CHECKS & BALANCES: NOTES ON PLATO'S LAWS.III (1)

AM | @agumack

"... Urheber der Theorie der Mischverfassung" — Alois Riklin

It is with great pleasure that I start today a series of posts on Laws.III and the ideas of mixed government and checks and balances. Laws.III is the starting point of what is to me the most important idea in the history of political science. I read and re-read the text with a sense of awe and admiration. I went to the secondary literature, always with a focus on mixed government and checks and balances. The last and longest of all Plato's dialogues (13,444 lines), and the only one that does not feature Socrates, Laws is, according to Dutch historian Gerhard J.D. Aalders (see), "de eerste en laatse plaats in Plato's werken waar de geschiedenis een rol speelt in het onderzoek". It is the first and last place in Plato's works where history plays a role in the investigation. 

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That alone seems to me a good reason to pay careful attention to Laws.III. So let us do it! I struggled for a time with how to write these posts. I have made up my mind. Partly due to time constraints, and partly because I could not get my hands around of copy of Glenn Morris' celebrated Plato's Cretan City: A Historical Interpretation of the Laws (Princeton, 1960), I will write these posts in no particular order. I'll go wherever the fancy takes me. I have discovered a good deal of excellent secondary litterature, most of which is available online. So let me start by presenting my sources.

- Laws. I am using the third edition of Las Leyes. Edición bilingüe, traducción, notas y estudio preliminar de José Manuel Pabón y Manuel Fernández-Galiano published in 1999 by Centro de Estudios Políticos y Constitucionales in Madrid (first edition 1960). I don't pretend to comment on the quality of the translation, although I will mention one or two discrepancies with other translations. As always, the Perseus bilingual Greek-English edition provides valuable additional resources

- Aalders. The Dutch historian's 1968 book, written in German, Die Theorie der gesmischten Verfassung in Altertum (Amsterdam: Hakkert), is one of the most widely cited sources for the early history of the theory of mixed government. While an entire chapter is devoted to Laws (pp. 38-49), two very short chapters deal with Menexenos and Letter VIII. Before turning 30, the Rotterdam-born historian had written a mémoire fully devoted to the third book of Laws: Het derde boek van Plato's Leges. Deel 1: Prolegomena (Amsterdam: H. J. Paris, 1943). I could only read this informative review in Antiquité classique. Aalders went on to announce a full blown commentary of Book III that, to the best of my knowledge, never saw the light of day.

- Nippel. Wilfried Nippel wrote what is surely the most widely quoted book on the history of the mixed government at the age of 28. Mischverfassungstheorie und Verfassungsrealität in Antike und früher Neuzeit (Bochum: Klett-Cotta, 1980) is, to say the least, a very challenging book to read. With untranslated quotes in Greek, Latin, French and old English (just like in Aalder's book), it is written in 'academic' German—and it is giving me a hard time indeed. There is a before and an after—following its publication, scholars appear to have adopted the term coined by W. Nippel: Mischverfassung instead of gemischte Verfassung.

With regards to Laws, the book contains extremely valuable, if polemic, material: (a) a presentation of Spartan institutions from both a nomistische and a kratistische point of view; (pp. 124-131); (b) another discussion of Sparta, this time with a historical approach (pp. 131-136); (c) an 'Exkursus' on the constitution proposed by Plato beyond Book III (pp. 136-142). To define Plato's views on Sparta, Wilfried Nippel proposes "das Theorem der Interorgankontrolle", which he deems more appropiate than a "vollausgebildete Theorie von checks-and-balances" (p. 129).

Much more on all this soon!

[TO BE CONTINUED: MORE SOURCE MATERIAL COMING UP]