Every Law Sucks

In my reading of the first half of Book 4 I lingered on Socrates’ narrative concerning inner strife within the city. Part of Socrates definition of the ideal city is that it does not set down laws promoting good manners and good morals but rather a city that allows it’s citizens to make these decisions according to their own judgment, which Socrates says will naturally gravitate towards being good due to the nature of the city. Socrates remarks to Adeimantus “But to set them down as laws is, I believe, foolish. Surely they don’t come into being, nor would they be maintained, by being set down as laws in speech and in writing.” (425b) However, Socrates does believe that a city must have good manners and good morals in order to function properly, these things just have to come into fruition of their own accord, not forced upon by the rulers. This led me to ponder the pro’s and cons of free speech, freedom of the press, freedom of religion, censorship and all of the other freedoms and laws concerning those freedoms we have today in America. If all forms of negativity within communication, religion, entertainment and all other facets of life are made illegal through laws (ex. Censoring profanity on television and in music, criminalization of drug usage, even acts of violence), then this does not necessarily accomplish our goals because the true character of the city is neither improved nor worsened but rather blotted out altogether. No one can tell if it is a just city or not because the citizens refrain from illegal activities in fear of being punished, not because they possess knowledge that persuades them against these illegal deeds. Eliminating the choice of the problem does not eliminate the problem itself. The ideal city is one that has NO LAWS yet remains lawful, one where people are able to murder and steal from one another without judicial consequence yet don’t do this because they know that it’s better for society as a whole if they don’t do these things. I believe America has partially failed in this category. We believe the simple act of making something illegal also magically educates the population into realizing why this particular thing is illegal. You cannot eliminate the human experience of trial and error. I’ve never murdered someone before, so how am I to know if murder will negatively affect me or not? I only know because our country’s rulers have established that murder is bad through laws and I’m supposed to trust the law. However, this doesn’t always work because not everyone trusts the government, even though in this case it’s the wise thing to do. In 427a Socrates remarks “I, for one, therefore thought that the true lawgiver wouldn’t have to bother with that class of things in the laws and the regime, either in a city with a bad regime or in one with a good regime-in the one case because it’s useless and accomplishes nothing; in the other, partly because anyone at all could find some of these things, and partly because the rest follow of themselves from the practices already.” The idea is that a city without laws from the very beginning will grow in such a way that it naturally develops good moral character because of trial and error. However, we can’t all afford to go through the trial and error process of breaking every law and realizing the negative consequences. We are forced to trust the laws given to us by the authorities because the laws are based upon the wisdom of people who have gone through trial and error before us. This is why we must place a greater emphasis on educating our youth as to why these laws are in place and less emphasis on blindly enforcing
Butttttttt……in order for a law preventing, let’s say murder, has to be set, at least one act of murder had to have been committed in the first place for us to realize that murder is bad and should be discouraged against. If murder had never occurred in the first place it wouldn’t exist and anti-murder laws also wouldn’t exist. I believe this is Socrates’ point, that the more absence of law there is the better because every law is merely a representation and consequence of some flaw in our city or society.