[38] Plato, Minos, 317 C.
Reasoning of Sokrates in the Minos is unsound, but Platonic. The Good, True, and Real, coalesce in the mind of Plato — he acknowledges nothing to be Law, except what he thinks ought to be Law.
That the reasoning of Sokrates in this dialogue is confused and unsound (as M. Boeckh and other critics have remarked), I perfectly agree. But it is not the less completely Platonic; resting upon views and doctrines much cherished and often reproduced by Plato. The dialogue Minos presents, in a rude and awkward manner, without explanation or amplification, that worship of the Abstract and the Ideal, which Plato, in other and longer dialogues, seeks to diversify as well as to elaborate. The definitions of Law here combated and given by Sokrates, illustrate this. The good, the true, the right, the beautiful, the real — all coalesce in the mind of Plato. There is nothing (in his view) real, except The Good, The Just, &c. (τὸ αὐτο-ἀγαθὸν; αὐτο-δίκαιον — Absolute Goodness and Justice): particular good and just things have no reality, they are no more good and just than bad and unjust — they are one or the other, according to circumstances — they are ever variable, floating midway between the real and unreal.[39] The real alone is knowable, correlating with knowledge or with the knowing Intelligence Νοῦς. As Sokrates distinguishes elsewhere τὸ δίκαιον or αὐτο-δίκαιον from τὰ δίκαια — so here he distinguishes (νόμος from τὰ νομιζόμενα) Law, from the assemblage of actual commands or customs received as laws among mankind. These latter are variable according to time and place; but Law is always one and the same. Plato will acknowledge nothing to be Law, except that which (he thinks) ought to be Law: that which emanates from a lawgiver of consummate knowledge, who aims at the accomplishment of the good and the real, and knows how to discover and realise that end. So far as “the decree of the city” coincides with what would have been enacted by this lawgiver (i. e. so far as it is good and right), Sokrates admits it as a valid explanation of Law; but no farther. He considers the phrase bad law to express a logical impossibility, involving a contradiction in adjecto.[40] What others call a bad law, he regards as being no real law, but only a fallacious image, mistaken for such by the ignorant. He does not consider such ignorant persons as qualified to judge: he recognises only the judgment of the knowing one or few, among whom he affirms that there can be no difference of opinion. Every one admits just things to be just, — unjust things to be unjust, — heavy things to be heavy, — the existent and the real, to be the existent and the real. If then the lawgiver in any of his laws fails to attain this reality, he fails in the very purpose essential to the conception of law:[41] i. e. his pretended law is no law at all.
[39] See the remarkable passage in the fifth book of the Republic, pp. 479-480; compare vii. 538 E.
[40] Plato, Minos, 314 D.
The same argument is brought to bear by the Platonic Sokrates against Hippias in the Hippias Major, 284-285. If the laws are not really profitable, which is the only real purpose for which they were established, they are no laws at all. The Spartans are παράνομοι. Some of the answers assigned to Hippias (284 D) are pertinent enough; but he is overborne.
[41] Plato, Minos, 316 B. Ὃς ἂν ἄρα τοῦ ὄντος ἁμαρτάνη, τοῦ νομίμου ἁμαρτάνει.
Plato worships the Ideal of his own mind — the work of systematic constructive theory by the Wise Man.
By Law then, Plato means — not the assemblage of actual positive rules, nor any general property common to and characteristic of them, nor the free determination of an assembled Demos as distinguished from the mandates of a despot — but the Type of Law as it ought to be, and as it would be, if prescribed by a perfectly wise ruler, aiming at good and knowing how to realise it. This, which is the ideal of his own mind, Plato worships and reasons upon as if it were the only reality; as Law by nature, or natural Law, distinguished from actual positive laws: which last have either been set by some ill-qualified historical ruler, or have grown up insensibly. Knowledge, art, philosophy, systematic and constructive, applied by some one or few exalted individuals, is (in his view) the only cause capable of producing that typical result which is true, good, real, permanent, and worthy of the generic name.
Different applications of this general Platonic view, in the Minos, Politikus, Kratylus, &c. Natural Rectitude of Law, Government, Names, &c.