From the Beginning to Plato

FROM THE BEGINNING TO PLATO 387
city?’ (d4–c2)). This must be because there are no reliable generalizations
linking the concrete and the abstract; absolute laws cannot do justice to the
dissimilarities of men and situations (294a10–b6). A conception of precision
(t’akribes, 284d1) can only be sketched imprecisely; expert statesmen, like all
practical experts (c2), must be able to measure the greater and the lesser in
relation not only to each other but to the ‘mean’, that is, ‘the moderate, the fitting,
the timely, the necessary, and all else that falls into the mean between extremes’
(e5–8). Aristotle was to develop this more fully, but to very different effect: Plato
aspires to the precision of an art of measurement, while he appeals to the
perception of particular cases (Nicomachean Ethics II.9.1109b22–3). Within
Plato, we must suspect, imprecision of description, and precision as an aspiration,
are made for each other.
There are still roles for rules, either fixed or flexible. Even expert rulers will
enact laws to guide action in their absence (Statesman 295a4–b2); but these are
revisable by rulers, and overridable by subjects (c8–d7). More significant is the
right role of laws within cities whose rulers are inexpert—that is, within all cities
outside Utopia (meaning ‘nowhere’). Here flexibility is dangerous. Where there
is no knowledge, revision is likely to come of corrupt motives, whereas long
experience, careful consideration and popular consent lie behind laws as they
stand (300a1–b6). When rulers know what they are doing, consent does not
matter (293c8–d2); when they do not, it does. It is if a doctor is expert that the
patient’s consent has no bearing on the desirability of the treatment (296b5–c2).
However, as in medicine, political consent is at best an indication, and never a
criterion, of getting things right. At least the primary goal of governing well
must be to act justly oneself; but its mark is just action by the governed (c6–d4),
which is a consequence and not a mode of procedure. Plato retains a counterfactual
optimism: if a perfect ruler appeared, he would be welcome (301d4, cf.
Republic VI.498d6–502a2); but, as it is, no such king is produced in our cities,
and the best that we can do is follow in the track of the truest polity (301d8–e4).
This causes Plato no enthusiasm. If a more practicable art, like medicine or
navigation, were to proceed by rigid legislation, we should all find it absurd
(298b6–299e9). Such government is an imitation of the true in a manner that
makes it less a copy than a counterfeit (293e2–3, cf. 300c5–301a4): far from
taking the ideal as a model, it despairs of achieving more than a simulacrum of
success by means that are fit less to succeed than to avoid the worst causes of
failure.
The Laws deepens and develops what is essentially the same conception, but
with much more patience for the unideal. Its protagonist is an Athenian Stranger,
who lacks at once the uncertainties and the aspirations of a Socrates. He
distinguishes a ‘first city and polity’, which realizes the greatest possible unity,
from one that is single to a secondary degree (V.739b8–e4). The ideal recalls the
Republic, the means are communist (women, children, property held in
common), the end unanimity in attitude and action; even things private by
nature, eyes and ears and hands, must seem to operate in common. There is a new