Article by Richard S. Kay
In the Statesman Plato considers the art of government. At one point the Eleatic Stranger, Plato's primary interlocutor, argues that the sole criterion for true government is whether the governors possess the “royal science.” Everything else is irrelevant: “[W]hether they rule according to law or without law, over willing or unwilling subjects, and are rich or poor themselves—none of these things can with any propriety be included in the notion of the ruler.” On this point his student, young Socrates, raises a rare if mild demur suggesting that “as to their ruling without laws—the expression has a harsh sound.” In response the Stranger puts the case of a physician who departs upon a long journey and leaves a written set of instructions for his patients. Should he return earlier than expected no one would want him to adhere to his written rules if he thought that “owing to an unexpected change of the winds or other celestial influences” those rules no longer offered the greatest promise of cure. Similarly, any rules laid down by the political “physician” must, given the “endless irregular movements of human things,” be inferior to the unfettered judgment of the wise ruler.
And if he who gave laws, written or unwritten, determining what was good or bad, honourable or dishonourable, just or unjust, to the tribes of men who flock together in their several cities, and are governed in accordance with them; if, I say, this expert author of laws were suddenly to come again, or another like to him, is he to be prohibited from changing them?—would not this prohibition be in reality quite as ridiculous as the other?
Of course, the Stranger's judgment that the returning governor may act independently of the rules depends on an assumption that the returning governor is a true statesman, that he possesses the royal science. The Stranger and young Socrates agree that such rulers are very rare. In the more common situation, when there is no such statesman, the society can do no more than resort to a “second-best procedure.” It is necessary, then, “to meet and compose written laws, endeavouring, as it seems, to approach as nearly as they can to the true form of government.” “The laws would be copies of the true particulars of action as far as they admit of being written down from the lips of those who have knowledge.” But such law-governed polities are, at best, imitations of states in which the ruler governs “in the spirit of virtue and knowledge, and . . . dispense s what is due to all, justly and holily.” Thus, Plato never abandoned the view that the only truly worthy goal was a city “in which kings are either philosophers or gods.”
About the Author
Richard S. Kay. Professor of Law, University of Connecticut.
Citation
63 Tul. L. Rev. 1501 (1989)