As far as the theory of regime in ancient political philosophy is concerned, the classical discussion in Plato's Republic Volume VIII and Aristotle's Politics Volume III are familiar to scholars. For Plato, "the most political work" [1] [1] ）Little attention has been paid to the study of regime in Volume III of the Law [2] 。 Before dealing with this part of the text, it is necessary to briefly review the discussion of regime in the Republic. In fact, at the end of the fourth volume of the Republic, after the analogy between city-state justice and individual justice, Socrates proposed the relevant degree and type of five regimes of city-state to seek personal happiness. The first form of government is monarchy or aristocratic politics: "If one prominent individual among the rulers holds power, it is called monarchy; if more than two rulers hold power, it is called aristocratic politics." It was not until the eighth volume that Socrates began to discuss the evolution of the other four regimes: the honorary regime (Spartan and Crete regimes), the oligarchy, the democratic regime, and the tyrant regime. (544C-D 313) and elaborated the internal principles of the evolution of the four regimes.
The discussion on regime in the Law Chapter is after the issue of soul education (Volume I and Volume II). In the first volume, a stranger in Athens came up and asked Krinias the Crete: "Who made the laws of your city, God or man?" 624a entered the dialogue. After Crinias and Megillus, a Spartan, said that God had established laws such as the sharing system for Crete and Sparta based on the purpose of war, and explained that the virtue of "courage" was the dominant thought of Crete's law, the strangers in Athens rejected this view, believing that only four virtues (prudence, moderation, justice and courage, see 631c-631d) It is not appropriate for one of them to dominate the law, and thus introduced the discussion of Jiujiao to identify what is true courage and the relationship between other virtues. In the second volume, strangers in Athens turned to music discussion. Through the edification of music on human soul, the equal relationship and related relationship between justice and happiness were combined through music, making music education a tool to cultivate virtue.
At the beginning of the third volume, strangers in Athens began to discuss the origin of the political system (676a). He believed that at the beginning, there were many states and different forms of political system (676c). Later, a big flood, plague and other disasters made these countries all perish, leaving only the shepherds (677a-677b) living on the top of the mountain, and the city states living on the plains and seashore were all destroyed 677c. For the preserved mountain people, all skills are basically untraceable, and there is no 678c-678d in copper and iron. At this time, because of their small number, they would not compete for food because they were "short of meat and milk" (679a). At the same time, because they were short of metal, they would not become rich, so they would not fight with each other. Civil war and war did not exist at that time. Athenian strangers call this state "na? Ve simplicity". "They are not only more simple and brave, but also more moderate, and more just in all aspects," (679e). At this time, they do not need legislators, but rely on habit and ancestral law to rule (680a). Athenian strangers call it the "dynastic" period, and use Homer's verse to support 680b-680c, which is classified as a savagery 。
As the number of people gradually increased later, they began to move to the foot of the mountain (the Athenian stranger quoted Homer's poem, that is, at that time, Elion had not yet been established, and people lived at the foot of the mountain, 681a - 682b). At this time, the originally scattered tribes began to get closer, and their customs and ancient laws gradually became diverse and diverse, Here comes the origin of legislation. At this time, one person selects a law that is most conducive to the community from the laws of each tribe, lists it clearly, and obtains the consent of the leaders of each tribe. This person is called the legislator; By this time, the regime had turned to Monarchy or Aristocracy (680e-681d)
Then people began to come down from the mountains. "When they reached the vast and beautiful plain, they established Ilion". (682b) At this time, they almost forgot about the flood, began to approach the plain and the seaside (mainly because of population reproduction), and began to overcome their fear of the sea and use it. Then came the world-famous Trojan War. After the Greeks besieged Ilion, they returned home. However, the soldiers were not met with "grand reception, but were assassinated, massacred and exiled on a large scale" 682e, because when they were far away in the battlefield, "young people launched a rebellion in their hometown." (682d) This was the third regime.
However, the exiled people returned to Greece with the title of Dorians (because a man named Dorieus united them) and established the fourth regime, the so-called "nation" (683a), which is the prototype of Spartan regime. In particular, this statement is consistent with the so-called "historical facts". Thucydides wrote: "Even after the Troyes War, Greek residents were still in a state of migration; there were always migration and resettlement, so there was no chance of peaceful development. After a long time, the Greek army returned from Troyes. This fact itself has caused many changes. Almost all cities have partisan struggles; Those who were exiled built new cities. Sixty years after the fall of Troyer, the modern Biotia people were driven out of Ani by the Thessalians and settled in the present place of Biotia, which used to be called Cadmis. Twenty years later, the Dorians and the descendants of Heculi occupied the Peloponnese Peninsula [3] 。” Herodotus also described the relationship between the Dorians and Sparta in this way: "The most powerful of the Greek city-state, among the Doris, is the Lachdemon, while among the Ionians, is the Athenian [4] 。”
Later, Dorian people were divided into three countries: Argos, Messene and Lacedaimon. They reached an agreement with each other and announced in the name of Zeus that if a country subverted the regime or changed the law, an alliance composed of other countries would fight against it. Its purpose was to ensure that the three countries could maintain the long-term stability of the fourth regime. But in the end, only Sparta completed the mission. Why? Strangers in Athens believed that "the reason why the kings and the whole cause were destroyed" was due to "an evil, especially ignorance of the most important affairs of mankind" (688c). Here, the strangers in Athens returned to the question raised in Volume I again. It was not enough to have the virtue of courage alone, but also needed wisdom and prudence (688e). Later, the strangers in Athens classified the matrixes of political system into "monarchy" and "democracy" to illustrate prudence. The historical sample of monarchy is Persia, while democracy is Athens. Persia once had a monarchy based on the interests of all. In Cyrus, the interests of the people and the power of the monarch were well integrated, "cleverly reconciling freedom and obedience" (694a). However, because Cyrus neglected the education of his son Gambissis, entrusted him to women to raise him because of the war and pampered him, which made him lack of restraint, and finally corrupted the Persian regime (694c-695b). Then Darius reversed this trend, but Darius still failed to learn the lessons of Cyrus in the important task of educating his children, making his son Xerxes grow up again in a luxurious environment (695d), and finally making Persia completely corrupt, "They excessively deprived the people of their freedom and committed themselves to introducing more authoritarian elements, destroying the friendship and community in the city-state" (697c-697d)
On the contrary, in Athens, the ancestral "awe" of God and the "fear" brought by the Persian invasion enabled people to obey the law and rulers, and established friendship and harmony in the city-state (698b-699c). However, after the victory in Athens in the Persian War, the Persians suffered the same experience as the Persians (699e). The Persians forced the people to turn the corner out of complete obedience, while the Athenians encouraged the people to move towards the opposite of unrestrained and complete freedom. Since then, due to the corruption of music (such as the destruction of discipline control, rhythm form and other ancestral systems), people have been "gripped by crazy and unrestrained desire for joy, and mixed laments and hymns" 700d-e, making the whole city-state a "twisted theater regime", replacing a "aristocratic regime" of music, (701a) The city-state was corrupted, and the people no longer obeyed the rulers and laws.
At this time, the stranger in Athens concluded that legislators should focus on three things when making laws: freedom, friendship and wisdom (701d). Therefore, he chose "two kinds of regimes, namely, the extreme of autocratic regime and the extreme of free regime", namely, Persians and Athenians. Strangers in Athens then hoped to pursue a regime that was in line with the moderation. Obviously, what he described to Megillus, a Spartan, was the Spartan regime, so the discussion of the Law returned to the question raised at the beginning. Here, Krinias joined the dialogue. After a series of historical discussions on the issue of regime, he proposed:
"Most Cretans are trying to find a colony and entrust this work to the Knossos. Knossos has entrusted this matter to me and nine colleagues. Our main task is to make laws if we find the laws there are satisfactory; But if we find that the laws in other places are better, we will not hesitate to use them to legislate without rejecting them because they are from foreign countries. You help ourselves - you and I - to do the same thing. Let us build a city-state in words and build it from the source. " （702c－702d）
Thus, it entered the legislative stage starting from the fourth volume.
We can see that the most striking difference between the discussion of regime in the Law and the Republic is that in the Law, the Crete and Spartan regimes are the beginning of the dialogue and the focus of the dialogue. They are also the regimes most favored by strangers in Athens (who replaced Socrates in Plato's other dialogues) in the historical discussion of regimes, In the Republic, this kind of regime is regarded as "honorary regime", which belongs to the second place (the first is the monarchy or aristocracy). Why is this difference?
At the end of the third volume of the Law, it puts forward the idea of "building a city-state in words", which immediately reminds people of the famous sentence in the Republic: "a good polis in logos, 472E". This similarity makes people feel that at first glance, the Law also has an ideal element. However, we should not forget that in the Republic, the discussion of the regime is inherent in the construction of the ideal city-state in his Rogues. In other words, in the Republic, the time evolution of the regime is not a historical evolution, but a theoretical deduction, which is Sugradi's philosophical thinking about the nature of the regime and the reasons for its change. In the Law, the discussion about the regime was conducted before "building a city-state in words". In a sense, the third volume of the Law is one of the few real historical studies in Plato's works, which has quoted a lot of Homer for him, And the mutual verification with historians such as Thucydides and Herodotus (as shown above). In other words, if the discussion of the regime in the Republic is conducted from a natural perspective, the discussion in the Law is more from a historical perspective.
We can also note that in the Republic, the discussion of regime is subject to the discussion of city-state justice, and the discussion of city-state justice corresponds to individual justice. The ultimate solution is the theme of what kind of life is happiness for individuals, that is, "What is justice?" In a sense, it is a discussion about the limit of the best regime, the idea of the best regime, that is, to abandon all restrictions (the most restrictive element hidden in the Republic is the human body) and see what the best form of governance is, so it is a real "city in words" and "city in heaven" (594B). In the Law Chapter, the discussion of regime is "what is law"? "Who is the legislator"? Under the guidance of such questions, the historical study of the regime ultimately serves the legislators' establishment of the same "verbal city-state", but this "verbal city-state" is undoubtedly on the ground (for example, starting from Volume IV, strangers in Athens began to discuss the city-state's geographical location, number of people, various systems, etc. in detail). Therefore, we can roughly say that for the Republic, the discussion of regime serves the "heavenly city-state", so the regimes of Sparta and Crete are the second best; In the Law, the historical study of the regime serves the "city-state on the ground", so the regimes of Sparta and Crete may be the best. Here, the distinction between nature and history is crucial. In other words, Plato actually raised the question whether politics can be established only by natural reason or must rely on history and religion [5] ？ In modern times, this topic was taken over in the decisive debate between Filmer and Locke. The former built its patriarchal monarchy relying on the history and religion of Greece, Rome and Hebrew, and even the legal tradition of England [6] The latter launched an attack with natural reason, opening a peak in the theory of natural rights. Today, we still need to return to Plato to better understand this important dispute in modern political thought.
