Is there any way to follow the many other than with fear? -- "should we follow the opinion of the many and fear it ..." (47d). Couldn't you follow the many happily? Two points of comparison here (both from the Republic) are S's metaphor of the many as a beast who is handled, poorly, by the sophists (Resp. 493a) and S's claim that the philosopher who returns to the cave runs the risk of being killed by the ignorant (Resp. 517a).
49b: one must not inflict wrong in return for wrong. I suppose that this is compatible with both not returning harm when harmed, and also with punishing wrongdoers, since a punishment inflicted on a bad person can be corrective, and therefore cannot be a wrong or a harm. (Cf. the discussion in the Gorgias, where S suggests that the worst thing that you can do to a vicious person is to leave them alone--does it follow from this that a virtuous person cannot let a vicious person go unpunished ... since that would be to harm them?)
50e: "... you are our offspring and servant"--'servant' here translates δοῦλος, which I believe can also be translated as "slave". Nice.
53a-b: Sparta and Crete--it is Crete that is idealized in the Laws, is it not? What about Megara and Thebes? Any mention of those two in any other dialogues?
Not much to say tonight, but I will note that I forgot that Socrates has a discussion with an anthropomorphic version of the laws in this dialogue.
ReplyDeleteI'm keeping up!
ReplyDeleteDone the reading! Interested in the metaphor of a convincing argument as a sound so loud you can't hear anything else. By contrast, "silencing" is something of a modern buzzword...
ReplyDeletePryio--Good call re: 49b. Surely it's not obvious (or even true) that punishing wrongdoers is a wrong. And re: 53a-b, I'm pretty sure it is indeed Crete that is idealized in the _Laws_.
Pryio--would you mind editing the original post to include labels?
ReplyDeleteDone! (Sorry.) Additional comments on cities and places mentioned by Plato: Thebes frequently served as the setting for tragedies, and played a role as a sort of mirror of Athens (so I have been told); Thessaly was renowned for the quality of its witches; Stephen Menn has a great paper on Plato and Sparta in BACAP 21 (2005).
ReplyDelete