Plato, Minos

Through this introduction to the life of Socrates through the shorter Platonic dialogues, I begin to get the feeling that Plato is guiding us from a love of what we think we know (authoritative opinion) to a love of the truth. Whatever else may be said for Bruell's take, I have to admit it's rather wonderful. The medievals held that the short dialogues are the best gateways into Platonic philosophy (though what that itself is is a matter of some dispute, and I claim provisional ignorance), and the Straussians tend to agree. I at least am finding the order of dialogues he recommends perfect: dialogues 'on' gain, law, and justice (among other things). Most incredible is the way Plato effortlessly illustrates thoughtful popular opinion on these things, and how similar a man in 21st century America might have the same opinions on gain, law, and justice as a 4th century BC Athenian.

Never have I read a dialogue where I was more invested in the outcome than in the Minos. Socrates asks a nameless companion, "What is law, for us?" Socrates immediately presses the issue towards defining law as something not entirely up to us ("a discover of what is), but he is initially unsuccessful. His companion's final definition of the law is as following: Law is the official opinion of the city; that is, political opinion. Opinion, and not knowledge. Here begins my difficulty: this is precisely my definition of law: customarily accepted political opinion. But if it is mere opinion, not knowledge, why ought it to be respected and heeded? Why should the philosopher, who has knowledge, not be above the law? I react with some horror at the implication of my own view, for widespread disrespect for the law would be devastating to the city. Plato, it seems to me, is trying to raise the reader up from such a vulgar view of law, and so I was hoping very much to find a persuasive argument that was not intended to be ironical.

Unfortunately, I did not find it. Socrates links justice and law very closely when he gets his companion to agree that the lawful are just and the lawless unjust. But is this true? That there could be unjust law I have no doubt: laws which defraud the poor and vulnerable, laws which treat political equals unequally, or worse offenses. If the law may be unjust, then are not the unlawful just and the lawful unjust? Yet this returns to disrepecting the law, for if the view that in some cases the unlawful is just is promulgated, one will simply call all laws which moderate one's vulgar desires unjust and himself just when he is unlawful - surely a great disgrace.

Through linking the law with justice, Socrates persuade his companion that "Law is true opinion", and therefore that "Law wishes to be the discovery of what is", like the other arts: medicine, agriculture, gardening, cooking, etc. The companion raises a difficulty: if this is so, why do cities everywhere not use the same laws, as they all use the same medicines, etc? (a similar impasse might be raised against the proposition that certain things are true) And Socrates' response is most unconvincing: professing ignorance that this is indeed the case. And after the companion enlightens him with a description of contrary laws and customs (like Herodotus, a bit), Socrates avoids his clear, eloquent speech and instead moves into being a sophist to produce agreement. His response is quite puzzling. After the companion pleads that he wishes to be convinced (as did I - I longed, positively longed to be convinced), but that "when I consider that we never stop changing the laws, I can't be persuaded", Socrates says, "Perhaps you do not perceive that these things, being moved like droughts pieces, remain the same" - which I don't understand at all.

Further, the argument progresses on the assumption that law is some sort of techne: as the heavy is heavy in Athens and Sparta alike, and the healthy is as well, etc. law will be the same everywhere. He uses four examples: medicine, agriculture, gardening, and cooking. How do these illustrate the nature of law? Medicine seems accurate enough: the causes of health in a man can be approximately codified, and doctors, whether in Athens or Lycaea, will use similar means to induce health. Agriculture is similar, but seldom relies on written "laws" - most often tradition and experience (though I suppose these are similar in practice to the 'laws' of medicine) to produce bountiful crops. But gardening? What is the aim of gardening? And cooking? These seem far more dependent upon private whim and fancy than they do with a written law, intending to be the discovery of what is (also, in the Gorgias, Socrates uses cooking as a negative example to illustrate rhetoric). Perhaps Plato did not intend to undermine Socrates' argument that law is the discovery of what is, or that I'm missing something crucially important, but Socrates did not convince me that the lawful are always just, and that therefore law is the discovery of what is; if Plato did not intend that, he sure came close.

I have seldom been in a position of wishing to be convinced, and yet being unconvinced. It is rather unpleasant. Is law nothing more than authoritative political opinion, whose justice is entirely accidental? Are justice and law completely separate things? I don't want to hold either of those opinions, but till I work something out (perhaps Aquinas' Treatise on Law, which I have completely forgotten, would help), that is unfortunately where I linger: in the shadow of vulgar opinion.

"What else would law be, Socrates, except those things that are lawfully accepted?"

Plato, Hipparchus

I am under no illusions about the depth of these brief notes on the Dialogues. I have read the Hipparchus carefully only a few times. Doubtless indeed I should see more of it if I read it carefully twenty times, but I must move on; and even in this brief introduction I have learned much about the Socratic life and how philosophy constitutes itself in the face of the authoritative public opinion against which it must inevitably conflict.

It helps, truly, to have a good guide. I am reasonably intelligent, but I am young and have read little. Christopher Bruell is very learned, utterly brilliant, and has been reading Plato carefully for at least fifty years. His book, On the Socratic Education is an exquisite thing, written late in life, and ironically entitled "An Introduction", which it most certainly is not. The writing is far denser than it needed to be, with seemingly endless subordinate clauses everywhere you look till you have almost forgotten what the subject was; but this is no criticism, for Mr. Bruell is a smart enough man to write intentionally. The difficult, dense writing employed by him, Leo Strauss, and those like him, is truly a barrier set up against the average reader, but the barrier is there on purpose. Not everyone is meant to embark upon philosophy; not everyone should begin to question their authoritative, traditional opinions. Such men might be made worse by philosophy, like Meno; better for them to remain simple, moral people. Though we today would call sentiment 'elitist', 'snobbish', or 'aristocratic', I believe Strauss and his students thought it was the truth, and inculcated it in themselves and employed it in their writings. But they learned it first from their masters, particularly Plato. But enough of Bruell - I shall turn to what little I have gleaned from the Hipparchus.

The Hipparchus is first in the path of sixteen Bruell lays out, indicating that he intends the Hipparchus to be the introduction to Socrates and his education, if not the introduction to philosophy. In it, Socrates approaches a young man and asks, "What is the love of gain, and who are the lovers of gain?"; or the dialogue begins in the midst of on ongoing conversation. His young companion immediately launches an impassioned, indignant assault upon the lovers of gain as sellers of the worthless, cheaters, frauds, evil men, etc. He neglects to seek out what gain could be. What is it? We think first of increase of wealth or money, but also increase of good things, since gain in the first sense is held to be good. The companion seems ignorant of this double meaning, and Socrates exploits the ambiguity rather mercilessly. Through his questioning, he shows his companion that he believes gain is always good, and thus it is unreasonable to expect anyone, even the decent or just man, from seeking it; even more, that those who love gain what is good; thus, cheaters and frauds turn out to be lovers of the good. This shocking conclusion is rendered unconvincing to the reader (and Plato intended it to be so), since Socrates banishes justice from the dialogue quite early on, locking out his companion's complaint against the lovers of gain, and refusing to acknowledge the opposing view, that gain could be criticized. And by subtly switching the terms of the argument, and proceeding on a false assumptions (when the companion defines the lover of gain in terms of the worthless, Socrates acts as if he meant "worthless for producing gain" - obviously not what his interlocutor intended), he is easily able to reduce the counter-arguments to nonsense, 'proving' his argument true.

The companion thinks of gain as a good, but wishes to restrain the love of gain in the name of decency or justice. He further argues that the lover of gain is "he who thinks it worthwhile to make a gain from that which the decent wouldn't dare to gain from", and what he has in mind is most likely the unjust increase of money through deception, bribery, etc. But in calling them gains, he implicitly recognizes them as good, since he resolutely adheres to the proposition that gain is good. Further, he asserts those who pursue such gains are harmed by them, which means he is forced to argue that the good harms. He is confused about the nature of gain, and Socrates is so willfully obtuse that the nature of gain is never clearly spelled out in the dialogue.

Why does Socrates hold this conversation? Why is he so brutal to his interlocutor? In what way is the Hipparchus meant to be a defense or propaedeutic to philosophy? This is difficult for me to say, probably because I have read insufficiently. But perhaps Socrates sees a danger in the companion's criticism of the lovers of gain, for since he does not recognize the ambiguity inherent in the word, the philosopher might well be included in his condemnation. As to what this different love of gain might be, I am rather unsure; but the interlude on Hipparchus hints that it may have something to do with wisdom.

"This is a memorial of Hipparchus: Do not deceive a friend."

On Reading Plato: Hermeneutical Tools

Collecting organized thoughts on writings as complicated as Plato's dialogues is more difficult than I thought; when I said 'tomorrow', I probably meant 'sometime next week'. And here is next week (or the week after) and instead of a brief essay articulating questions which go right to the heart of the dialogue - so I flatter myself - I thought I should lay down for myself how to approach my most beloved philosopher. So here are some general guidelines for those who are not natural geniuses:

1. Plato was quite possibly wiser than you and wrote on purpose; every word in the dialogue is present with design and purpose. Nothing of importance is left to chance or happenstance. [N.B. this probably applies to all wise men]
2. Read slowly and repeatedly. When dissatisfied at the end of a dialogue (a first reading of the Hipparchus, for instance), start again, for you have only scratched the surface.
3. Become personally committed in seeking out the question at hand. If you do not care about what law is, how can you read the Minos profitably?
4. Where are oddities, contradictions, and sophistries present? Who is responsible for them? How do they come about, and why? 
5. Examine your primal reactions and associations at every turn. When answering a question to yourself, or probing a difficulty, strain your mind to search out alternatives, and ask always, "Why do I think this answer is true or sufficient?" 
6. What are the important terms of the dialogue (e.g. gain, good, etc. in the Hipparchus)? Do their meanings shift as the dialogue progresses? If so, how? Do the interlocutors understand the terms differently? If so, how? 
7. Be honest in your difficulties and courageous in your perseverance.

 Using the above suggestions, I am curing all of my bad reading habits and getting beneath the surface of a text on my own for what is probably the first time in my life. Many of us are not used to reading carefully, and the Dialogues profit us when we bring all our mental faculties to bear as we read. Take notes, if that helps you, or annotate the book (I never do that), even. Anything to slow yourself down and approach the dialogue from a fresh angle. And when you are onto something, indulge your feelings of excitement.