The Argument and the Action of Plato's "Laws"
Moors, Kent F.
by George Washington Plunkitt The Bootblack Stand Dear Dr. Plunkitt: As you no doubt _know, my wife has been forced to resign from her $67,500 position as public relations agent for...
...Some are unquestionably authoritarians...
...Cleinias, as one who will contribute to the founding of an actual city, may be considered a prospective "real world" legislator...
...There are, perhaps, some reasons for this...
...516) 437-6300...
...Quibblers can read "Property in a Hi mane Economy", with profit...
...his mortal nature will prevent him from acting according to that insight and urge him on to prefer his private pleasure and ease to the common good...
...Awesome enough that the state should make war, print money, dole out justice, and fix the price of natural gas— it is still more awesome that it should monopolize the doing of them...
...GWP Book Review/Kent F. Moors The Indispensable Strauss • Toward the end of the Republic, Socrates counsels that one must seek out a man who can teach the difference between what is valuable and what is not...
...For property not only sets me free," writes Leopold Kohr in an article included here, "it also makes me sovereign, and anyone exercising sovereignty over me, such as the state, can only do so through my delegation, not by intrinsic right...
...It is only natural that you should want a little something for your wife to do to keep-her mind active...
...Aside from the Phaedrus, the Laws is the only Platonic dialogue to occur outside...
...Such order requires that the legislator both understand the needs of the city and produce a structure through which the necessities of order are preserved from the vicissitudes of individuals' demands and gratifications...
...Secondly, if someone acquires this fundamental insight of the political art...
...the essays here date froi 1963 to 1973, and traces of obsolescent appear now and then...
...Even here, the common good must supersede the private good...
...Much to the credit of Open Court, th excellent collection comes complete wi an index...
...While the Athenian Stranger is unquestionably one of philosophic persuasion, the dialogue is almost cornpletely bereft of philosophic discussion...
...Matlovich: It is an absurd disfiguration of the historical record to, claim that homosexuals impair the fighting capabilities of military units...
...The very discussion of law and government, therefore, takes on added importance when their backgrounds are considered, as they are in the dialogue...
...Plunkitt: Keeping up on momentous American issues as you do, you must realize that in a ,move of shocking injustice and intolerance the military bounced me from their midst some months ago merely because I had become an outspoken homosexual and a pain in the neck...
...We are now experiencing a renaissance of interest in political philosophy, particularly classical political philosophy, which owes its existence largely to the brilliance of Strauss and his erudite students...
...During the walk, the participants discuss law and government, subjects which will produce the founding of a "city in speech"—a city devised in discussion...
...0 Book Review/James Grant The Case for Private Property • • Here is a book on property that has nothing to do with the making of money or with the losing of it, but rather with the freedom to do both—indeed, with the freedom to do neither, to pass one's days in the full-blooded scorn of mammon...
...The Argument and the Action of Plato's "Laws" was completed in 1971, two years before Strauss' death...
...of Athens...
...To do so further requires that the legislator be able to identify what drives men to injusticeand what can prompt them to love justice above individual satiation...
...How can I refute this cruel charge...
...For those who think otherwise, who prefer to employ subjective ideas rather than the actual dialogue as a starting point, The Argument and the Action of Plato's "Laws" provides a valuable reprimand...
...It is a massive, complex, and at times trying dialogue...
...The Laws is Plato's most political work, for in its pages a city is founded through the act of legislating...
...It is the only Platonic dialogue which begins with the word Theos ("God"), and during the dialogue's development, the treatment of the divine and sacred things constitutes the primary shaft by which the entire discussion of actual legislating (Books 4-12) is transfixed...
...Kohr goes on to say that property, in conferring freedom, need not also confer happiness...
...The "city in speech" founded in the Laws, however, is shortly transformed into advice given to actual legislators and actual cities...
...As to the views of Okun and those budding economic planners who parade each Sunday through the pages of the New York Times, the book mounts a sustained and telling assault in articles ranging from "A Christian Perspective on Property," by Carl F.H...
...We have in these three characters the representation of three great Greek legal systems...
...One chapter is devoted to each of the 12 books of the dialogue: As with any Platonic dialogue, the Laws constitutes a movemant from beginning to end—that a problem is posed, a question raised, or a subject introduced, which unfolds progressively through discussion until the participants (and readers) are led to an understanding of truths higher than those possessed by opinion alone...
...hold this much in common: It is the right to own and dispose of one's property that, in the end, holds the hounds of government at bay...
...only the skillful and thoughtful scholar can show us its intricate detail without losing the overall design in the process...
...In the former case, Strauss deftly traces the dialogue's statement on how political order is established and in what ways that order is maintained...
...Now comes Arthur Okun of the Brookings Institution, wondering that "some people argue the case for private ownership [of airlines or oil companies] as though it were the same kind of basic liberty as freedom of speech or universal suffrage...
...That property subverts rather than supports the civilized life is an idea deeply rooted in American thought...
...Each theme is predicated upon what has already taken place, and each points toward those which still are to come...
...The regime of the Laws is characterized by a rule of law, not of men...
...It is not without interest, therefore, that despite these compelling dimensions, the Laws has never received an intense degree of scholarly scrutiny by students of political philosophy...
...The "city in speech" here constructed is one which seeks to ascertain the ingredients of stable political rule...
...There is present a clear and intimate familiarity with Platonic language combined with a thorough and detailed understanding of the Laws as an organic whole...
...Petr( examines the land law in feudal Englan( for the laudable reason of determining "whether it is in fact the proponent o broad property rights who wishes to 'turi back the clock.' " He concludes that it not...
...Environmental Pol icy and Property Rights," by Edwin G Dolan...
...Rule in the Laws is radically depersonalized...
...Jacob Davits Dear Senator Javits: Tell them that's politics...
...GWP Dear Dr...
...Peace and Freedom and Brotherhood and Sisterhood and anything else that might turn a profit, Leonard Matlovich Dear Mr...
...The able legislator is he who can accomplish these tasks without also sowing the seeds of political instability and disorder, for, unless the individual finds significance in the standards established in political life for -everybody, he will seek for them elsewhere on his own...
...The dialogue begins after the journey has already commenced and ends before that journey is completed...
...She was a versatile woman, and we needed the money...
...In this work, Plato chooses to examine the essence of the "real world" of political life...
...Also, let us not forget that your people served with valor at such crucial spots as Auschwitz and Dachau...
...There is more: "The Decline of Privat, Property and the Diminished Person," ',James W. Wiggins...
...I remember when I was with Tammany and serving as ward boss of the Fifteenth Assembly District...
...Megillus has been educated in the traditions handed down by Lycurgus from Apollo...
...My wife is a creative woman and liberated up to her teeth...
...These are three old men, presumably wise in the ways of their respective traditions...
...The lawgiver must know the soul of man, for this is also the soul of the city...
...Several hundred years later, Henry David Thoreau was warning his fellows against the oppression of barns and houses, "for these are more easily acquired than gotten rid of...
...Many people of your persuasion fought effectively in World War II under the glorious banners of the German SChutzstaffel (SS...
...For those who have considered themselves students of political philosophy during the past few generations, that man has been the late Leo Strauss...
...and, in the best-written of the 1 essays, "The Impact of Invasions of Pri vate - Property on Financial Crises," b Louis M. Spadaro...
...Add to this government sway over economic life, join the monopoly aforce with that of bread, and City Hall becomes the seat of commissars...
...The work of the most noble laws," Strauss writes, "consists precisely in inducing people to hate injustice and to love justice itself or at any rate not to hate it...
...The Athenian Stranger appears to serve a similar function on the political level in the Laws...
...It is a fine tapestry woven with great care...
...where confusion reigned, he projected order...
...In the event that another position opens for her, how should I reply to the chorus of reactionaries who are out to stifle her...
...It is his last major work...
...Life, liberty, and property,!' shouted yesterday's radicals, uttering the words in the same breath...
...In the Republic, a "city in speech" is constructed to assist Socrates and his interlocutors in the determination of what constitutes justice...
...One must first understand the exoteric development —what is said and what happens—before proceeding on to the dialogue's deeper esoteric meanings and import...
...That development transpires in the interchange between what is said (logos) and what is done (ergon...
...Those legal institutions framed the character which saved Greece from Persian domination at Marathon, Plataiai, and Salamis...
...For the discipline of political science, a discipline which had radically severed itself from its essential foundation, Leo Strauss was the "gadfly" par excellence...
...enough to have largely escaped contini ing aggression in land titles...
...yet they must also bear the responsibility for the likes of Cleon and Cleomedes...
...Plunkitt: As you no doubt _know, my wife has been forced to resign from her $67,500 position as public relations agent for the Iranian airline...
...Well what of it...
...Frankly I suspect many of them as being chauvinists and McCarthyices...
...Here on the island of Crete, the oldest Greek civilization, three old men embark on a walk from the ancient city of Knossos to the even more ancient sacred cave of Zeus—an Athenian Stranger, the Cretan Cleinias, and Megillus, a Spartan...
...Wise words and sorely needed...
...What kind of a man would you be if you did not see to the comfort and security of your family...
...An ancient bestseller, of course, long ago counseled: "Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth doth corrupt and where thieves break through and steal...
...Matthew or Mr...
...It does so only for those who love freedom," he writes, "just as marriage bestows happiness not at random, but only on those who love each other...
...This is not, however, merely a retelling of the dialogue...
...That is precisely what Property in a Humane Economy does, and with ringing success...
...The Laws is also Plato's longest work, and, if classical tradition is to be our guide, his last...
...In the first place it is difficult to know that the true political art must care not for the private but for the public...
...It' makes little difference Property in a Humane Economy edited by Samuel L. Blumenfeld Open Court $10.95 whether you are committed to a farm or the county jail...
...I had sacrificed my life in pursuit of the public interest, and now was the time for a little just compensation...
...Such is Strauss' accomplishment...
...The long discussions in the Laws on the subjects of regard for the divine, education, and reward and punishment indicate the clay the best legislator must employ in molding a regard for justice...
...Having proposed scheme ,to wrest land from the ancestor of thieves and bestow it on the ancestor of victims, Rothbard writes, "In tf United States, we have been fortuna...
...It is that dialogue in which the sinews of Greek civilization confront the awakened human intellect to produce a timeless tract on the subject of political order...
...A frightening row' arose over it, and many shocking allegations of impropriety were circulated because I am a member, of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and because Iran' has had some minor involvement with the oil cartel...
...Such preservation of the common good is possible only if proper legislation establishes a foundation for political life which seeks to elevate the whole of the city over its parts...
...A discussio by Murray N. Rothbard of "Justice an Property Rights" shuns, to this reader disappointment, the brooding question the American Indian...
...I -have since taken to the campus speaking circuit in attempts' to, make my case before fellow members of the ; American intelligentsia...
...Justice is a political commodity, one which men hold in common...
...The Athenian, the youngest of the three, represents the latest of the hallowed Greek legal institutions...
...These are institutions which can boast the likes of Solon and Pericles...
...The significance of the Laws, and the importance of Strauss' treatment of it, lies in the relationship it establishes between political order and legislation on the one hand, and political virtue and right opinion on the other...
...Cleinias carries with him on this journey the legal traditions handed down by Minos from Zeus...
...Spadaro argues prc vocatively that government abridgmer of property rights tends to produce ban runs and crises in the international pay ments balance (the rush out of one cur rency and into another), a view tht makes -compelling sense when we it dude, as does Spadaro himself, currenc inflation in the arsenal of state larceny (Spadaro evidently wrote before th adoption of partially floating world cu: rency rates...
...The title is instructive...
...All of this is of course nonsense or simply irrelevant...
...Not all who participate in a Platonic dialogue become philosophers, but all are touched and changed by the experience...
...Still, it must be recalled that they are-also the same legal institutions which produced the Athenian Empire and precipitated what Thucydides justly titles the "great war...
...It is the only dialogue in which the principal character actually engages in political activity during the course of the discussion...
...Some holier-than-thou types dug up the fact that my wife was serving on several city commissions and holding down a few jobs over at the Sanitation Department...
...The authors, who disagree on many things (is or is not self-ownership the basis of all claims to ownership...
...Socrates in the Theaetetus claims that he is a midwife of philosophy—capable of bringing forth wisdom in others though barren himself...
...Sincerely, Sen...
...Property—the free man's right to do what he will with his own—is the great wall standing between what is private and what is public...
...The Alternative: An American Spectator March 1976 33 and high position...
...There is scarcely consideration of the order of an individual's own existence...
...Without the power to confiscate property, to order economic activity from above, the wouldbe tyrant is at worst an ambitious politician...
...A nice position with, the Iranians 'would, have been appropriate...
...It is grand to see the spirit of Tammany living on...
...What immediately impresses the reader of Strauss' indispensable guide to the Laws, perhaps its most striking characteristic, is the way in which the original Greek text is mirrored so closely in the commentary...
...They do so always with an eye toward their own preservation...
...Mention this the next time you speak on campus, and my best to your family...
...The legislator sets down the standards but does not himself reap the benefits of power FOR MATURE AUDIENCES ONLY For the first time on film the roisterous tale of Adam is finally available in a fullcolor 28-minute documentary shocker entitled "Adam Smith and The Wealth of Nations...
...No man's nature is sufficient for knowing what is conducive to political life and, if knowing it, for always being able and willing to do what . is best...
...Plato takes us on a highly orchestrated and integrated journey from the realm of appearance— that which seems to be—to the realm of truth—where one apprehends what is...
...We learn quite early (at the end of Book 3) that Cleinias is to be of ten delegated the task of founding a Cretan colony...
...These are elements of the dialogue which receive due and cogent consideration by Strauss...
...Still, as Strauss counsels parenthetically, this is not simply a dialogue in which Plato acts as a real political legislator would act: "As Socrates explains in the Phaedrus, saying to all human beings the same things is the essential defect of writings, a defect which is presumably remedied in Plato's writings: Plato's writings, including the Laws, are as remote as possible from the legislator's writings...
...In other words, is it possible for the good man to be also a good citizen in this city...
...There was also the exaggerated claim that Iran was a dictatorship and an enemy of Israel...
...Henry ("Their refusal to b( stewards of God," he writes, "seems it our day to destine people to enslavemen to false gods, whether mammon or gov ernment") to "Feudalism, Property an( Praxeology," by Sylvester Petro...
...We are deliberately led away from the obvious question—can the individual who possesses a well-ordered personal existence exist in the regime constructed in the dialogue...
...A collection of 13 essays, Property in a Humane Economy is written by 13 academics, a fact apparent on the contents page and on most pages thereafter...
...Today's radicals— these essayists—agree...
...You can get this remarkable 16millimeter film on a free-loan basis by contacting Modern Talking Picture Service, 2323 New Hyde Park Road, New Hyde Park, NY 11040...
...This movement is tightly structured about both the matter under discussion and the capabilities of the interlocutors...
...The subject of the Laws revolves around the order of political life...
...More than a decade ago, Leo Strauss counseled this path: "Having arrived at the end of the Laws," he wrote, "we must return to the beginning of the Republic...
...Strauss has elsewhere referred to this as logographic necessity—it is, in other words, necessary that each part of a Platonic dialogue be where it is...
...34 The Alternative: An American Spectator March 197...
...Rather, it is an intriguing examination of the complex development of the Laws, and the manner in which that development comes to, pass...
...Knowledge which comes through the kaleidoscopic cultural haze, through the multidimensions of language, has a claim to full acceptance," writes one of the dons, in an evident test of his readers' sincerity...
...It is the only dialogue in which the juxtaposition of the divine presence and the neces32 The Alternative: An American Spectator March 1976 sities of political life occupies a central, perhaps the central, theme...
...All cities construct ideas of virtue and opinions concerning what is to be honored and cherished...
...The book offers no defense for materialism and therefore has no quarrel with the word according to St...
...One hopes that they persevere, for this is a book of parts...
...This is the only place to begin if one wishes to master the dialogue, as Strauss has constantly reminded us throughout his decades of work with Plato...
...As Strauss comments: "Men's laying down laws and living according to laws are indispensable if they are to differ from savage beasts: The reason is this...
...Prosper and enjoy yourself...
...To seriously consider this fundamental question—a question which not only plagued the classical age but also plagues our own—one must turn to the Republic where Plato presents us with another city, and , another founding...
...The Athenian Stranger, on the other hand, while instructing Cleinias-in the most important tasks of a legislator, will not himself found a real city...
...Where there was darkness, he brought light...
...An argi ment awaits him in Wounded Kne South Dakota...
...There is nothing out of place...
...One of the ctitiCisms the military made against me was that having homosexuals in the armed forces might impair their fighting capabilities...
...there is nothing without meaning...
...The best legislator, therefore, is one who can direct citizens' attentions to that which binds them together...
...Thoreau (the part played by American money hunger in alienating intellectuals from the higher uses of property is grist for a fourteenth essay...
...Secondly, in recognizing the place of political virtue and right opinion, the Laws also commands that the legislator be able to identify the proper ordering of political man—the virtues of the citizen— and the proper perspectives which that ordering exhibits—the opinions of the citizen...
...It chooses to deal both with the argument— the development of discussion in, the The Argument and the Action of Plato's "Laws" by Leo Strauss University of Chicago $10.75 Laws—and the action—the deeds demanded by that discussion...
...Who could hold it against me or her...
...The Laws develops as the discussion develops...
Vol. 9 • March 1976 • No. 6
