The game of the Laws

Political Theory

Volumn 27, Issue 6, 1999, Pages 769-788

  Jacobson, Arthur J ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 0033249524     PISSN: 00905917     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/0090591799027006004     Document Type: Review

References (27)

1. The Athenian repeats the reference to law as an "old man's game" in Book VI of Plato's Laws (769a) - "Then our prudent game of the elderly would have been played in noble fashion thus far" - linking preparation of the game of the city explicitly to politics. The first reference was in Book III.
2. On the devotion of Athenian aristocratic culture to contests, see Christian Meier, Athens: A Portrait of the City in Its Golden Age (New York: Henry Holt, 1998), 114-15. Plato's text abounds in references to games and to play and its opposite, seriousness. These and related terms occur more frequently in the Laws than the index to the best contemporary scholarly edition indicates. See Thomas L. Pangle, ed. and trans., The Laws of Plato (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980). The passages are Play: 635b, 636c, 643b, 644d, 649d, 650a, 653e, 656b-e, 657c-e, 666b, 667e, 671e, 673a, 673d-e, 685a, 688b, 732d, 761d, 764e, 772a, 778a, 789b, 794e (the lyre), 796d, 808e, 819b-c, 820c-d (playing at draughts), 832d, 834d, 844d, 887d, 889d, 903d (draughts player), 935d, 942a. Seriousness: 636c, 643b, 644d, 647d, 656a, 659e, 664c, 668b, 673e, 688b-c, 707b, 722e, 724b, 732d, 735c, 743e, 769a, 770d, 772a, 796d, 803b-d, 816d-e (and the laughable, its opposite), 817a, 817c, 831d, 857d (laughing), 859a (laughed at), 887d, 889d, 893b, 935b, 935e, 942a, 966b-c. Games: 647d, 659e, 685a, 723d, 769a, 793e, 794a, 795d, 797a-c, 803e, 804a, 820c (draughts), 829b, 865d, 868a, 903d (draughts player), 968b-969a (throw three sixes or three aces). There are four references to jokes: 778a, 792e, 838c, 885c. Four to laughter: 816d-e (opposite of seriousness), 859a, 918e, 935d. Pangle's translation of the Laws is used throughout.
3. On the devotion of Athenian aristocratic culture to contests, see Christian Meier, Athens: A Portrait of the City in Its Golden Age (New York: Henry Holt, 1998), 114-15. Plato's text abounds in references to games and to play and its opposite, seriousness. These and related terms occur more frequently in the Laws than the index to the best contemporary scholarly edition indicates. See Thomas L. Pangle, ed. and trans., The Laws of Plato (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980). The passages are Play: 635b, 636c, 643b, 644d, 649d, 650a, 653e, 656b-e, 657c-e, 666b, 667e, 671e, 673a, 673d-e, 685a, 688b, 732d, 761d, 764e, 772a, 778a, 789b, 794e (the lyre), 796d, 808e, 819b-c, 820c-d (playing at draughts), 832d, 834d, 844d, 887d, 889d, 903d (draughts player), 935d, 942a. Seriousness: 636c, 643b, 644d, 647d, 656a, 659e, 664c, 668b, 673e, 688b-c, 707b, 722e, 724b, 732d, 735c, 743e, 769a, 770d, 772a, 796d, 803b-d, 816d-e (and the laughable, its opposite), 817a, 817c, 831d, 857d (laughing), 859a (laughed at), 887d, 889d, 893b, 935b, 935e, 942a, 966b-c. Games: 647d, 659e, 685a, 723d, 769a, 793e, 794a, 795d, 797a-c, 803e, 804a, 820c (draughts), 829b, 865d, 868a, 903d (draughts player), 968b-969a (throw three sixes or three aces). There are four references to jokes: 778a, 792e, 838c, 885c. Four to laughter: 816d-e (opposite of seriousness), 859a, 918e, 935d. Pangle's translation of the Laws is used throughout.
4. Edward A. Lippman, Musical Thought in Ancient Greece (New York: Da Capo, 1964), 3. Plato uses several different terms in the Laws to express various aspects of the idea of harmony. He uses harmonia to mean harmony proper, a concord of sounds (e.g., 625d). An Intermediate Greek-English Lexicon, Founded upon the Seventh Edition of Liddell and Scott 's Greek-English Lexicon (1889; reprint, London: Oxford University Press 1972), 118 (henceforth referred to as "Liddell and Scott"). Sumphonia means a concord or unison of sound (e.g., 634e). Asumphonous means, of course, discordant (e.g., 777d) (Liddell and Scott, 127 and 765). Prosarmozo means to fit to, thus to suit (e.g., 712b) (Liddell and Scott, 686). Emmeles means sounding in unison, in tune, hence suitable or proper (e.g., 776b) (Liddell and Scott, 253). Sunodos means singing or sounding in unison (e.g., 837e) (Liddell and Scott, 781). To grasp Plato's doctrine of harmony in the Laws, it would be necessary to parse through his usage of these words, hence, to define them somewhat more articulately than Liddell and Scott do. Unfortunately, Pangle, who is otherwise quite accurate, does not consistently reflect even the distinctions drawn by Liddell and Scott. See the relevant passages in Pangle, The Laws of Plato.
5. Edward A. Lippman, Musical Thought in Ancient Greece (New York: Da Capo, 1964), 3. Plato uses several different terms in the Laws to express various aspects of the idea of harmony. He uses harmonia to mean harmony proper, a concord of sounds (e.g., 625d). An Intermediate Greek-English Lexicon, Founded upon the Seventh Edition of Liddell and Scott 's Greek-English Lexicon (1889; reprint, London: Oxford University Press 1972), 118 (henceforth referred to as "Liddell and Scott"). Sumphonia means a concord or unison of sound (e.g., 634e). Asumphonous means, of course, discordant (e.g., 777d) (Liddell and Scott, 127 and 765). Prosarmozo means to fit to, thus to suit (e.g., 712b) (Liddell and Scott, 686). Emmeles means sounding in unison, in tune, hence suitable or proper (e.g., 776b) (Liddell and Scott, 253). Sunodos means singing or sounding in unison (e.g., 837e) (Liddell and Scott, 781). To grasp Plato's doctrine of harmony in the Laws, it would be necessary to parse through his usage of these words, hence, to define them somewhat more articulately than Liddell and Scott do. Unfortunately, Pangle, who is otherwise quite accurate, does not consistently reflect even the distinctions drawn by Liddell and Scott. See the relevant passages in Pangle, The Laws of Plato.
6. Edward A. Lippman, Musical Thought in Ancient Greece (New York: Da Capo, 1964), 3. Plato uses several different terms in the Laws to express various aspects of the idea of harmony. He uses harmonia to mean harmony proper, a concord of sounds (e.g., 625d). An Intermediate Greek-English Lexicon, Founded upon the Seventh Edition of Liddell and Scott 's Greek-English Lexicon (1889; reprint, London: Oxford University Press 1972), 118 (henceforth referred to as "Liddell and Scott"). Sumphonia means a concord or unison of sound (e.g., 634e). Asumphonous means, of course, discordant (e.g., 777d) (Liddell and Scott, 127 and 765). Prosarmozo means to fit to, thus to suit (e.g., 712b) (Liddell and Scott, 686). Emmeles means sounding in unison, in tune, hence suitable or proper (e.g., 776b) (Liddell and Scott, 253). Sunodos means singing or sounding in unison (e.g., 837e) (Liddell and Scott, 781). To grasp Plato's doctrine of harmony in the Laws, it would be necessary to parse through his usage of these words, hence, to define them somewhat more articulately than Liddell and Scott do. Unfortunately, Pangle, who is otherwise quite accurate, does not consistently reflect even the distinctions drawn by Liddell and Scott. See the relevant passages in Pangle, The Laws of Plato.
7. Following the accepted approach to the Laws, Glenn Morrow believes that philosophy and law are interdependent, "exercising a joint sovereignty in philosophically formulated law." Glenn R. Morrow, Plato's Cretan City: A Historical Interpretation of the Laws (1960; reprint, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993), xvi. Morrow believes that the law is "a kind of formal sovereign, a politically authoritative expression of the insights of philosophy, so far as they bear upon the ordering of states" (p. 576). What gives law (nomos) its authority (its title to rule in Plato's terms) is the intelligence (nous) it contains, and it is the job of philosophy to apprehend this intelligence and mold it into legislation. "At the same time," Morrow argues, law becomes essential to the effective authority of philosophy; for it is not abstract theoretical insights that govern the city, but these insights formulated in legal terms and publicly declared as rules for the ordering of the state. There would thus be a kind of compound sovereignty - of legal technique and scientific knowledge, neither of which is capable of accomplishing its political task without the other, (pp. 576-77) Morrow's discussion of the relationship between philosophic knowledge and law is correct. But he is wrong about what is sovereign: neither law, nor philosophy, nor a compound of the two is sovereign in Plato's city. Games are.
8. The translation is from Seth Bernardete, Plato's Statesman (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986).
9. Eric Rasmusen, Games and Information: An Introduction to Game Theory (Oxford, UK: Basil Blackwell, 1989), 22, 24.
10. Ibid., 22.
11. Ibid., 26.
12. Ibid.
13. Ibid., 27.
14. Game theory assumes that players are rational but not necessarily that they have common knowledge that they are rational. See Robert Gibbons, Game Theory of Applied Economists (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992), 4-7.
15. John Rawls, "Two Concepts of Rules," Philosophical Review 64 (1955): 3-32 (1955). Reprinted in Philippa Foot, ed., Theories of Ethics (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1967), 144-70, at 158 (page citations are to the reprint).
16. John Rawls, "Two Concepts of Rules," Philosophical Review 64 (1955): 3-32 (1955). Reprinted in Philippa Foot, ed., Theories of Ethics (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1967), 144-70, at 158 (page citations are to the reprint).
17. Rawls, "Two Concepts of Rules," 158.
18. In John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, MA: Belknap, 1971).
19. J.J.C. Smart proposes this in "Extreme and Restricted Utilitarianism," Philosophical Quarterly (1956): 344-54 (1956). Reprinted in Foot, Theories of Ethics, 171-83, at 179.
20. J.J.C. Smart proposes this in "Extreme and Restricted Utilitarianism," Philosophical Quarterly (1956): 344-54 (1956). Reprinted in Foot, Theories of Ethics, 171-83, at 179.
21. Rawls, "Two Concepts of Rules," 162.
22. Stanley Cavell has criticized Rawls's application of practice rules to moral life (and, by extension, presumably to political life as well). Practice rules, he says, define the actions they regulate. Thus, it is true that a strike is a strike only because the rules of baseball define a strike, just as a will is a will just because the Law of Wills defines a will. In moral (and by extension, political) life, in contrast, rules do not define the actions they regulate. Moral (and political) struggle is about defining actions as much as it is about finding or promulgating rules. Hence, the game model is peculiarly inappropriate for moral (and political) questions. Stanley Cavell, The Claim of Reason: Wittgenstein, Skepticism, Morality, and Tragedy (Oxford, UK Clarendon, 1979), 306-7. Surely Cavell is right about morality (and politics) in general, and Plato clearly understood the opacity of political life to law (Statesman, 294a-c; Laws, 767a-b - judges are rulers of sorts, 769a-770c - laws must sometimes be made more precise, 951c - legal customs must sometimes be corrected). But Plato's point in the Laws is that citizens who approach political life as a game will make it transparent to legal regulation, eliminating the struggle over definition. Plato kicks the political struggle over definition into the second-order, divine game of law-giving. Plato's implicit response to Cavell is that citizens can indeed approach political life as a game when the city embraces a culture of games and when divine lawgivers have already played the second-order game of definition.
23. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Judgement, trans. James Creed Meredith (Oxford, UK: Clarendon, 1928), 38-39.
24. Ibid., 223.
25. Immanuel Kant, The Metaphysical Elements of Justice, trans. John Ladd (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1965), 19.
26. See, for example, Peter Goodrich, Oedipus Lex: Psychoanalysis, History, Law (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995). Gilles Deleuze has proposed a pure or ideal game in which each player remakes the rules with each move. Unlike the partial games of ordinary experience, where rules are fixed and moves determinate, the product of Deleuze's game is neither victory nor defeat, but thought and art. Deleuze's game resembles the godlike game of the Laws. The difference is that god does not remake the rules of the universe. Deleuze: agrees that his ideal game is nonsense, that because it would amuse no one, not even god would play it. But precisely because it is nonsense, it is the unconscious of thought - what thought does not realize, but which makes thought possible. Deleuze has thus rediscovered Plato's thought that in order to be playful, intelligence must repeat its operations, that the gods and godlike men do not follow rules, but play with them. The only constraint Plato imposes on god, in order to preserve the limited frame of being in the Laws, is that god refrain from changing the rules of the universe. God is thus less free to play than are godlike men or the gods. The game of the Laws is thus partial, just like the games of ordinary experience. Unlike Deleuze's game, the games in the Laws "refer to another type of activity, labor, or morality, whose caricature or counterpart they are, and whose elements they integrate in a new order." Gilles Deleuze, The Logic of Sense (New York: Columbia University Press, 1990), 59. Nevertheless, Plato agrees with Deleuze that god could play the ideal game. She just chooses not to.
27. See, for example, Peter Goodrich, Oedipus Lex: Psychoanalysis, History, Law (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995). Gilles Deleuze has proposed a pure or ideal game in which each player remakes the rules with each move. Unlike the partial games of ordinary experience, where rules are fixed and moves determinate, the product of Deleuze's game is neither victory nor defeat, but thought and art. Deleuze's game resembles the godlike game of the Laws. The difference is that god does not remake the rules of the universe. Deleuze: agrees that his ideal game is nonsense, that because it would amuse no one, not even god would play it. But precisely because it is nonsense, it is the unconscious of thought - what thought does not realize, but which makes thought possible. Deleuze has thus rediscovered Plato's thought that in order to be playful, intelligence must repeat its operations, that the gods and godlike men do not follow rules, but play with them. The only constraint Plato imposes on god, in order to preserve the limited frame of being in the Laws, is that god refrain from changing the rules of the universe. God is thus less free to play than are godlike men or the gods. The game of the Laws is thus partial, just like the games of ordinary experience. Unlike Deleuze's game, the games in the Laws "refer to another type of activity, labor, or morality, whose caricature or counterpart they are, and whose elements they integrate in a new order." Gilles Deleuze, The Logic of Sense (New York: Columbia University Press, 1990), 59. Nevertheless, Plato agrees with Deleuze that god could play the ideal game. She just chooses not to.