CHECKS & BALANCES: NOTES ON PLATO'S LAWS.III (5)

AM | @agumack

"This innovative conception of constitutional mixture" — David Hahm

[See previous posts on Laws.III and checks & balances: 1, 2, 3, 4].

My 'review of the troops' continues today with three important papers. As I said in the previous post, the volume Le Gouvernement mixte. De l'idéal politique au monstre constitutionnel en Europe (XIIIe-XVIIe siècle), edited by Marie Gaille-Nikodimov, contains several interesting references to Laws.III. In an article devoted to François Hotman's Francogallia, Isabelle Bouvignies mentions the 1586 reference to Plato and the term frein : « Ainsi, bien qu'il y ait eu des rois, conclut Hotman, la domination monarchique a toujours eu des freins de façon, comme dit Platon, à ne pas verser dans las tyrannie ». Dr Bouvignies goes on to cite the Latin text: « ... tanquam freno coercendus est » (pp. 126-127) [†]. That's great! In my own ruminations about the origins of the term checks and balances, I traced the word freno all the way to Plato's τό ψάλιον—I am glad to see that my intuition made considerable sense! ("Sobre el origen de la expresión checks and balances", Contrapesos, Nov. 15, 2020). 

* * * 

- David E. Hahm (*). This paper has a tremendous merit: it allows us to make sense of Plato's two completely different versions of the mixed constitution in Laws.III—the racconto of the genesis of Spartan institutions and the counterpoint between Persia and Athens. Dr. Hahm establishes a clean break between these two ideas. Immediately, my mind traveled to G.B. Gwyn's explanation of how Montesquieu presented the separation of powers and the mixed regime as two overlapping concepts. No wonder Montesquieu was such a keen reader of Plato's Laws! (See "¿División o separación de poderes? (V)", August 2021). Dr. Hahm has nothing but praise for Plato: "More importantly, Plato here introduced for the first time in history the concept of curbs and checks among organs of government" (p. 185). While the analysis is less detailed than in other papers, this is more than made up by the concise interpretation of Plato's goals in Book III. 

(*) David E. Hahm: "The Mixed Constitution in Greek Thought", in Ryan K. Balot. A Companion to Greek and Roman Political Thought. Blackwell Publishing, 2009.
________________

- Stephen Hodkinson (*). Eager to downplay the historical significance of Sparta as a mixed regime, the author builds on Wilfried Nippel's view that Laecedemon embodied a network of Interorgankontrolle rather than a full blown system of checks and balances (p. 230). There are many insightful points: (a) the sequence of Plato's racconto: from divine to human agency; (b) the influence —and the differences— between Laws and Aristotle's Politics ("Aristotle is not immune to the influence of Plato's account of Sparta's politeia"); (c) the long footnotes, especially No. 21 on the Platonic Letter VIII, where the danger of an unchecked monarchy is more forcefully expressed than in Laws.III, and No. 23 on Archytas of Tarentum; (d) the position of Isokrates: "Isokrates' reference to 'aristocracy' instead of 'oligarchy' is linked to his insistence that Sparta's Likourgan constitution was not unique but divised in imitation of the ancestral Athenian constitution, for which the use of oligarchic terminology would have been offensive" (p. 233).

(*) Stephen Hodkinson: "The imaginary Spartan politeia", in Mogens Herman Hansen (ed.) The Imaginary Polis. Copenhagen: Det Kongelige Danske Videnskabernes Selskab, 2005 [review]
_________________

- Edmond Lévy (*). The great Athenian writers of the fourth century were no blind laconizers. Edmond Lévy's paper, widely cited in books on Sparta, is the result of a painstaking effort at compiling all or most of Plato's references to the history, the institutions and the society of contemporary Laecedemon. Of all the authors surveyed here, Dr. Lévy is perhaps the least versed in political theory. But this is more than made up, not only by his patient compilation of Platonic references, but also by his evident command of the many nuances of the Greek language. Thus we are rewarded by precise references to the concept of mixture: μεμειγμένη (691e: Lat. misceo, to mix, mix up, mingle), μείγνυσιν (691e: to be mixed up with, mingled among) and σύμμεικτος (692a: commingled). Lévy concludes: « L'éloge du régime lacédémonien que présente ici l'Athénien des Lois repose ainsi, comme il le souligne en conclusion, sur les notions complémentaires de mélange et de mesure, qui assurent la pérennité du régime » (p. 226).

(*) Edmond Lévy : « La Sparte de Platon », Ktéma : civilisations de l'Orient, de la Grèce et de Rome antiques, No. 30, 2005, pp. 217-236.

[†] Isabelle Bouvignies :  « Monarchie mixte et souveraineté des États chez les monarchomaques huguenots », pp. 117-138.

____________________