIAN: So surely, anything done to us, which has the quality of [860] justice, is to that extent agreed to be ‘good’? This wouldn’t involve our argument in any contradiction.

  CLINIAS: True.

  ATHENIAN: If we agree that something done to us is just, but at the same time shocking, the terms ‘just’ and ‘good’ will be in conflict with each other—the reason being that we have termed ‘just’ actions ‘most shameful’.

  CLINIAS: What are you getting at?

  ATHENIAN: It’s not difficult to understand. The injunctions of the laws we laid down a little while ago would seem to be in flat contradiction to what we are saying now.

  CLINIAS: How so?

  [b] ATHENIAN: Our ruling was, I think, that the temple-robber and the enemy of properly established laws would suffer a ‘just’ death. But then, on the brink of establishing a great many such rules, we held back. We saw ourselves becoming involved with penal suffering of infinite variety and on a grand scale. Of all sufferings, these were particularly just; but they were also the particularly shocking ones. Thus, surely, one minute we shall find ‘just’ and ‘good’ invariably turning out to be the same, and the next moment discover they are opposites.

  CLINIAS: Likely enough.

  [c] ATHENIAN: This is the source of the inconsistency in the language of the ordinary man: he destroys the unity of the terms ‘good’ and ‘just’.

  CLINIAS: That is indeed how it looks, sir.

  ATHENIAN: Now, Clinias, we ought to examine our own position again. How far is it consistent in this business?

  CLINIAS: Consistent? What consistency do you mean?

  ATHENIAN: Earlier in our discussion I think I have said quite categorically—or if I haven’t before, assume I’m saying it now—that…

  CLINIAS: What?

  [d] ATHENIAN: …all wicked men are, in all respects, unwillingly wicked. This being so, my next argument necessarily follows.

  CLINIAS: What argument?

  ATHENIAN: That the unjust man is doubtless wicked; but that the wicked man is in that state only against his will. However, to suppose that a voluntary act is performed involuntarily makes no sense. Therefore, in the eyes of someone who holds the view that injustice is involuntary, a man who acts unjustly would seem to be doing so against his will. Here and now, that is the position I have to accept: I allow that no one acts unjustly [e] except against his will. (If anyone with a disputatious disposition or a desire to attract favorable notice says that although there are those who are unjust against their will, even so many men do commit unjust acts voluntarily, I would reject his argument and stick to what I said.) Well then, how am I to make my own arguments consistent? Suppose the two of you, Clinias and Megillus, were to ask me, ‘If that’s so, sir, what advice have you for us about laying down laws for the city of the Magnesians? Do we legislate, or don’t we?’ ‘Of course we legislate’, I’d say, and you’d ask: ‘Are you going to make a distinction for the Magnesians between voluntary and involuntary acts of injustice? Shall we impose stiffer penalties [861] on voluntary wrongdoing and acts of injustice, and smaller penalties on the involuntary? Or shall we treat them all on an equal footing, on the grounds that there simply is no such thing as an act of voluntary injustice?’

  CLINIAS: You are perfectly right, sir. So what use shall we make of this position we have just taken up?

  ATHENIAN: That’s a good question. First of all, we shall make this use of it—

  CLINIAS: What?

  ATHENIAN: Let’s cast our minds back. A few minutes ago we were quite right to say that in the matter of justice we were in a state of great muddle and inconsistency. With that in mind, we may go back to asking questions of ourselves. ‘We have not yet found a way out of our confusion in these [b] things. We have not defined the difference between these two categories of wrongs, voluntary and involuntary. In all states, every lawgiver who has ever appeared treats them as distinct, and the distinction is reflected in his laws. Now, is the position we took up a moment ago to overrule all dissent, like a decision handed down from God? Shall we make just this one assertion and dismiss the topic, without adducing any reasons to show that our position is correct?’ Impossible. What we must do, before we legislate, is somehow [c] make clear that there are two categories, but that the distinction between them is a different one. Then, when one imposes the penalty on either, everybody will be able to appreciate the arguments for it, and make some kind of judgment whether it is the appropriate penalty to have imposed or not.

  CLINIAS: We think you state the position fairly, sir. We must do one of two things, either stop insisting that unjust acts are always involuntary, or, before going any further, demonstrate its validity by means of a preliminary distinction. [d]

  ATHENIAN: The first of the two alternatives, denying the proposition when I believe it to represent the truth, is absolutely unacceptable to me. I should be breaking the laws of both God and man. But if the two things do not differ by virtue of being ‘voluntary’ and ‘involuntary’, how do they differ? What other factor is involved? That is what we have to try, somehow or other, to show.

  CLINIAS: It is surely impossible, sir, to approach the problem in any other way.

  ATHENIAN: So this is what we shall try to do. Look: when citizens come [e] together and associate with each other, they obviously inflict many injuries; and to these the terms ‘voluntary’ and ‘involuntary’ can be freely applied.

  CLINIAS: Of course.

  ATHENIAN: But no one should describe all these injuries as acts of injustice, and conclude that therefore the unjust acts committed in these cases of injury fall into two categories, (a) involuntary (because if we add them all up, you see, the involuntary injuries are no less numerous and no less great than the voluntary ones), and (b) voluntary as well. Rather than do [862] that, consider the next step I am going to take in my argument: am I on to something or just driveling? My
position, Clinias and Megillus, is not that, if someone hurts someone else involuntarily and without intending it, he is acting unjustly but involuntarily. I will not legislate so as to make this an involuntary act of injustice. Ignoring its relative seriousness or triviality, I shall refuse to put down such an injury under the heading of ‘injustice’ at all. Indeed, if my view is sustained, we shall often say of a [b] benefactor that ‘he is committing the injustice of conferring a benefit’—an improper benefit. You see, my friends, in effect we should not simply call it ‘just’ when one man bestows some object on another, nor simply ‘unjust’ when correspondingly he takes it from him. The description ‘just’ is applicable only to the benefit conferred or injury inflicted by someone with a just character and outlook. This is the point the lawgiver has to watch; he must keep his eyes on these two things, injustice and injury. He must use [c] the law to exact damages for damage done, as far as he can; he must restore losses, and if anyone has knocked something down, put it back upright again; in place of anything killed or wounded, he must substitute something in a sound condition. And when atonement has been made by compensation, he must try by his laws to make the criminal and the victim, in each separate case of injury, friends instead of enemies.