The International Law Ideas Of Plato

As a law to adjust international affairs and regulate the relationships between states, international law derived from accustomed law as well as else departmental laws at it' s beginning, and some ancient thinkers early had international law ideas accordingly. Plato had more abundant international law ideas than his Greek predecessors, and there were respective feature contrasted China' s thinkers before Qin Dynasty. To clarify these questions, this essay is divided into the preface and the main body.In the preface, the author outlines the origins of the science and ideas of the international law and the situation about the study of the international law ideas of Plato.The main body includes four parts.In the first part, the backgrounds of the formation of Plato' s international law ideas are discussed. On the one hand, it was tightly contacted with the whole history backgrounds of Greece: the great number of Greece city-states formed the initial international society, the wars were so frequent, the overseas markets of were enlarged quickly and trade towards foreign markets grew fast, foreigners entered Greece :.n multitude, Greek extensively communicated with the nations and states around it, and so on. All of them promoted the development of the international laws between Greece city-states. On the other hand, the especial experiences of Plato himself to a great extent influenced his ideas of international law.In the second part of the main body, a variety of Plato' s ideas of international law are clarified as five subsections as the core of the paper. 1. Equality in sovereignty and no menace from powers should be persisted. 2. Country was just a city-state, which was merely large-size that it could only be a unity, and individual could not be the subject of the international law. Greek should settle outwards. There shouldbe full of diplomatic etiquettes, honors and worships to diplomats between the Greek city-states. The Proxenia shoulc be brought into effect, but aliens should be restricted. 3. The war between Greek was defined as internal conflict, the goal of the war was to self-defend, the sort of the war included legal war and illegal war, and humanism should be put into effect, etc. 4. Certain treatment that was similar to national or discriminate treatment, which only appeared since modern times and often applied to foreigners, should be respectively applied to aliens, freed thralls and slaves according to different situations. 5. Appropriate foreign trade should be developed, management on the quantity of cash, foreign exchange, and the kind of merchandise, which was imported or exported, should be reinforced, and the tariff should be annulled.In the third part, it is clarified that the great influencesof Plato's international law ideas on the ancient Greece and Roman and somewhere all round the Mediterranean, and the noted western thinkers in modern times such as St. Thomas More and Jean-Jacques Rousseau etc.In the final part, it is pointed out there are not distinct differences between western and eastern international law and ideas of international law, and then the author retorts the view that international law was a result of the development of Christianity Civilization by virtue of history affairs, after the expounding the abundant international law ideas of Confucian and others, and the contrasting with Plato' s.