Plato on the Rule of Law

David Lay Williams

Professor of Political Science
DePaul University

David.Williams@depaul.edu
773-325-4906

To be presented at the Jack Miller Center panel:

"Rule of Law Abroad:

Should the United States Promote Rule of Law Programs around the World?”

DePaul University College of Law

February 23, 2017

1. Introduction: Who Will Save Us – Gods or Men?

It seems that superhero stories are big these days. Batman, Superman, Iron Man, X-Men,

Spiderman, and even the Green Hornet, among others. One reason that these heroes are

the objects of fascination to audiences is because of their ability, as it were, to save us from

ourselves. Us normal folks, for various reasons, almost inevitably find ourselves on the

brink of disaster. And our disasters are generally brought about by a combination of very

human failures – selfishness, greed, the lust to dominate others, and myriad other flaws,

vices, and sins. The appeal of superhero stories, however, is that no matter how close we

might approach catastrophe and devastation, the heroes swoop in, remove the offending

elements from our population, and offer the rest of us a chance to move forward with our

lives until the next cataclysm.

In the Ancient world, of course, the gods often played the role of these

superheroes. If one reads either the poetry of Homer or the history of Herodotus, one finds
gods earnestly intervening in human affairs so as to save one city or another from

destruction. The Iliad, for example, is littered with gods variously taking the sides of the

Greeks or the Trojans, intervening with supernatural deeds to correct wrongs and set their

people on a favorable course. Similarly, Herodotus’s Histories, written in the early 5th century

BCE, employs gods involved at various levels nudging the events of the Persian Wars in

favor of the Greeks so that they might stave off their Persian nemesis. On these accounts

embodied in Homer and Herodotus, the gods exist and they take an earnest interest in

saving us both from our enemies and from ourselves.

It is worth noting that the Persian Wars with its account of intervening gods

took place not long after the long reign of the Athenian tyrant, Pisistratus. While perceived

by the masses as a benevolent tyrant, who confiscated the property of aristocrats and

redistributed it to the lower classes, he did so without the benefit of laws. He ruled by fiat or

arbitrary decree. This is the classical definition of a tyrant – someone who rules without

regard to law. It is the rule of the leader’s whims.

I am admittedly speculating here, but one cannot help but imagine, however

popular Pisistratus’s reforms might have been, there was sense of unease with this kind of

rule. Because for every popular tyrant, such as Pisistratus, there are surely many other

vicious tyrants who would instinctually abuse this arbitrary rule for personal gain. Thus, one

might reason, the need for gods to enforce limits, correct human errors and abuses, and

restore an ordered justice. A world with tyrants requires gods to step in and correct the

abuses. In this way, Herodotus’s gods are a helpful and even necessary cosmic corrective

force in an unstable and otherwise arbitrary world.

The next great Greek historian after Herodotus was Thucydides, who

recorded the events of the Peloponnesian War. And while he was merely a generation after

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Herodotus, his history is strikingly different from his predecessor in one relevant respect: the

gods are no longer intervening. The events of this war unfold in ways that he attributes

entirely to human and other natural causes. If there were still gods, the implication, it seems

to me for our purposes, is that if anyone is to be saved, it must be us, and not the gods,

doing the saving. It is in this context that I would like us to think about the origins of the

rule of law in Ancient Athens and specifically Sophocles’s great tragedy, Antigone.

2. Sophocles’s Antigone and the Rule of Law

The first serious defense of the rule of law in the Western world can be found in Sophocles’s

tragedy, Antigone. Let me provide a brief recap of the plot. Antigone’s brother, Polynices,

had taken up arms against his home city of Thebes and died at the hands of his and

Antigone’s brother. The Thebian king, Creon, had decreed before this had happened that

no traitor would receive the burial rites to which all citizens were otherwise entitled. Such

corpses were to be left to the buzzards. Despite the edict, Antigone insists that she has an

obligation transcending the law – one based on family kinship and the will of the gods. She

then takes it upon herself to provide her fallen brother with burial rites all on her own, even

as her own sister reminds her that this would “violate the laws and override the fixed decree

of the throne” (72-73). Upon discovery of the illicit burial, King Creon is outraged. He

confronts Antigone, who confesses her crime, appealing above the city’s laws to “the great

unwritten, unshakable traditions” (504-505). Creon is unimpressed, insisting that her

primary obligations are to the city’s laws. He is also unimpressed by the defense of her

fiancée, Haemon, who happens to be Creon’s own son. As he engages Antigone and

Haemon successively, Creon grows increasingly angry and impatient, insisting that Antigone

must die for her crime. It is only when his counselor and prophet, Tiresias, warns him that

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his severity might have been carried too far that he relents. But by the time that he locates

Antigone, he finds a scene of carnage. Antigone has killed herself in anticipation of her

execution. Creon’s son, Haemon, has killed himself when discovering the loss of his fiancé.

And Creon’s wife, Eurydice, has also killed herself when discovering that she has lost her

beloved son. Creon is left alone at the conclusion, left to contemplate how everything has

gone wrong.

For audiences in the 20th and 21st centuries, Antigone is typically the most

sympathetic character. On the surface, she resembles heroes who have stood up against

unjust laws – such as Martin Luther King, Jr. and Mahatma Ghandi. But scholars have

noted that when the play was first produced, Creon was far more sympathetic, specifically

because of his defense of the rule of law. Creon announces his principles clearly before he

even learns of Antigone’s offense:

. . . And whoever places a friend

above the good of his own country, he is nothing:
I have no use for him. Zeus is my witness,
Zeus who sees all things, always –

I could never stand by silent, watching destruction

march against our city, putting safety to rout,
nor could I ever make that man a friend of mine
who menaces our country. Remember this:
our country is our safety.
Only while she voyages true on course
can we establish friendships, truer than blood itself.
Such are my standards. They make our city great (203-214).

Creon’s point was clear to his Athenian audiences. If we fail to prioritize the city over

relations of blood and private friendships, the city itself is not ruled by law – it is ruled by

what we in the 21st century call “patronage.” Such a city, in Creon’s estimation, does not

long endure. Indeed, Pisistratus’s own tyrant son, Hippias, was viewed as having fickle

loyalties because of his own family connections to Persia. A rule of law establishes a fixed

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and legal equality of all citizens that provides the foundations for a functional democracy.

So when Antigone challenges the rule of law on the grounds that she has greater obligations

to her family than to her law, she is effectively challenging the very status and legitimacy of

the state itself. This is why the crime of treason merits such severe penalties.

Creon subsequently elaborates on why he so prizes the rule of law:

But whoever steps out of line, violates the laws

or presumes to hand out orders to his superiors,
he’ll win no praise from me. But that man
the city places in authority, his orders
must be obeyed, large and small,
right and wrong.

Anarchy –
Show me a greater crime in all the earth!
She, she destroys cities, rips up houses,
Breaks the ranks of spearmen into headlong rout.
But the ones who last it out, the great mass of them
owe their lives to discipline. Therefore
we must defend the men who live by law (746-757).

Without fidelity to the rule of law, and anticipating the subsequent logic of Thomas Hobbes,

we are necessarily returned not only to patronage, but also almost certainly to anarchy – that

which “destroys cities, rips up houses,” as Creon memorably warns. The rule of law is our

superhero, our Greek god – that which prevents us from doing horrific things to one

another. And so long as it is maintained, so Creon argues, we can live among one another

peacefully and with a degree of equality.

3. Correcting the Abuses of Creon: The Lessons of Plato

Of course, Antigone is a tragedy. This is because despite the fact that Creon is right to defend

the rule of law, his power to make that law goes to his head increasingly throughout the

story. Whereas he begins with a sober defense of the rule of law, near the end he adopts the

disposition of an autocrat or tyrant. In the argument with his son, he is so angered that he

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barks, “The city is the king’s – that’s the law!” (825). Thus in the span of a few dozen pages,

Creon is transformed from a defender of the rule of law against anarchy, by the end he has

undermined the rule of law by elevating his whim to serve as the law itself. He no longer

appears bound by the laws – he stands above them. This is what makes Creon a tragic

character.

Plato was born in Athens not long after Sophocles and surely knew

Sophocles’s works, including Antigone. Although one cannot claim with certainty that he was

inspired by this work to write on politics and the law, he visits the same intellectual terrain.

His most celebrated work today, The Republic, seems to downplay the importance of laws.

While his utopian city occasionally references the laws, it is not a point of emphasis. The

city is ruled by philosopher-kings, distinguished by two attributes: virtue and intelligence.

Plato goes some distance to assure that his rulers will be accomplished on both dimensions –

subjecting them to an education extending for fifty years before they are able to assume high

office. But once they arrive there, he does not worry about them abusing power. They will

not become tyrants like Hippias, nor will their character decline when pushed, like Creon,

into autocratic tendencies. They are the bedrocks upon which the entire state rests. As

such, Plato is comfortable in permitting them to rule more or less by fiat – since their

intelligence and virtue assures that they will consistently make wise choices benefitting the

whole community.

Naturally, resting power in a small number of hands requires supreme

confidence in the integrity of those rulers. And a frequent criticism leveled against Plato, by

people like Karl Popper, is that it is naïve to rest this degree of power in anyone’s hands.

Yet this criticism does not consider Plato’s own revisions to his political and legal theory.

Specifically, it ignores his two subsequent political dialogues – The Statesman and The Laws.

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With regard to The Statesman, Plato importantly outlines the Myth of Two Ages. The two

ages of this myth are of Cronus and Zeus respectively. In the age of Cronus, a god has spun

the earth clockwise, opposite of its normal course, which has the effect of subjecting

humankind to the political rule of the gods. Because the gods are both wise and good, they

rule without law and do so with perfectly benevolent effects. Plato describes it thus: “So it

befell that savagery was nowhere to be found nor preying of creature on creature, nor did

war rage nor any strife whatsoever.” He goes on to describe this lawless earth as a

“paradise” (Statesman, 271e). The story, however, continues with the celestial god returning

the earth back to its normal counter-clockwise rotation. This has the effect of casting the

governing gods from the earth, hence leaving humanity to run its own affairs. This is now

the Age of Zeus. At first, human beings had a good memory of how the gods were running

things before, and did their best to model their rule on what the gods had previously done.

But over time, each passing generation would forget a bit more until most of that wisdom

had been lost. At this point, the success of governments would hinge upon the limited

wisdom and virtue of humanity. And because of human limitations particularly with regard

to virtue, we would have to devise laws to which all citizens, including the rulers, would be

subject.

I want to stress here the importance of human frailties as Plato understands

them, since this is a common theme among philosophers, theologians, and jurists alike. In

his Laws, a dialogue dramatically set on a walk toward the Temple of Zeus, Plato’s

interlocutors stress these limitations: “human nature is not at all capable of regulating the

human things, when it possesses autocratic authority over everything, without becoming

swollen with insolence and injustice” (Laws, 713c). Human beings are not gods. They make

mistakes. They are tempted by power, wealth, and flattery. As such, the rulers must be

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accountable in a way that neither gods nor philosopher-kings are: they must themselves be

subjected to the rule of law. In this spirit, Plato explains that while the rulers enforce the

laws, they are at the same time subjected to them:

I have now applied the term ‘servants of the laws’ to the men usually said to be
rulers, not for the sake of an innovation in names but because I hold that it is this
above all that determines whether the city survives or undergoes the opposite.
Where the law is itself ruled over and lacks sovereign authority, I see destruction at
hand for such a place. But where it is despot over the rulers and the rulers are slaves
of the law, there I foresee safety and all the good things which the gods have given
good cities (Laws, 715d).

Plato’s passage is notable for three reasons. First, this ‘sovereignty of the law’ over the rulers

is precisely what subsequent scholars and statesmen, such as John Adams, would come to

call the ‘government of law and not of man.’ Rulers are distinguished not by their ability to

inspire obedience through fear, but rather to inspire obedience with their own obedience.

Second, the passage suggests that if there is a divine element here, it is in the rule of law itself

– that is, in the ability of human beings to manage their own affairs without further

interventions by and assistance from the gods. Third, it resembles one of the most

memorable passages from the Republic, in which Plato insists, “Until philosophers rule as

kings in their cities, or those who are nowadays called kings and leading men become

genuine and adequate philosophers so that political power and philosophy become

thoroughly blended together . . . cities will have not rest from evils” (473d). Plato modifies

this doctrine in The Laws, recognizing that it is not impossibly intelligent and virtuous rulers

we need, since they do not exist, but rather that our fate rests on controlling those in power

with laws.

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4. The Limits of General Rules and the Need for Virtue

While Plato is the first great champion of the rule of law, he was also keenly aware its

limitations. I don’t want to spend too much time on this now, but I’d like to make two

quick points so that we can appreciate, at least a little, Plato’s sophistication on the rule of

law. While it is abundantly clear in the Statesman and The Laws, that the rule of law is

required for any semblance of a thriving political community, we should not assume that

laws function as smoothly as would real-world philosopher-kings. The first limitation

pertains to the very nature of rules. They are, by their nature, general. They speak to the

usual cases. As such, they are prone to errors and exceptions in particular instances. As he

comments in his Statesman,

Law can never issue an injunction binding on all which really embodies what is best
for each; it cannot prescribe with perfect accuracy what is good and right for each
member of the community at any one time. The differences in human personality,
the variety of men’s activities, and the inevitable unsettlement attending all human
experience make it impossible for any art whatsoever to issue unqualified rule
holding good on all questions at all times (Statesman, 294ab).

Laws pertain to the general case. They do not speak to the exceptions that inevitably emerge

in practical living. Accepting this difficulty is a necessary feature of living without the

benevolent dictates of philosopher-kings or gods.

A second difficulty, Plato observes, is the assumption that we can solve all of

our problems with laws. In his Republic, he draws out an analogy between the sick city and

the sick person. A sick person with bad habits is constantly feeling ill. He looks for

medicines and potions to make himself feel better. Yet as soon as he treats one symptom,

another emerges. Consider the obese person. The overwhelmingly most common cause of

obesity is poor dietary and exercise habits. So what happens if we try to treat the symptoms

with drugs and surgeries? Chances are, the problems are only solved in a partial way for a

short period of time. Then the old problems return – often along with some new ones as

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well. Gastric by-pass surgery or liposuction is only good so long as the patients reform their

habits after their procedures. If they don’t, they have gotten no better, and probably a bit

worse. The same is true with the laws. Most social and political problems cannot be solved

with statutes. Laws against one variety of insider-trading will inspire the wicked to invent

new ones. Drug-testing in athletics is a hopeless way of addressing the real problem of

steroids. The clever and determined athletes will simply find new drugs and new ways of

evading detection. The best solution, argues Plato, is to give citizens a good education from

the beginning. Teach them what virtue is. Train them in good habits. Beyond this, we need

to eliminate temptations for being wicked. For Plato this meant, among other things,

prohibiting obscene wealth, eliminating private property for rulers, and teaching citizens to

value one another as siblings. These will go much further to achieving the desired effects

rather than simply passing a new law that will surely be ignored or circumvented.

5. A Few Thoughts on the Rule of Law & the Community of Nations

The topic of this panel encourages us to think about the rule of law beyond national borders,

specifically, whether or not the United States should promote it abroad. Plato obviously

does not directly address this question, as he wasn’t even aware of the existence of our

continent! But I imagine he would surely think the rule of law anywhere to be good for

people everywhere. If the Greeks were right, the alternative to the rule of law was some

version of tyrannical or autocratic rule. This is power without limits. In this context, I want

to remind us once again of Plato’s mature thoughts about unlimited powers: “human nature

is not at all capable of regulating the human things, when it possesses autocratic authority

over everything, without becoming swollen with insolence and injustice.” When autocrats

and tyrants become “swollen with insolence and injustice,” there is no reason to assume that

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their lust for power will stop at national boundaries. They are unaccustomed to respecting

boundaries and limits. They may not even have a fully-developed concept of such notions.

As such, it seems clear that autocratic and tyrannical nations are a genuine threat to others by

their very nature. And as such, as a general principle, it seems obvious that all nations

making a good-faith effort to live under the rule of law ought to be encouraging all others to

do the same – not only for those living under autocratic rule, but for simple reasons of self-

interest and survival in the larger community of nations.

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