Laws (Book V) by Plato
This post is part of my journey through the classic texts of Western civilization.
Book V begins in typical Platonic fashion, with the Athenian Stranger expounding on the primacy of the soul over the body. The body is not be neglected; on the contrary, the Stranger emphasizes the need to honor the body. Nevertheless, special care ought to be taken in cultivating a virtuous soul and honoring it.
The way to honor the soul is to improve it. A man may praise his soul with word and gift, but if he improves it not, he merely honors the soul in appearance, not in actuality. The Stranger personifies the soul as having her own agency. To honor her is not to let her do whatever she wills, following her and praising her. We must cultivate virtue in her, teaching her and even resisting her at times. It is the life of virtue that will ultimately lead to the most pleasure, whereas the life void of virtue will lead to maximum pain.
"Let every man, then, freely strive for the prize of virtue, and let there be no envy."
Eventually, the Strangers returns to the creation and organization of the new colony they had been discussing prior. According to the Stranger, there are three forms of government. The first and highest form is that in which the citizens have all things in common: their wives, their children, property, etc. They even, in some way, "see and hear and act in common, and all men express praise and blame and feel joy and sorrow on the same occasions." No other state can surpass this one in virtue and happiness, and The Stranger says we ought to look to this state as the ideal to pursue.
"for there is no greater good in a state than that the citizens should be known to one another. When not light but darkness and ignorance of each other's characters prevails among them, no one will receive the honour of which he is deserving, or the power or the justice to which he is fairly entitled..."
The Stranger spends the rest of the book outlining the second form of government, which is the next ideal after the first. Among other things, he outlines the manner in which land/property is to be divided, how wives and children ought to be shared, how the population level must be managed, and the role of the legislators in all this. Particularly noteworthy is near the end of the book, where the Stranger remarks on the impossibility of achieving the ideal and the importance of achieving what is possible. He recognizes that the notion of a perfect number of citizens who will go along with the ideal vision without resistance is a dream. Nevertheless, it is important for the legislator to first draw up and think upon the perfect blueprint for the ideal state, even if it be unattainable. Only then does the legislator know what to strive for, and can properly and prudentially consider which parts are possible to implement and which parts would draw too much ire from the citizens.
"Politics is the art of the possible."
- Otto von Bismarck