Hi everybody and welcome to a very sad episode of The New Thinkery with me as always is my good friend Greg McBrayer. Hi. What's wrong Greg? She wants all the folks at home I ever said.
I can't. We regret to inform you that our usual introducing host who then never says anything afterwards David Barr, he has passed away. So he's not with us as always but with us as his new replacement, new co-host is Tom very excited, very excited. Very excited.
I don't. Hey, Tom. I wish we would have to be here. We're glad you're here.
We should clarify, David's not dead. He's not even sick. We made a couple of jokes and we had some of these actually sick and choir about his health and then I felt really terrible because I felt like we're mocking the ill or something like that. He's not in tip-top shape.
No, he's not. Okay. Welcome back to The New Thinkery. Yes.
So he, his wife had a baby so he can't join us. He's busy helping her out but we've got special guest today, Tom Cleveland. Greg, you want to introduce Tom? Sure.
Tom Cleveland is a friend of the show, friend of ours actually regularly submits questions to us on Twitter. It's our first live episode, first live recorded episode. Tom Cleveland joined the Jack Miller Center back in August of 2019 as the Academic Programs Officer. He received a BA from St.
John's College in the NAPLs where he also went where he studied the history of science math and philosophy and he went on to complete his PhD doctoral studies at Boston College in the Department of Political Science. And in 2016 he completed his dissertation on Plato's laws or the accounts of the origins of Pluto's life and Plato's laws. And before his current role at the Jack Miller Center, Tom was a postdoctoral fellow in the program on constitutional government at Harvard University. And he's also taught political theory in American politics at Miami University here in Ohio and also the College of Holy Cross.
It's a real pleasure to have you here. And I'll just say we've become somewhat friendly over the years, mostly meeting one by chance at conferences and shindig saying out after. And I think some of our conversations at conferences is partly what led us to think that something like this little podcast might be a good idea. So welcome.
Thanks for coming. I'm very glad to be here. Yeah. I think we communicate mostly on the internet, which is a bad thing.
There's been more and more of that kind of thing this last year, which is, you know, I think it's bad for humanity, but some relatively good things have come up with it, I think. Like this podcast. That's right. Can I ask a silly question for you on the show?
I mean, I've been thinking a lot about this. I want a serious answer. It's a silly question, a serious question. I want your honest assessment.
What do you think the UFOs are that the Navy has confirmed? What do you think? What do you think they are? I think they are a mixture of optical illusions and human created advanced technology that have not been publicly announced.
I think that people that suspect otherwise have an emptiness in their soul desire. But we'll be talking about this today. They've got a desire for the divine that has been misapplied and because of use. And so, but that's it.
What country of origin? I have a suspicion. I'm hoping it's ours. I think it's ours.
Yeah. It's American. I'm going to be sad if it's the Chinese. There's no way, right?
Right. What if it's like the Cubans? That would be fantastic. They're secretly and only technologically advanced.
So you see the movie Brazil, by the way, about this really advanced comments. Yeah. Right. So, Alex is like his smirk is telling me he's not happy with the direction of the UFO conversation.
So we actually invited Tom on because he's a believer. He believes in the believer. I got a hole in my heart. She's like a little green man.
I need him to fill it. Make sure it's in your heart. Anyway, today we're doing Plato's minus. I say minus.
I say, me, no. I say, me, no. You say me, no. I tend to say that too.
No. No. Okay. It's closer to genuine ancient Greek pronunciation based on the solidest evidence available to us.
It's an Iota, not an Iota. Yes. Good point. And which is a dialogue by Plato and Tom given his expertise on Plato, we thought it would be an excellent idea to have him on to talk about this dialogue.
So first, I guess I should mention we're using a, I assume we're all using the same translation, the one done by Tom Hengel in his pink book, The Roots of Little Philosophy. And it's a 10 forgotten Socratic dialogues. But I was like the 10 best Socratic dialogues. Yeah.
And it's available from Cornell University Press. It's a great addition. I first got it when I was an undergrad and it was a good companion. 10 short dialogues, all with great essays, good introductory essays, all at volume.
That's actually the first thing I want to go to grad school. You're looking at looking these people up. So I'm going to go ahead and say, yeah, so it's, it's affordable. It's a great volume.
If you're looking to get, you know, get introduced to Plato and shorter works with good essays that I think are pretty relatable from the start, I really suggest it's any of our younger listeners. Yeah, I agree. So Tom, can you just maybe start with, tell us a little bit about this dialogue. You know, so what's it about?
Maybe situated relative to other dialogues. I don't know if you want to tell us it's relatively short. I don't know if you want to go sit like an outline of summary. What should listeners know about this dialogue to start off?
Yeah, I can say a couple of things. I mean, first we have a title, Minos, and then we have subtitle and Bernefershire of the validity of those things. But in this case, it seems obviously apt on law. And the dialogue between Socrates and an unnamed comrade, which is a pure year, there is one other dialogue that has that characteristic name, like the Hipparchist.
Did you guys talk about the Hipparchist already? I can't recall. We have no. We have these two dialogues.
They had the reputation of being spurious, but like the naive and simple minded people, we are we, we just ignore all that controversy and it says, Plato and the title and then we just trust that those ancient collectors of these texts were accurate. And so they both have this peculiar relation to each other. First of all, they have titles that are not the name of anyone in the dialogue, but they are referred to, you know, quasi mythical, mythical or quasi mythical figures that are referred to at the end of each dialogue. And in each case, we have Socrates talking, as I said, to an unnamed comrade.
The subtitle or topic of the Hipparchist is the lover of gain. And there is a plausible connection between the themes of these two dialogues. One other thing I might say is, so Christopher Brul and his book on the shorter platonic dialogues says in a tone of, you know, portent that one will be compelled to read these dialogues that he discusses in a particular order, the first of which is the parkis and the second of which is the meanos. And I think he has some reasons for doing that.
I say that trembling in fear because we're skipping the Hipparchist and jumping straight to the meanos. And according to this law that has been handed down to us, there's no chance we could ever understand the meanos without discussing the parkis first. Nevertheless, we're going to do it. That's an order you have to.
It's not the final order. So I mean, we're just adding order. Yeah, we're past the, well, we're moving. That's a probiotic, right?
Well, I think there's something to that because that the trajectory of that parkis is you've got someone who's, you could say, conventionally minded, the comrade there. And Socrates says some nasty, possibly immoral things in favor of love of gain, you could say against lawfulness. And in the meanos, I think we have an opposite trajectory. We have a man, I think, who has become somewhat cynical about law and its status.
He's something of a conventionalist, I think. And Socrates moves him along towards respect for law. And I think that this ladder, there's an idea that this ladder approach is a better beginning point for political philosophy that is respect for law, you know, a searching and thinking of respect or questioning respect. But anyway, if the question, if there's going to be questioning, it should involve this initial respect.
I'll say one more thing about relation to other dollars. And maybe we'll talk about this later is that there's a connection between this dialogue on law and the dialogue, the laws. If we're just going to read, I'll just read from the opening lines of the laws. There is an Athenian stranger who says, is it a God or some human being strangers who is given the credit for laying down your laws?
And Klineus, who is a Cretan says, a God stranger, a God to say what is at any rate the most just thing among us Zeus and among the lack of the Timonians from whence this man here comes, I think they declare it's Apollo. And then he goes on to talk about this meanos figure. So there's a very strong connection between the meanos and the laws. You could, it's a good guess that the meanos is a kind of introduction to the laws.
Yeah, that sounds right to me. It's a couple of small questions and you should feel free to just skip over if it's not. And then folks think it's very interesting. It's just because the content, it seems so far-field.
I would say, I mean, it does seem different. These two dialogues seem very different from all the other ones. So if you're just thinking, so maybe this is a good introduction to the thing itself is it begins with Socrates asking the what is question. And except for these two dialogues, I don't think things develop in quite so direct way.
You know, on first look, it seems cruder in form dramatically than a lot of other platonic dialogues. You know, and that's, I mean, I think that's worth reflecting on that. And so far as this and the park is the other dialogue you mentioned, since they both jump in with what is love gain, what is law, right? Usually there's some buttering up before we get into the questions.
Yeah. And maybe we can try to see what what a traumatic sophistication is in fact present here. I don't know if we'll get to that. But I was a little bit, no.
But one small point on this and something Alex and I have talked about for an Alex, and the apologies actually start out, he's always in the board talking to people. And I sort of have said, you know, we don't really actually ever see that. It doesn't seem very plausible. And Alex pointed out that these two dialogues might actually be the examples of that of Socrates doing that.
And I don't know if that helps us understand like sort of dramatically when it happened or early in his career, if we realized maybe you shouldn't go around in the agora, just asking people these random questions or I don't know. Yeah. My colleague, so you hear Paul to Duke, which I know, you know, Greg, I don't know if you know him Tom, but he thinks that this and the park is might have been dialogues, Socrates engaged in very early in his career, maybe prior to encountering El Sabaidis sort of asking about which is an interesting hypothesis. I'm not sure how I'm going to answer that, but maybe thematically by how far he gets.
But they are in a way kind of rudimentary in their approach as Tom point out, their concern. And the outcome isn't very great. I mean, it's suitable to his, you know, lockers just kind of, they seem to be just average Athenians, right? And so, you know, dramatically it makes sense, but there is a kind of introductory rudimentary and maybe unsatisfying quality to them.
There's also one other dialogue I thought that has something in common with and it's the photographers you mentioned El Sabaidis. Yeah. Just as far as they're both dialogues. I mean, people probably forget this because the photographers, the vocal conversations between Socrates and Tigers, but it's actually a conversation being married by Socrates to another unnamed comrade.
So there's something going on there. Yeah. I mean, to Alex's point where your friends point, yeah, something like that is, you know, the seem plausible to me. And I think it's something indicated in the brutal book or this, there's like a direction he's thinking, which is that the park is in a way is a false start.
And the mean is like the proper start that it sort of lays the groundwork of the attitude or the kind of questioning that needs to take place. And then the proper socratic, the fugitive activity follows what set out in the mean hospital. Yeah. It'd be impossible to prove these kinds of claims.
They must remain speculative. But in any case, you have something like that seems plausible to me. So this is a pretty short dialogue, maybe 10, 12 pages, something like that. You can read it an hour, probably carefully, but you can read it an hour.
So what are the main parts of the dialogue? I mean, we just were jumping into other conversation, but are there sort of clear markers, breaks time? Yeah, I would say the way I have split it up is that there's this initial question, what is law for us? And then there are three or four definitions, which I can recite just to get our bearings at least initially.
The first is that law is the things that are lawfully accepted. The second is that law is the official opinion of the city or its political opinion. And the third, which is the strangest and most alluring, is that law is either the discovery of what is or it wishes to be the discovery of what is. And then there's a sort of longer section trying to make sense of what this third definition would be.
And then the whole dialogue, well, let me interrupt myself. I think there's a possible force definition that is maybe identified in some ways with one version of the third definition, namely that law is the correctly written political writings that have adjusted beyond just and how a city ought to be organized. So we'll get through all of those. And then there is an even stranger final section, which is a discussion of this mythical figure of mean us.
I just want to restate that more concisely. So the first part is just an investigation of the question, what is law? You get these three answers. The second major part is sort of trying to make sense of the third definition that's given.
And then the last part of the book is about mine. So it's the mythical ancient longer. So what is law, explication of one of the answers, and then an account of this mythical longer? OK, very good.
All right. So why don't we just jump right into it then? Where should we begin? I know that one of the things you mentioned was in connection to conscience or something.
Maybe I'll read a brief passage because this is at the very beginning. I'll read from right around 3 14 A. But you raised this and it compelled me to go back and revisit this question that I hadn't paid sufficient attention to. So one of the questions is the first question is what is law within a question that immediately arises?
Well, how do we know what law is or through what sort of a thing do we recognize while law is or what sort of a faculty is already just about 3 14 A. Socrates says, so what then would law be? Let's investigate it in the following way. If someone had asked us in regard to the things that just now, since it is by sight that you declare that the things that are seen or seen by the sites being seen, what are they seen?
We would have replied to him that is by its being this perception that shows matters through the eyes. And if again, he asked us what then? Since it is by hearing that the things that are heard or heard by the hearings being what does this take place? We would have replied to him that it is by its being this perception that makes voices manifest to us through the ears.
In the same way, then, if he should ask us, since it is by the law that the things lawfully accepted or lawfully accepted by the laws being what are they lawfully accepted? Is it by its being some perception or some showing as the things that are learned or learned by the science that shows them or some discovery as the things that are discovered or discovered, for instance, the things pertain to health and sickness by the medical art? And on the other hand, the things that gods think as the diviners claim by the dividing art since for us art is presumably a discovery of things. Certainly, that's at least the answer.
There's a question, what is the human faculty by which we come to even recognize and understand law? It's so easy to pass over this because immediately they come to this definition that is the official opinions and decrees, but Socrates first offers it not as some kind of statement or something like this, right? But as something related to a kind of faculty, the chief examples of which are related to well perception and finally knowing science, which is remarkable. However, Socrates understands the law.
If he has some sort of understanding operative behind these examples, it's not in a conventional way. The difficulty being, of course, that the comma gives very confessional answers. Yeah, I think it's worth re-skating the first definition provided by the comrade and trying to think of what he had in mind initially. And that sort of puts in relief, how strange this passage that Reg just read is.
The comrade wants to say that law is the things that are lawfully accepted, and there's a sort of funny Greek pun type thing in there. So far as the things that are lawfully accepted is tau nomid-somena. The things, there's this verb nomid-sane, which includes the word for law nomos, but generally means something like things that are held to be the case or things that are observed to be the case or accepted as such. So I think his initial idea is a pretty purely conventionalist notion of law.
Law is what people happen to think it is, something like that. And Socrates draws this analogy between the law recognizing faculty and these other folks and the other faculties we do recognize we have a faculty foreseeing. We have a faculty for hearing. We have also manners of discovering things.
What is that faculty in the case of law? That's a turn away from this conventional direction. Yeah, and it introduces a, I think, sort of set of contrast between the passivity of the conventionalist, by which we mean some of you think laws are merely conventions that are agreed upon, right? And the activity or sort of active disposition that Socrates identifies with law, which is less to do with just agreeing to what's been passed or what's out there as law, but more with a sort of activity of searching out and discovering whatever it is law might be through some kind of perception.
Well, I was just going to play the part of trying to defend unnamed comrade for a moment. I mean, there's a certain sense in which, and Tom already noted this because he pointed out the edmological link between the noun and the verb. So a real bad way of saying this is what is law? English, we can't, you know, law is not a verb, but in Greek it'd be something like, well, the law is the thing that's law, which makes a certain kind of common sense, right?
What is legislation? Well, it's that which the legislature passed. So it's, I mean, I recognize the conventionality of it, but I also, I think we ought to, in a certain sense, you ought to take to think through, I think, play with one is to think through, even though even the bad definitions, there's something there that's grasping at something about what the thing is. So yeah, sorry.
Well, yeah, I wanted to, I mean, if we look at the second definition, maybe it was jumping too quickly or not on the third page of the dialogue, this is irresponsible when reading Plato. But it's, I think the second definition, which is the official opinions and decrees passed by votes, or a restated as the official opinion of the city, that gets more clearly at what he obviously had minds, right? And what Socrates is, I think focusing on is that we do seem to be able to say like, okay, that statement is a law, whereas this other statement is not a law, right? That would seem to imply that we have either it's an extension of our reasoning capacity, or is it some kind of alternative moral sense or conscience, I guess you would say, that allows us to recognize certain opinions as, you know, genuine, genuine legal or governing opinions, right?
And or I mean, to say less emphatically, it's a question whether we possess such a thing or not. Right. Yeah. I mean, just, you know, this is just some dude, right?
Like, and so like, you know, Alex, this is probably a younger Socrates before he's become sort of famous Socrates. And so imagine just saying on the marketplace and somebody, I go say, what's law? You're like, you know, it's the stuff that they write down, you know, the legislative bodies, right? And comment sensically, we would all do this to, I mean, like even when last when we were just sitting around talking, they're just sort of loose and fast way in which we would speak, but then if we were to say, okay, but let's try and be precise and figure these things out, right?
So any of their laws on the books in China, their laws in Soviet Union, their law, there were laws in Soviet Union, right? So loosely speaking, but then that's obviously no, it's actually something more in fact more he's trying to get what is that thing that makes law as law, no matter where we're looking at it. Yeah. Yeah.
And we should be clear, the opening question, what is law for us is really ambiguous in Greek. It could mean what are what is our law and so which makes sense of the comments responses. What sort of laws you're asking about it? If I go up to Greg and ask, what are our laws?
He'll be like, we got a lot of them. What do you mean? What do you mean? But Michael Davis has it on the mean us and he points out that it could actually be also what is law in us, which would point to the idea of a faculty because it's the date of the views for location.
So it's a beautifully as the Plato often does with his first lines, it's beautifully ambiguous and rich. And one way to think about it is that maybe he's kind of taking the comrades temperature. How will you react to this question flat footed and conventionally? Or will you realize that I might be saying something a little bit more?
Or just like, you know, the hippiest was a major. I know you've worked on this word. Hey, what's beautiful. I don't know, she is, you know, like, oh, we're all philosophically okay.
What is the beautiful light in cash? I didn't get the article. Right. Yeah, I just one more thing about the four us.
I think I think one element of the four us is, yeah. So like there's one would be the date of interest, I guess, which is just sort of the non-grief. Naturally, yeah, non-grief. What is a date of?
It's what Alex did a lot of a college, but what's a date of? It's a case. We're not going to get into this. Yeah, we're just nouns have case for.
Yeah, I mean, you could just say in English, what is it for us? There's like, what do we consider to be right now in general? But I think it can also mean something like for us as a feeling in citizens, because that's another question that naturally arises, which is like, there are laws here that are laws that are not the same as the laws there. It really does matter where you are.
And his second definition sort of clarifies in that direction. And so far as you say here in Athens, where we're a democracy, it's those political opinions that are stamped by the assembly, right? But that's not going to be the case in oligarchy or a monarchy or a tyranny. And that points through this difficulty.
He also has this like, what do you mean by law simply? That if you just look around, laws seem to be different from place to place and there doesn't seem to be some underlying universal character to them. Socrates is sort of unnaturally pushing in that direction. Can I slightly in the comments defense here, his second answer does point to an actual activity, right?
Now, it's an activity of the assembly, right? Passing it by votes. It's not, and it presupposes some activity within those individual people in which they're ascertaining whether something is law or not. But there's an activity, and what Socrates does, and I think it's quite nice, is that he shows that we have a sort of expectation of law.
That's not just what's passed, but that is also just, right? So he's trying out of this definition, which is somewhat accommodating to Socrates' analogy of a kind of faculty. He is trying to bring out what it is that we're reaching after, or we're trying to get at when we're passing laws, which is something like justice, and ultimately something that's good, right? He brings out this sort of rich implication in law that's often lost when we're thinking about the mundane and sort of very nuanced aspects of law, and like the particularity of it.
I think he is trying to slowly push him in that direction a bit. Yeah, just to bring it to the text more explicitly. The second definition is that it's the official opinion of the city and Socrates' response. Basically, it's something like, we don't consider unjust laws as laws, do we?
Right? That's a characteristic that seems to distinguish between illegitimate commands and legitimate commands. At least part of the time, we tend to think that if there isn't an unjust command, it doesn't have the force of law. And you were also mentioning the good.
There's some notion that together with its justice or some element of its justice or what governs its justice is that some notion that it is for the good of the city. So unjust commands lead to the destruction of the city or ignoble or shameful commands lead to the destruction of the city, whereas good and noble and just demands lead to its preservation. That kind of opinion cuts against a conventionalist attitude for its law. Go it out.
Go ahead, Chris. I was actually going to derail the conversation for a moment and just come back to it. But as I reread this in preparing for today, I also reread Strauss' commentary on it in the same book by Pangal. And I just couldn't help but think of how unsecratic this seems to me to even ask this question that seems impruned or sort of not judicious in some way.
It seems to be cutting, maybe listeners won't quite capture what I'm saying here, but to ask what a law is, they probably don't find this very controversial. I mean, even the notion that they're unjust law is it steeped into American culture, right? King's famous political Birmingham city jail. So it's asked this doesn't seem very controversial to us.
This is the question that's come to all the time. But it seems to me that this is getting at the heart of something extraordinarily controversial in our understanding of little life. And it almost seems imprudent to ask this question so directly to just some random guy. Because it touches on theological questions, right?
I mean, it touches on, yeah, go ahead, Tom. Did you really see that when I'm saying, like, just by contrast, by the way, Zenithin, who might have done a good deal of work on, Zenithin Socrates does not and would not, I think, ask this question, whereas Plato's actually does. Yeah, go ahead. Well, we do, I guess there are two things we see in the memorabilia.
There's recounting of the conversation that also biases is supposed to have had with parakles that points in something like this direction. But the second thing I would say is that my read on the comrade, we don't have that many clues, is that he's already a cynical person who is not so on board with this. And the tendency of the conversation is not to disabuse him of his mindless devotion, but rather to push him, bring him back. Oh, I see.
So the question itself is, the question itself is, like, your right is a radical one that points in all sorts of redirection. But what he's dealing with is a corrupted individual. And he's in some respects. I'm not suggesting this is like main intention.
But like the tendency is to bring him back. So Alfred Avi's Plato, by the way, doesn't discuss the mean us, but yeah, go ahead. Yeah, yeah, I think that this to me is one of the core puzzles of this dialogue is how he goes from a comrade who's a kind of relativist in the first half of the dialogue to one who basically ends up agreeing, at least verbally, but at least dissenting outwardly to the notion that the best laws come from Cree because they came from Zeus, right? So he goes from relativism to a belief in divine revelation, or at least a something to it.
And because they're old too, very traditional. So not just God, but oldest. So can I give a sense of why I think that might be? Because I think there's a passage where he gets emphatically, this is at 315 B, where he gets emphatically just the relativist, right?
And he talks about the changing of laws. He says this. He goes, this is the Socrates. OK.
Yeah, this is the kind of idea. He goes, but this at least Socrates is not difficult to know, namely, whether we all use the same laws all the time or different ones. He says that the same people do not at all times use the same laws and that different people use different ones. Because, for example, among us, it is not the law to sacrifice humans, but is instead impious.
So he's saying it's a pious, but just for us. While the Carthaginians do perform the sacrifice, it's something that is pious and legal for them. And some of them even do these things with their unsung sons for the sake of chronos, as perhaps you two have heard. And it's not just barbarian human beings who use laws different from ours, but these people in the Macaya and the descendants of the Thamas.
What sort of sacrifices do they perform, even though they're Greeks? As to ourselves, presumably you two know from having heard yourself what sort of laws we use in regard to the dead, slaughtering the sacred victims before the carrying out of the corpse and sending for the women who collect the bones and earns. And again, the people who lived still earlier used to bury the dead where they were in the house. But we do none of these things.
Some could tell of 10,000 such things for there's plenty of room for demonstration. Now, I think the important point here is that while he's giving this relativist account, he's distinguishing Greeks from barbarians and then barbarian Greeks from civilized Greeks. And in the civilized Greeks, the Athenians have barbarous times and civilized times. So even as he provokes this, he still has an inner conviction that certain behaviors civilized and certain behaviors barbaric.
And so I think what Socrates understands is that beneath this relativism, there is this slight conviction that if you can finally get in touch with it, could perhaps expose the relativism for superficial, that deeper down, there is this sort of longing or sense that certain things are simply just right, simply right naturally, or on a principle basis. Yeah, I think, and I just want to paint the dramatic unfolding that leads to that response. Because the second definition, the comment that said, it's whatever the official decrees are. And Socrates says, well, we don't consider official decrees to be laws if they are unjust and bad for the city.
So then he proposes the least conventionalist definition appears to that you could possibly imagine, which is that law is in fact the discovery of being. And it's in response to or wishes to be the discovery of being. And the comrade only hears the first one, rather than the latter. And that seems insane to him.
And he gives this relativist account. It's like, that's obviously on the case, people do all sorts of crazy things. It's different in all the other places. But if I understood you correctly, Alex, your point is that in so far as he's clearly troubled by the existence of these barbaric customs, that means he thinks that there is some standard by which they can be measured, which would be the true discovery of being, which is actually a law.
So even his complaints or objection to Socrates is a kind of evidence that he believes something like this notion that law is the discovery of being. Yeah, it's in a way that's similar to the problem to the republic, though he's not as perceptive as those interlocutors. But it's similar to the problem where you can't deny there's a variability of law from time to time and place to place. It's just absolutely obvious on the one hand.
On the other hand, you cannot deny this love of justice or this conviction that you have about what is just. And it's relativism is an easy solution to the problem because you just say, yeah, well, it's just variability, whatever's decided, you don't really feel that way, right? And that's not taking that connection or that attachment you have seriously of thinking about it, right? And I think ultimately, I don't know whether Socrates actually wants him to think seriously about it, but he certainly wants to see how what happens if he draws on this conviction within him.
And I think he successfully does that going forward as the dialogue. And that's, I think, what eventually gets him a little bit more receptive to the idea that there could be good laws simply, right? Yeah, I wonder if it'd be helpful at this point to introduce the breakdown of the discussion of this third definition. Absolutely.
Baked into, in the midst of that long passage, you read, we're like two types of objections. First, it's clearly the case that laws are different in different places. And so that's one kind of relativism. And I think that's discussed primarily from 315A and following, and Socrates has a kind of reply to that.
There is a other kind of related objection, which is that even if there is some agreement among people generally about what law is from place to place. We see that in a given place like Athens, they're changing the laws all the time. How could it be the discovery of being if they're changing from all the time, presumably being something that stays the same? How do we deal with that obvious fact?
So yeah, I thought we might just discuss each one of those objections in order. I mean, I could add just the first one. Socrates' first defense of this definition is something like, yes, law is different from place to place, but people do agree everywhere, something, namely that the just things are just and the unjust things are unjust. And the noble things are noble and the ignoble things are ignoble.
And that does, in a way, respond to this objection. I wonder if it's a complete response to what the comrade is after. There's obviously, I think there's an obvious problem with that. But can I want to try and even in the examples that the comrade gives, I wonder if there isn't even a kind of uniformity at the heart of the variability, just some silly.
So like that, so some of the differences, right? So some people sacrifice humans because they think it's pie as well. Others think that's impious. Sacrifice different things, right?
Some bury their descendants one way, others bury it another way. So what's even uniform in those is that everywhere there's some construction of what it means to be pious, and there's uniformly some notion that we ought to respect the dead somehow. So this isn't the root Socrates goes, but I was struck by, I wonder if a comrade doesn't seem to be fully aware of this, but even the examples he gives are like, well, there's still agreement that we ought to be pious, and there's still agreement that we ought to respect the dead. It's just what that looks like varies.
And I think that does actually tend in the direction of what Socrates says, but we all agree that the just as the just and the noble is a noble. So I do think that there's something to that. I don't make you think of others like there's a sort of uniform. There seems to be a universal agreement that we ought to risk.
We ought to not steal stuff now. What what does someone's stuff is going to bury from time and place? But I mean, there's do these seem to be these handful of things that we kind of there is widespread agreement on even if there's also widespread disagreement on the content of that thing, if that makes sense. Yeah.
I mean, so he goes, he says the comrade objects to this line of reasoning that Tom laid out and sorry, says, perhaps you don't reflect that these things be moved as draft pieces remain the same. So it'd be like saying, look, I don't know what a rook is a rook is a rook for that guys on D five or rook for that guys on B three, it's whatever, please like, no, no, no, it could be in different places, but it always moves the same way, right? And it has the same function on the on the playing board. Um, similarly, right, if if a law appears to be unjust to us, right, we don't feel like it's a law.
We don't think that it's really binding to us. It might be in fact, right binding to us, but it's not as a matter of justice actually law for us, right? You can't you can't avoid that association or that conclusion, though the particular acts and the particular sort of rights that go with those things might change from place to place. Right.
Yeah, but I mean, I'm on board with that, but I think it is also worth emphasizing how it falls short, which is that while everyone, everyone everywhere agrees that some things are just and other things are unjust, everybody also disagrees about what those things are. And then, and there's like another type of problem, let me see if I can find the passage quickly when he's discussing this, this thought. So I'm looking at a three, 16 a there. So he talks about the just and the unjust things being different from one another, even the Persian degree about that.
And everyone also agrees that the things that way more are heavier and the things that way less are lighter. And that example or that model is not so helpful in combating a relativism because the heavy and the life are by definition relative, that is they are heavy in relation to something else or we said another way. The same thing is either heavy or light, depending on what it is compared to. And it is not the general opinion that the just and the noble have this characteristic, which implied in law where things are written down and set down forever is that this action is simply unjust or is simply just simply not in relation to anything else.
So this, yeah, I'll let you go. Let me try to maybe add a little bit of nuance here. We should be careful. We call relativism the thing where we just say it's whatever we agree to.
But that's more of specifically a subjectivism, right? Does something is relative, right? It can still be objective. So the right amount of shampoo for Greg is different than the right amount of shampoo for me because I have no hair, right?
That's relative to us. How much shampoo do you use? None. I don't use any.
We're in no hair. Do you use soap on it? Yeah, I just put a face soap and I rub it on my head. Okay.
Anyways, but now in light of the fact that there is this relative quality or variable quality, the easy thing or the cop-out thing is to fall into this subjectivism slash melodism, right? But I think what he's trying to do is not necessarily to give him sort of here's the law. It's crystal clear, but really trying to show him that even though he might not know what law is simply for all times and places, he does believe there is such a thing, right? And so don't fall back into this quick sort of subjective term, but push.
Now, Stockley is just trying to show him he has these expectations, right? That he wants to say the law is just and good, right? Whatever I really believe is law, but he just keeps falling back. I think that's why he pivots after this definition.
And he says, all right, let's look at it a different way. If you're not happy with this, we'll take something that maybe is more satisfying for you. Yeah. I guess I think I'm making the same point a little differently, which is that what does come out in this section is that to recognize law as law, one must be of the opinion that some things are simply just and other things are simply unjust in such a way that the simply just thing could not be unjust in some other situation.
I mean, maybe this isn't the best example of thinking of a kind of Kantian moral imperative. The notion that there is some such absolute command or categorical imperative is an underlying opinion that the recognition of law depends on. And to the extent people recognize laws as laws everywhere, they all share this opinion. Now, it's a second question whether that opinion is true or not, right?
That would be in need of investigation. And what maybe is what's shown here is that the comrade is of that opinion, right? Which is significant, but it's still in need of investigation. Yeah, I guess they never really get there though, right?
Because of his tendencies. Should we go to the next section? So what you, as Thomas later on, what Socrates is doing here is these are all attempts to show that law is, as he defined it as Socrates defined it, the third definition, which is the one that Socrates gives it law wishes to be the finding out of what is. And so I think Thomas laid out that one of the first four A's that Socrates makes us try to prove that is by showing us that the justice, people agree that the just things are just and noble things are noble, hence law is kind of universal as well.
I don't know if this will be the next step. And as I understand it is then he's trying to show that law has a kind of universal universality to it. And he does that by saying the just adjusted, no, no, well, and then the second way he tries to do this, I think is by showing that law that there's an art of law, is that is that where you would go next time that just like other things like there's an art of medicine. So because there's a kind of uniformity to that art.
And so he tries to show that he tries to get the comrade to agree that there is an art of this. Yeah, one thing I'd add to that, he does that in light of the comrades persistence in his sort of relativistic turn, right? So I take that. I take that.
Yes, we're constantly there at three, 16C. He says, thus, Socrates, as you say, the same things come to sight as legal both for us at all times and for the others. But when I reflect that we never stop changing laws this way and that, which in Greek could mean Topsy Turvy, actually, I think it's I know, yeah, it means up and down to it, you know, Topsy Turvy, I can't be persuaded. So he's kind of made dizzy of a credit process.
I think that that confession, I think of just bewilderment, like, I don't know what to do with this. But this is just the fact as I see it, make Socrates take this term to art and ultimately writing. Right. Right.
Well, I think I think a helpful way maybe to frame these two sections is that to say something like this, it's sort of a hypothesis. If law is in fact the discovery of being these things would have to be true. That is, it would have to be true that there are certain things that are simply just and other things that are simply unjust in such a way that they are not changeable in that manner. Second of all, it would have to be true that the knowledge of the just and the unjust would be subject to scientific knowledge or an art in the way that these other things are.
And so again, that's not to say that that is in fact the case, but to the extent you think something like that is possible, it would follow that you do think it's possible that there is a kind of law that is in fact, indeed, a discovery of being. Now, I'll show on this one small way, Tom, just at 3 14, go back to the beginning, 3 14 B. So what's interesting is, I think we're all on the same page here, Socrates is trying to show that if law is trying to find out what it is, trying to discover what it is, there would be an art of it, just like the other arts. But he mentioned another possibility.
And that's that there might be a science. And I'm just wondering if are we comfortable conflating the two for Socrates that he's willing to speak of science and art in the same breath? Or does he take the art path and not the science path? Like maybe there's a, because I mean, to say that there's an art of legislative makes sense to me is to say that there's a science, okay, that's problematic.
But to say that there's an art of discovering the beings, okay, that actually not have plausibility to it, but I might be more inclined to say there's a science of discovering the beings. So I'm interested in why, why do you think, Tom, he goes to the art path, there's an art of discovering what the beings are as opposed to a science? Or maybe that's if that's taken us too far, I feel we just, well, I would say that there's a couple of different kinds of examples. And this, so we're looking at, I can read examples.
Three, 16, three, three, 16 D. We've got the medical arts, the agricultural arts, we've got gardening, we've got cooking, and then finally ruling, which is supposed to be what our example is. And I would say, I mean, medicine is a peculiar one, and there's a manner which is an art, there's also a manner which it's a science in so far, is it really, I mean, even agriculture has this character, but it seems to point to knowledge of causes in some definite way that's connected with the knowledge of nature. Perhaps that's always the case with an art.
I mean, in the case of cooking, that seems to be less the case, right? If you look at 317A, it says, the cooks, as they claim have knowledge, right? Which I think is a mitigation that cooks it away. It's not clear that they perhaps they possess an art, but not a science in the same way.
What they know is they've got a good knack for knowing what pleases people. Yeah. And that's a little bit less definite that's further away from discovery of being territory. Well, I found interesting about these examples.
There are a number of things I've found, but one of the things that I found interesting about these examples are agriculture gardening, cooking, and even medicine, to a degree, is the extent to which these aren't, I mean, I don't know that I would say any of them are aiming at discovery of what is so much as it's the human attempt to bring something under control, if that makes sense. So like, I mean, works and days or whatever, right? Like food doesn't just grow a plenty for us. There's a human imposition of will onto the earth to make it yield.
Same gardens, right? Same thing. I mean, like gardens are kept by humans. Cooking, I don't know, same, right?
I mean, food is not immediately digestible or palatable in some way. So humans have to change the world in some way. And I'm wondering if I'm right about those is a similar case being made about law, that it's a kind of human, I'm not satisfied with putting it quite this way, but a human exertion of will onto whatever it is, the political community or something like this. I mean, does that make sense?
I mean, agriculture isn't simply discovering what is it's like planting. It's like trying to get the earth to do something that it wouldn't do spontaneously. Yeah. Maybe that's the word.
Like, yeah, that these things don't happen spontaneously. Yeah. One way maybe another way to look at this is that when it was called, said that law wants to be the discovery of what is it seemed contemplative, whereas now it seems productive. Yeah, very.
Yeah. And that's that's an interesting shift because it suggests that, and this is, I think, Tom, you know, probably speaks this pretty well, but it reflects something in Plato's States, which is another dialogue that's very close to this. There's a couple of illusions there. But the idea that the Statesman's art has our skill, whatever it is, has two aspects.
One is contemplative and looking at the nature of problems or something like that. And then one is productive, which is this creating of laws and weaving together the community through them. Yeah, I think it might be worth bringing up the sense you mentioned it. Another, I think, connection to the Statesman here, where I think it's useful in thinking through what's actually being discussed.
This is a weird dialogue and easy to lose your bearings. But the problem of law is stated pretty explicitly in the Statesman way. I think mirror some of what's going on here. So if we, I'm going to ask you, Alex, to state that problem, especially understand it.
But as a sort of run up, I thought it'd be useful to, introduce what I was saying is possibly a fourth definition, that 317A, and a 317A, which is that laws are political writings, the writings of kings and good men. And then there's a further gloss further down. That is, there's that C in the writings about the Justin unjust things and in general, about ordering a city and about how a city ought to be organized. What is correct is Kingly law.
Well, what is not correct, what seems to be law to those who don't know is not for this law list. So I think there's some notion that, again, I want to say that somewhat hypothetically, if it's the case that the truth about what is simply Justin, what is simply unjust, could be captured in a writing, then there could be political writings that are scientific and character in such a way that you could claim that they are in fact the discovery of being. Now, there's a difficulty with this insofar as as laid out in the Statesman law is possibly necessarily deficient insofar as it's written down and sets down for all time. What the Justin unjust is.
Yeah, just to gloss the problem in the Statesman. Thanks. It's like given given the continual variability in all things, so it's kind of cosmological assertion, right? But given the continual variability in all things, right, and the sheer amount of decisions that a knowing Statesman would have to make is necessary for them to let us give laws right to legislate yet such laws are necessarily going to be inadequate.
So it's sort of in a way, a statecraft, a proper statement will understand that the most precise way of proceeding is to proceed imprecisely, right, with a defective sort of mode, which would imply that, which is I think useful because the comment would in a way get to have his cake and eat it too. What one, there would be a kind of knowledge or sort of knowing statecraft that would understand what's best to do, but to the results or the legislation that comes from that would always be defective and therefore eventually need to be changed. Right. Tom, you're jumping.
Yeah, I thought there's, and this is maybe a good transition to the mean on section itself. There's a way of stating the problem of law in such a way that it was a way of discussing this distinction between law as providing for the common good or setting things down in an unchangeable manner versus distributing what is fitting for each in such a way that it appears that law is necessarily bad. It's a deficient mode, as you said. I think in the mean off section, there is a kind of, you know, like, what if, what if that weren't the case?
What if it was the opposite case? What if what was in fact best for human being were to be compelled to sacrifice something, right? Law is deficient insofar as many people have to suffer something that is not simply good for them. You could say that in a bad way, or you can say what law demands of us is a willingness to sacrifice.
And if it's the case that doing what is simply just and being willing to make that sacrifice is the true good of the soul, then these apparently irrational cruel writings, in fact, provide what is best for us in a way that any other kind of art fails to do. So they just satisfy some particular need rather than, in fact, ordering themselves to our souls. I just want to keep you, I didn't mean to interrupt, but the last section is Socrates discussing with the comrade the actual law giving of a mythical law gave her mean us. So in what would what do we need to know about this?
Those that they were thought to be exceptionally harsh. What else do we need to know that they're the oldest? Well, you know, infamously, as I mean, he talks about he's got a really bad reputation, right, especially among the Athenians, Athenian, Trigidians, because he demanded among other things, perseum to demand things like human sacrifices, right? Yeah.
That's very just right. Maybe this goes back to this barbaric. That's that's the another. So not only does it bring from relativism to like these laws from somebody who's done something barbaric, but who's done the very barbaric thing that's so outraged him before, I mean, it's really.
Human sacrifice, right, right, right. Right. But I think there's there's another line that I think is very important and peculiar that it's worth us reading. And before we finish with the style, like at least for today, at 3 18 B.
And the initial question is like, who is said to have, you know, the most revered and most ancient laws, just as if I were to ask you, you know, what are the most revered and ancient tunes? And the tunes of Marcius and Olympus are held to be such and they have this characteristic, which is that their alos tunes are indeed most divine and alone, move and reveal those who are in need of the gods. And now they alone still remain because they are divine. So we have these very old songs, just as we have very old laws that bring out the reverence and people and to point it against the psychological angle.
It's when we are commanded to do something when we're commanded, when we're told that this is the simply right thing to do and it requires something difficult of us or sacrifice. That is what shows or brings out those who are in need of the divine. This command and the willingness to follow this command is leads to a kind of divine experience or gives one the impression that there is some kind of divine ordering that we are taking part in. And you could say something similar, possibly about minus infamously cruel, but it's this very difficulty or cruelty that brings out our reverence for them as possibly divine and characters.
That was really, really interesting. Wasn't there an etymological link between songs and laws to? Yeah, there are certain kinds of songs that are called nomoy. I think they're either by a Olympus, right?
There's a place on this in the dialogue, the nomoy, the laws. Of course, I just couldn't help it wonder then what's the connection between music and law? And I think that you actually just, I think you laid it out. The similar effect it has on our souls.
Yeah, I mean, maybe this is a good thing to. There's a connection here between music and law. And I would say it's like both of the both of these things lead us to experience the divine or to think that we are experiencing the divine. You could say something similar about love.
I know you guys were talking about the symposium recently. There's an important step in the so-called matter of love, which involves the investigation of noble laws and practices. Right. Just as arrows acts as a kind of diamond carrying us between the human and the divine or points us to the divine, I think there's a similar character to law.
It has this erotic or musical character and this sort of roundabout way. The music I see, I mean, I've seen it at churches and different gatherings, but the law, I don't know if I've ever seen the effect that, but I mean, I guess this repies devotion to people repeating the law. I have seen in other countries, for example, that's a good point. Yeah.
I remember that viral dance to Cardi B's web. Wireless access point. Yeah, wireless, a wet ass point. The people kept doing it.
It was like a prayer, right? Like the music, the music I get. The question was the law that I had trouble with. Well, I mean, you could say that the curator things in the other direction.
Sure. The things most the typical throughout human history, the typical experience people have of the divine is mediated immediately by law. Or as we see at the beginning of the dialogue, the laws, you know, there's a claim that these demands, these harsh commands that are made on us, you know, are in fact divine. Yeah.
It's a nice. Go ahead, sorry. No, go ahead. I was just going to say that's a nice segue to you should maybe if you'd like to say words about this dialogue relationship to laws, but I was also thinking what a nice possibility at some point for Tom to come back and talk to us about Plato's laws.
I mean, that's such a big book. I don't even know how we begin to address it in a podcast like this. Yeah. See, the FaceTime just made like we had a sign for that.
No, no, no. I was the initial suggestion and I thought, well, the lead us is much shorter than that. That's true. But yeah.
It's okay. So we got plenty of time. I'm going to space too. Because I mean, I'll just say a word about the law is who's dead.
Who's dead? Can't even remember. Who's that? The, I mean, I think a theme, especially of the first two books of the laws is related to this.
What is it in us that makes it possible for us to recognize law as law or makes it possible insofar as we recognize law to believe in something divine such that, for example, we say that these are defined laws passed to us by God that. Yeah, I think that question is pretty directly. If not, like dialectically examined is the theme of the opening books of the laws. And that's the manner in which I think there is a clear way in which the mean answers are introduction to the laws, the question and the questions are set out and then ordered way in the mean, also that you're prepared to think through what's going on at least at the beginning of the laws.
Well, I think we're at about an hour. So we should probably, yeah, the mailbag thing out to hit the mailbag. And then I'll tell them our lightning round questions. Yeah, sure.
I don't have it pulled up right now. Can I ask a couple lightning round questions? We don't start with the lightning round. I want to start with the lightning round.
I want to start with the lightning round. No, okay. Tom, Tom's a fan of the show. I see he's super fan, maybe even a groupie.
And so I think it would be good to change up the lightning round question. So favorite law. Favorite law? Yeah.
I know mine. Oh, what's yours? You can not commit adultery. That's a pretty good one.
Alex, that's my favorite one, Alex. Yeah, I don't. Lightning, Tom, lightning. Well, you know, lightning is followed by thunder with a considerable delay.
And it may come from the news. I mean, I like to speak crudely. I like the ones that protect my property. That's not a feeling that those are the ones I appreciate most often and regularly.
I actually like the first amendment of being serious. That's my favorite law. It's a very big. It's a law that there is not a law.
It's a very peculiar law. Yeah, it's sort of antonobian law. Somehow. Right.
Well, I would have chosen the laws that protect our Yeah, disadvantaged groups, but you guys don't care. Favorite law. You can apply to everybody in America. Favorite law, I would say Plato.
Favorite being? Same. Favorite philosopher. They're all the same answer.
Right. They've reviewed an ancient tune. Favorite review. You know, so I've got a story here, actually.
That changed on college. There's required music, of course, if you're in the under graduate program and not in the fake and a program that some people were. And we were required to write something in an ancient mode. And what I did is I took, I found, I determined what the Dorian mode was in ancient times, which is not the same as what it is in modern times.
And then I set the passage from Homer about Odysseus beating down his thumas, which is permitted from the republic to the Dorian mode to make a completely lawful tune. That's a good view. Is it you who say it? It went like a, I don't have the Greek hand.
You should have prepared me for this. I'm going to pull up this one. Okay, by the way, hold on. While he's finding that, so the real St.
John's College education is the undergraduate. Which one did you do? I did the masters with the. No.
Okay. Which one did you do? Neither. Okay.
Tom, a lusty Zeus asked you to enter his cave and with a wink promised to show you his nomos. What do you do? How do I know that he's Zeus? I would I would I would want to determine first that he is a god through some kind of rational inquiry before I can indicate.
All right. Favorite member of the new thinkery. Jake's the candidate. He's not a member.
He's the most important member without him. There is no. He's least favorite member of the new thinkery. Well, there's I think there used to be three of you.
Yeah. I'm trying to remember the other dude saying that. All right. Well, you find out why I think we should close with your tune.
I think that would be a good idea. Well, you find the Greek for it. Here's some mail back questions and we'll go to Greg's line around. No.
Jack, is it Gweep Ray? Good. Pretty. I'm in authority since I know him personally.
And I'm not saying that. I'm saying that. Capri. Capri.
Originally. Like Capri. Perrupted. Yeah.
Capri. So he wants to know why you're such a jerk. All right. He asks, what does it mean that it wishes to be the discovery of what is?
Are other accounts of law discussed? Is law a best or a second best or something of the sort? We already talked about this book. I mean, I could give some sort of summary of some thoughts.
I mean, I'll review your stating what I said earlier that. Maybe I can just say, since we already talked about this. His second question kind of amplifies that and asks why other accounts he means. So maybe contrast Sargent's definition of law with other accounts.
Natural law, divine law, positive law, conventional. That sort of thing. Is that worth? Does that help take a direction?