Complete Works
Page 232
CLINIAS: So far, so good.
ATHENIAN: Now to deal with unjust injuries (and gains too, as when one man’s unjust act results in a gain for someone else). The cases that are curable we must cure, on the assumption that the soul has been infected by disease. We must, however, state what general policy we pursue in our cure for injustice.
CLINIAS: What is this policy?
[d] ATHENIAN: This: when anyone commits an act of injustice, serious or trivial, the law will combine instruction and constraint, so that in the future either the criminal will never again dare to commit such a crime voluntarily, or he will do it a very great deal less often; and in addition, he will pay compensation for the damage he has done. This is something we can achieve only by laws of the highest quality. We may take action, or simply talk to the criminal; we may grant him pleasures, or make him suffer; we may honor him, we may disgrace him; we can fine him, or give him gifts. We may use absolutely any means to make him hate injustice and embrace [e] true justice—or at any rate not hate it. But suppose the lawgiver finds a man who’s beyond cure—what legal penalty will he provide for this case? He will recognize that the best thing for all such people is to cease to live—best even for themselves. By passing on they will help others, too: first, they will constitute a warning against injustice, and secondly they [863] will leave the state free of scoundrels. That is why the lawgiver should prescribe the death penalty in such cases, by way of punishment for their crimes—but in no other case whatever.
CLINIAS: In one way, what you have said seems eminently reasonable. However, we should be glad to hear a clearer explanation of two points: first, the difference between injustice and injury, and secondly the various senses of ‘voluntary’ and ‘involuntary’ that you distinguished so elaborately in the course of your argument.
[b] ATHENIAN: I must try to meet your request and explain these points. Doubtless in the course of conversation you make at least this point to each other about the soul: one of the constituent elements (whether ‘part’ or ‘state’ is not important) to be found in it is ‘anger’, and this innate impulse, unruly and difficult to fight as it is, causes a good deal of havoc by its irrational force.
CLINIAS: Yes, indeed.
ATHENIAN: The next point is the distinction we make between ‘pleasure’ and ‘anger’. We say Pleasure wields her power on the basis of an opposite kind of force; she achieves whatever her will desires by persuasive deceit that is irresistibly compelling.3
CLINIAS: Quite right.
ATHENIAN: Thirdly, we would be saying nothing but the truth if we [c] named ignorance as a cause of wrongdoing. The lawgiver would, in fact, do a better job if he divided ignorance into two: (1) ‘simple’ ignorance, which he would treat as the cause of trivial faults, (2) ‘double’ ignorance, which is the error of a man who is not only in the grip of ignorance but on top of that is convinced of his own wisdom, believing that he has a thorough knowledge of matters of which, in fact, his ignorance is total. When such ignorance is backed up by strength and power, the lawgiver will treat it as the source of serious and barbarous wrongdoing; but when [d] it lacks power, he will treat the resultant faults as the peccadilloes of children and old men. He will of course regard these deeds as offenses, and will legislate against these people as offenders, but the laws will be of the most gentle character, full of understanding.
CLINIAS: Your proposals are perfectly reasonable.
ATHENIAN: Most of us agree that some people are ‘conquerors of’ their desire for pleasure and feelings of anger, while others are ‘conquered’ by them. And that is in fact the situation.
CLINIAS: It certainly is.
ATHENIAN: But we have never heard anyone say that some people are ‘conquerors of’ their ignorance, while others are ‘conquered by’ it.
CLINIAS: Very true. [e]
ATHENIAN: But we do say that each of these influences often prompts every man to take the opposite course to the one which attracts him and which he really wishes to take.
CLINIAS: Yes, times without number.
ATHENIAN: May I now clearly distinguish for you, without elaboration, what in my view the terms ‘just’ and ‘unjust’ mean. My general description of injustice is this: the mastery of the soul by anger, fear, pleasure, pain, envy and desires, whether they lead to any actual damage or not. But no [864] matter how states or individuals think they can achieve the good, it is a conception of what the good is that should govern every man and hold sway in his soul, even if he is a little mistaken. If it does, every action done in accordance with it, and any part of a man’s nature that becomes subject to such control, we have to call ‘just’, and best for the entire life of mankind—and this in spite of the popular belief that damage done in such circumstances is an ‘involuntary’ injustice. However, we are not engaging now in a captious dispute about terminology. But since it has [b] become clear that there are three kinds of basic faults, we ought first to impress these upon our memory even more firmly. Our first kind is a painful one, and we call it anger and fear.
CLINIAS: Yes.
ATHENIAN: The second kind consists of pleasures and desires. The third, which is a distinct category, consists of hopes and opinion—a mere shot at the truth about the supreme good.4 If we divide this last category twice,5 we get three types; and that makes, according to our present argument, a total of five in all. We must enact different laws for the five kinds, and we must have two main categories.
[c] CLINIAS: And what are these?
ATHENIAN: The first category covers every occasion when crimes are committed openly with violence; secondly, we have crimes that take place under cover of darkness, involving secrecy and fraud. Sometimes we find a combination of both methods, in which case our laws will have to be very harsh indeed, if they are going to do their job.
CLINIAS: Of course.
[d] ATHENIAN: Now let’s go back to the point where we started to digress, and carry on with our enactment of the legal code. Our regulations about those who pillage from the gods, and about traitors, had, I think, already been made; we had also dealt with those who do violence to the laws in order to subvert the existing constitution. A man who commits one of these crimes might be suffering from insanity, or be as good as insane either because of disease, or the effects of advanced senility, or because he is still in the years of childhood.
44. (a) If clear proof of any of these states is ever shown to the judges selected in each case, on the submission of either the criminal or his counsel, and in the opinion of the court the man was in that condition [e] when he committed his crime,
he must pay, without fail, simple recompense for any damage he may have inflicted on anyone, but the other details of the penalty should be waived,
(b) if he has killed someone and his hands are polluted by murder,
he must depart to a place in another country and live there in exile for a year.
45. If he comes back before the legally appointed time, or even puts a foot into any part of his native country,
he must be imprisoned in the public jail by the Guardians of the Laws for two years, after which he shall be released.
The start we have made points the way forward: we need not scruple [865] to lay down a comprehensive set of laws that will cover every category of murder. First we should deal with those committed with the use of force, but unintentionally:
46 A. If anyone has unintentionally killed a man who is not an enemy
(a) in a contest or public games—whether death occurs immediately, or later as a result of the wounds,
(b) in war similarly,
(c) in military training, whether in javelin-exercises without the protection of armor, or when some weapons are being carried in imitation of [b] wartime usage,
the offender shall be free of pollution when he has been purified in accordance with the relevant law from Delphi.
(d) All doctors, if their patient dies as an unintended result of their treatment,
are to be free of
pollution according to law.
B. If one man kills another by his own act, but unintentionally,
(α) by his own hand,
(i) without weapons, or
(ii) by tool, weapon, administration of food or drink, application of fire or cold, or deprivation of air, whether
(β) (i) he does the deed himself, or [c]
(ii) through the agency of others,
in all cases it must be reckoned his own act and he must pay penalties as under:
If he kills
(a) a slave,
he must indemnify the dead man’s master against the damage, reflecting what the loss would be if his own slave had been killed.
C. If he fails to indemnify the master,
he must pay a penalty of twice the value of the dead man, the judges making an estimate of it, and he must resort to greater and more numerous purifications than those who have killed in contests; and such expounders as are chosen by the oracle are to be in charge of these purifications. [d]
B. cont. (b) If he kills a slave of his own,
let him purify himself, and be quit of the murder according to law.
(c) If he kills a free man, inadvertently,
he must undergo the same purifications as the killer of a slave.
He should not take lightly an old story that comes from our collection of ancient tales. It runs as follows: Having lived in the full proud spirit of freedom, the man murdered by violence, freshly dead, turns his fury on [e] the person responsible. The dead man is full of fear and loathing at his own violent sufferings; he abominates the sight of his own murderer going about localities once familiar to himself; to the full limit of his powers he visits his own anguish on the perpetrator of the crime, the man and his deeds; and his allies are the memories that haunt the murderer. Therefore
D. (a) A killer must keep clear of his victim for all the seasons of an entire year, by staying away from the dead man’s usual haunts and the whole of his native country.
(b) If the deceased is a foreigner,
[866] the killer should keep clear of the foreigner’s homeland as well for an identical period.
If a man obeys this law without demur, the deceased’s next of kin, who will take note of his compliance with these requirements, will grant him pardon and will be entirely correct to live on peaceable terms with him.
E. If the killer disobeys,
(a) by daring to enter temples and perform sacrifices, polluted as he is, and then
(b) by refusing to complete the above-mentioned period abroad, [b] the deceased’s next of kin must prosecute the killer on a charge of murder.
In case of conviction, all penalties are to be doubled.
F. If the next of kin does not prosecute the crime,
the pollution must be deemed to have arrived at his own door, owing to the murdered man’s supplications for atonement. Anyone who wishes may bring a charge against the next of kin and force him to keep away from his native country for five years, according to law.
G. (a) If a foreigner kills a foreigner who is living in the state,
[c]anyone who wishes should prosecute under the same laws.
(b) If the killer is
(i) a resident alien,
he must go abroad for a year;
(ii) a non-resident alien,
he must keep away, for the whole of his life, from the country that lays down these laws, in addition to performing the purifications; this is to apply whether he kills (1) a non-resident alien, (2) a resident alien, or
(3) a citizen.
H. If he returns
(a) illegally,
the Guardians of the Laws must punish him by death, and if he has any property, they must present it to his victim’s nearest relative;
(b) unintentionally,
[d] (i) being shipwrecked on the coast,
he must camp out where the sea washes by his feet and await an opportunity to sail away;
(ii) being forcibly brought in overland by someone,
the first official of the state that comes across him must set him free and dispatch him unharmed beyond the border.
If someone kills a free man by his own hand, but the deed is done in anger, we must first make an internal distinction within this type of crime. Anger is common to (1) those who kill a man by blows or similar means, owing to a sudden impulse: here the action is immediate, there is no [e] previous intention to kill, and regret for the deed follows at once; (2) those who have been stung by insults or opprobrious actions and who pursue their vengeance until, some time later, they kill somebody: they intend to kill, and the deed causes no repentance. So it looks as if we have to establish two categories of murder; broadly speaking, both are done in anger, but [867] a proper description would be ‘falling somewhere midway between “voluntary” and “involuntary” ’; however, each type comes closer to one or other of these extremes. The man who nurses his anger and takes his vengeance later—not suddenly, on the spur of the moment, but with premeditation—approximates to the voluntary murderer. The man whose anger bursts forth uncontrollably, whose action is instant, immediate, and without premeditation, resembles the involuntary killer. Yet even so, he is not an entirely involuntary killer: he only resembles one. It is therefore sometimes difficult to categorize murders done under the influence of [b] anger, and to know whether to treat them in law as voluntary or involuntary. The best course, which corresponds most closely to reality, is to classify them both under what they most resemble, and to distinguish them by the presence or absence of premeditation. We should lay down comparatively severe penalties for those who have killed in anger and with premeditation, and lighter ones for those who have killed on the spur of the moment without previous intent. Something which resembles a greater evil should attract a greater punishment, whereas a lesser penalty should be visited on that which resembles a lesser evil. This, then, is the [c] course our laws should take.
CLINIAS: Indeed it is.
ATHENIAN: Then let’s go back to our subject and carry on as follows:
47 A. If someone kills a free man with his own hand, and the deed is done in a fit of anger, without previous intent,
his penalty should in general be that appropriate to a man who has killed without anger; but in addition he should be obliged to go into exile for two years, by way of a curb for his anger.
B. If a man kills in anger, but with premeditation, [d]
his penalty should in general be that inflicted in the should in general be that inflicted in the previous instance; but his exile should be for three years as against the other’s two, the period of punishment being longer because of the greater violence of his passion.
In such cases, regulations for the return from exile should run as follows. (It is not easy to make hard and fast rules: sometimes the fiercer criminal as defined by the law may turn out easier to manage, whereas the man who is supposedly more manageable may turn out to be a more difficult case, having committed a murder with some savagery; the other, [e] conversely, may have dispatched his victim without brutality. However, my account does describe the cases you’ll find are typical.)
The Guardians of the Laws should act as assessors of all these points, and when the period of exile prescribed for either category has come to an end, they should send twelve of their number, as judges, to the borders of the country. During the time that has elapsed these twelve should have made a still more exact investigation into what the exiles did, so as to decide whether to grant pardon and permission to return; and the exiles are bound to acquiesce in the judgment of these authorities.
[868] C. (a) If a returned exile of either category is ever again overcome by anger and commits the same offense,
he must go into exile and never come back.
(b) If he does come back,
his penalty will be the same as that imposed on the foreigner who returns [46H].
D (a) If a man kills his own slave,
he must purify himself.
(b) If
he kills another’s slave, in anger,
he must pay double damages to the owner.
E. If a killer in any category flouts the law and in his unpurified state pollutes the market-place, the sports stadium, and other holy places,
[b] anyone who wishes should prosecute both the killer and the relative of the dead man who allows the killer to do this, and compel the relative to exact payment of twice the fine and the other expenses; and the prosecutor shall be legally entitled to take for himself the money so paid.
F. (a) If a slave kills his own master, in anger,
the relatives of the deceased shall treat the killer in whatever way they [c] like (except that under no circumstances whatever may they let him go on living), and be free of pollution.