Ep. 376: Plato's "Laws" (Part One)

You're listening to the Partially Examined Life, a podcast by some guys who were at one point set on doing philosophy for a living, but then thought better of it. Our question for episode 376 is something like, to what degree is society supposed to make us more virtuous? And we read selections from Plato's lengthy late dialogue, The Laws. For more information about the text and the podcast, please see partiallyexaminedlife.com. This is Mark Linsonmeier leaving my children an abundance of awe rather than gold in Madison, Wisconsin. This is Seth Paskin laying the groundwork for my benevolent dictatorship in Austin, Texas. This is Wes Ahwin drinking my way to justice in Cambridge, Massachusetts. This is Dylan Casey unmelted in Madison, Wisconsin. A dialogue that we have put off for a long, long time, This Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy article that Wes, you had found for us, that was a good summary of the whole thing since we were gonna read the whole thing. In its hard copy, in this translation by Thomas Pangle is five seventy seven pages. So obviously that's not all the dialogue, but a lot of it is the dialogue. It's, you know, 300 some pages. So Yeah. You're definitely not gonna read the whole thing. And I guess it's unfinished too. Is that right? That's scholarly? Apparently, it is. Yeah. Apparently, it's according to was it Aristotle or some other commentator who thought it was unfinished? Yeah. So this in Internet Encyclopedia Philosophy article, the laws of Plato's last longest and perhaps most loathed work. This is the objective. I thought it was okay, the parts that I read. I was looking at this sort of like the Kant on ethics lectures, like we're revisiting. So here, we're revisiting his politics, but, you know, it was always a question in the republic. Is he just talking about this the ideal state just to make a point about justice and the individual? Is it really political philosophy? Well, this is definitely political philosophy. Here is, you know, let's make up the laws for a new city. Let's talk about the laws of a couple of the participants in the dialogue. You know, if you're if you're a Spartan, if you're a Cretan, kinda what the laws are there. Let's make up this new, you know, ideal, but it's gonna be in the real world. You know? We can't just pie in the sky. Well, it would be really nice if the smartest people were in charge of everything. Here, we're you know, we actually have to deal with, well, how would we figure out who are the smartest people? What it so but, you know, it seems to complement to me a lot of what we saw in the Republic. Not only how do we figure out who are the smartest people, but we have a kind of chicken and egg problem because the laws deal not just with correction and punishment. In fact, ideally, …