1/12/2008
Eric Voegelin, Plato and Aristotle, vol. 3 - Order and History
The Laws, chap. 6, pp. 215-240
Joanne Tetlow, J.D., Ph.D.
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One of my few socialist impulses is to require each legislator to read Plato's Laws. Am I living in a dream-world of philosophy and
theoretical idealism? Is this a reasonable request? The fact that political philosophy is an endangered species in America makes it a
necessity. Despite the span of time, Plato and the man of the 21st century confront the same reality, divine and human. That
has not changed and never will. And so, what could modern legislators learn from Plato's Laws? the truth about the very job to which they
were elected---how to rule and be ruled according to the divine measure.
The essential point of Platonic philosophy is that God is the foundation of the state. As the Athenian Stranger begins the dialogue with a
question to Cleinias, a Cretan, and Megillus, a Spartan: "To whom do you give the credit for establishing your codes of law? Is it a god,
or a man? The answer will determine whether the state is good or bad, blessed or bankrupt, virtuous or corrupt. Only God can be the source of
order for a state, because only God knows the "whole" meaning of the cosmos, the soul, and society. In what Voegelin calls a Platonic theocracy, the
laws are sound only if the divine substance is present spiritually. The "spirit of the laws" is the divine order which is the sine qua non of
a virtuous, strong political society. A change has taken place since the Republic inasmuch as the law is the necessary supremacy rather than
the philosopher-king. This is because there are no philosopher-kings who have complete virtue and justice. Human material is imperfect and
frail so in the myth of the soul Plato tells us the story of God controlling the state by pulling the golden cords of his human puppets. In a
contracted symbolism, the polis as man writ large in the Republic is now centered on man as a differentiated autonomous psyche who as an individual
must possess the virtues of good judgment, self-control, justice, and courage. No longer is the polis representative of the individual soul with its
three class hierarchical order, but with the law as supreme reason, all are equally distant from the divine realization. Voegelin provides a
Christian analogy to show the relation between the Republic and the Laws. In the Republic, the unadulterated divine substance of
pure virtue similar to the Sermon on the Mount cannot be existentially absorbed, and so as the institutionalized church became the visible symbol of the
extent of Jesus's teachings in human form, so the Laws represent the veil needed to cover man's incapacity for perfected virtue. As Jesus is
the ideal, so St. Paul is the ecclesiastical, realist compromise with imperfect man.
Consequently, spiritual reform must be accompanied by force. Persuasion is the best method and particularly in educating children it is important
to attract them to what is right, true, and good, but force and compulsion must be a secondary option. The elite minority who embody virtue,
self-control, and reason must impose the same on the mass of people who live in folly and the pursuit of mere pleasure. In the myth of the cosmos
which is the boundary for the myth of the soul, the cycles from the Age of Cronus to the Age of Zeus has ended with the new order of Nous or
nomos. According to Voegelin, the inequality of the Republic is now all men equally under the Laws. Only Plato has
knowledge of true rule, and because he lacks community, he appears in the dialogue as the Athenian Stranger.
The advance beyond Plato's grasp came with revelation which allowed a distinction between the spiritual and temporal orders unknown to the
differentiated, yet still compact, theocratic Greek world.
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