The Law And Virtue Under The Conflicting State

Plato's political philosophy experienced from the early pieces (Apology and Crito) to the maturity of middle period (The Republic), and then the revision, the promotion and transformation in the late period. The paper makes an effort to comb the Plato's political philosophy in the view of the relationship between law and virtue (ar(?)te) in the conflict condition.The conclusions reached in the paper can be summarized as follows:First, Plato's political philosophy can not be summed up according to the works of The Republic. In the following years, his ideas about political philosophy had been developed a lot in his the Statesman, especially in The Laws. What's more, his different perspectives on "The Death of Socrates" in the former and later period can be regarded as a remarkable evidence of the development of his philosophy. The essences of political philosophy in The Laws do not concentrate in the last four volume as Sir Ernest Barker regards, and the author thinks Plato has explained the general principles of political philosophy about the expansion and consummation of conflicting situation, the goal and origin of legislation, the conditions of government by law city-state, and the purification of the city-state in the former five volumes of The Laws, as are more valuable than the legal articles and the government establishment in the last seven volumes.Second, if the supporting points in The Republic on political philosophy are the double-division of opinions (visible world) and knowledge(the cognitive world), and the division of labor, and three-side division including soul. However his supporting ones in The Laws of political philosophy are the broad conflicting theory based on the further understanding about the degenerates of human nature. The broad conflicting theory mainly includes following ideas: There always exists the conflicts among the cities, villages, families, people and their inner sides; and this kind of conflict was the result of the degeneration of human nature, so the conflict was unnatural. Plato has to turn his eyes to the power of law and mixed regime in order to track down the harmony and virtue in the conflicting condition.Third, this paper distinguishes the nature of the Plato's law-govern state from different aspects, such as the rule of law or the rule for law, governing the country according to the law or ruling the state by the using of law, "Nocturnal Council" and the position of law-giver, and so on. The city governing by law which was described in Plato's The Laws, compared to the law-govern countries in modern times, has not really reached the rule of law. Meanwhile, if we look The Laws from the view of its argument on the theories about super authority of the law, the practical goal of law, and the disperser and balance of powers in mixed regime, clearly the state and city designed by Plato should be put into the concept of the law-govern ones, his designing about the long preface and "Nocturnal Council" before the legal articles has some similarities with Hayek's meta-legal Principle.Fourth, Plato's The Laws has not ended the political philosophy in classical state; he has set an example on classic political philosophy as well as proposed more questions. The most incisive one was the position of "Nocturnal Council" and the law-giver. Aristotle took critics to Plato's political philosophy and developed them as well.Fifth, how about the relationship between law and virtue under the conflict condition? Briefly view The Laws, Based on the understanding of the degeneration of human nature and the conflicting condition, Plato established the value and the significance of law, and that of the target of law-giving, namely the whole of virtue. Furthermore, knowledge and wisdom (education is included it in some degree) are means to seek for virtue according to The Republic and The Statesman, the law and mixed regime, then inner tight is formed between the realistic target(freedom, harmony and wisdom) and the tendency of values on virtue; So Plato designed the "Nocturnal Council" in order to prevent the law-government state from overthrowing and guarantee the value-point direction on virtue not lost in the trivial legal rules. In The Laws, even the awkward of law-giver in the three dialogues on political philosophy also lies in the inner tight. Plato has not solved the problem, and the following classical liberalist and Rousseau, Hegel, Leo Strauss also failed to solve the problem.The system of Plato's political philosophy formed by the three dialogues is so great and profound, and it is debated in this paper from the view of the relationship between law and virtue under the conflicting state. In fact, there are still some wonderful thoughts in the three dialogues, especially in The Laws, and those are not concerned in the paper. The key ones are: the theory on the two kinds of equalities originated in The Republic and developed in The Laws, the theory of the organism about state, the ideas about debating between philosophy and poems, the educational theory concerned with children game, the theatre-politics, the supreme of law, and so on.