Conclusion

The Nomoi are historically the primary document of the school of thought that law and economics is today - or, better, of one way of pursuing this kind of thought and ‘method’ - and also the first formulated and detailed legal system that generally, and not incidentally, operates on law and economics principles.

This becomes particularly obvious once one is aware of the realistic character of the Nomoi as a classic utopia, with all its attendant features. Plato’s image and even goal should prevent neither the law and economics scholar nor the philosopher from seeing that the state of the Nomoi has a realistic impetus, and that realism implies facing the facts of reality and human performance. It is unimportant whether Plato uses law and economics principles in order to achieve ‘anti-capitalist’ goals.

The Nomoi give not only theoretical but also very practical attention to key law and economics tenets. Plato’s main emphasis is certainly on something else, but in the Nomoi he does create a legal system in which things are not taken for granted. We see, for instance, that in spite of general equality before the law, not all people have equal expertise; that not everyone might want, and thus should not be forced into, consumer-protecting interchange, and that a complex legal system, granting high damages, will not suffer from spurious claims. Merely to address a problem prima facie does not lead to its solution - rather, one must always remember what the goal of the law is and ascertain whether this is really fulfilled. We even find an early, probably the earliest, application of the Coase theorem. Therefore, this entry is not only justified, but necessary and inevitable.

Bibliography

Plato’s works are universally cited according to the pagination of a sixteenthcentury edition by Henricus Stephanus, without this usually being mentioned; which makes it possible to refer to the exact citation without listing an edition in the bibliography.

This citation consists of a (page) number, small letter (indicating the paragraph), and second (line) number, although most editions do not give the last. Unfortunately this system is not very useful, especially for non-classicists, because it pays little attention to units within the text. Benjamin Jowett’s translations into English are most frequently used; they also have the advantage of being available, under various addresses, on the Internet. The most relevant of Plato’s works for law and economics are, as mentioned, the political dialogues, Nomoi, Politikos and Politeia.

Regarding the nature of Plato’s political writings and their implications, next to Gadamer (1985, 1991a, 1991b, as well as several other essays on the topic), Salin (1921) is particularly interesting. Good summaries of the economic system of the Nomoi, or of Plato’s economics generally, regardless of the normative judgement some of them make, include Espinas (1914), Bisinger (1925: 56-91), Pohlmann (1925: 171-91, 238-45), Lacour-Gayet (1945) Rameil (1973) and Schefold (1989: 25-33). Among the best investigations of the legal aspects of the Nomoi, especially regarding criminal law, which take seriously the encompassing regulations as a system, are Shuchman (1963), Stalley (1983), and Saunders (1991), even if they do not start, or only incidentally so, from the classical-utopian character of the Nomoi as argued in this entry. Plato and law and economics are discussed by the author in Drechsler (1998, 2002b, 2003), on which the revised version of this entry is based.

Notes

1. The view of the Politeia as a utopia in which the individual counts for nothing at all, as an early form of totalitarianism, strongly sustained by Karl Popper (1966), overlooks that one of the most important motives of Plato’s political thought, if not the central one, is the defence against threatening tyranny (especially Koyre, 1962: 97, 152). For a general critique of Popper on Plato, see Gadamer (1991a).

See, for example, the famous Nomoi 849e-850a, about which more below, or 921d (prohibition of interest); the classic statement in Pohlmann (1925: 185-7, 238-41). However, see also Klingenberg (1982) and particularly Rameil (1973, esp. 76-82). Rameil locates the primary goal of Plato’s economics in stability - economic as well as societal - but that only underlines these concerns: no system is as volatile as the free market, or capitalist, system.

3. This segment might be a display of what Gadamer calls Plato’s ‘Attic humor’ (1991b: 230), since Nomoi 849e-850a could easily be an ironic way of showing that the economics of the market depends on state structures, institutions and rules to function at all.

References

Arendt, H. (1990), ‘Philosophy and politics’, Social Research, 57 (1), 73-103.

Bisinger, J. (1925), Der Agrarstaat in Platons Gesetzen, Klio, Beih, 27 (NF 4), repr. 1963, Aalen: Scientia.

Campbell, W.F. (1985), ‘The free market for goods and the free market for ideas in the Platonic dialogues’, History of Political Economy, 7 (2), 187-97.

Coase, R.H. (1960), ‘The problem of social cost’, Journal of Law and Economics, 3, 1-44.

Drechsler, W. (1998), ‘Platons Nomoi als Objekt der Rechtsvergleichung', in Werner, Haberle, Kitagawa and Saenger (eds), Brucken fur die Rechtsvergleichung. Festschrift fur Hans G. Leser zum 70. Geburtstag, Tubingen: Mohr Siebeck, pp. 44-61.

Drechsler, W. (2002a), ‘Hans-Georg Gadamers Plato und die Dichter', in E.J. Pickerodt-Uthleb (ed.), Zukunft braucht Erfahrung. 475 Jahre Gymnasium Philippinum, Marburg: Gymnasium Philippinum.

Drechsler, W. (2002b), ‘Les Lois de Platon, fondement de l’Economie du droit’,RevueFranςaise dHistoire des Idees Politiques, 16: Les Lois de Platon, 399-410.

Drechsler, W. (2003), ‘Plato’s Nomoi as the basis of law and economics’, in S. Scolnicov and L. Brisson (eds), Plato’s Laws: From Theory Into Practice, St. Augustin: Academia.

Espinas, A. (1914). ‘L’art economique dans Platon’, Revue des Etudes Grecques, 27 (122), 105-29, and 27 (123-4), 236-65.

Gadamer, H.-G. (1985 [1934]), ‘Plato und die Dichter’, in Griechische Philosophie 1 = Gesammelte Werke 5, Tubingen: Mohr Siebeck; English translation, ‘Plato and the Poets’, in Dialogue and Dialectic: Eight Hermeneutical Studies on Plato, New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, 1980.

Gadamer, H.-G. (1991a [1983]), ‘Platos Denken in Utopien. Ein Vortrag vor Philologen’, in Griechische Philosophie 3: Plato im Dialog = Gesammelte Werke 7, Tubingen: Mohr Siebeck.

Gadamer, H.-G. (1991b [1988]), ‘Plato als Portratist’, Griechische Philosophie 3: Plato im Dialog = Gesammelte Werke 7, Tubingen: Mohr Siebeck, pp. 228-57.

Haliste, P. (1950), ‘Das Servitut der Wasserleitung in Platons “Gesetzen”’, Eranos, 48, 142-9.

Klingenberg, E. (1982), ‘Das Zinsrecht in Platons “Nomoi”’, in H.J. Wolf (ed.), Symposion 1977 — Akten der Gesellschaft fur griechische und hellenistische Rechtsgeschichte 3, Cologne: Bohlau, pp. 99-112.

Koyre, A. (1962 [1945]), ‘Introduction a la lecture de Platon’, in Introduction a la lecture de Platon suivi de Entretiens sur Descartes, repr. Paris: Gallimard, 1991.

Lacour-Gayet, J. (1945), Platon et l^,economie dirigee, Paris: Union.

Pohlmann, R. v. (1925), Geschichte der sozialen Frage und des Sozialismus 2, 3rd edn, Munich: Beck.

Popper, K.R. (1966 [1945]), The Open Society and Its Enemies 1: The Spell of Plato, 5th edn, 7th repr., London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1991.

Rameil, A. (1973), ‘Die Wirtschaftsstabilitat und ihre Problematik in Platos Gesetzesstaat’, PhD thesis, Ludwig-Maximilians-University, Munich.

Ryle, G. (1967), ‘Plato’, in The Encyclopedia of Philosophy 6, New York: Macmillan and Free Press; London: Collier Macmillan.

Salin, E. (1921), Platon und die griechische Utopie, Munich and Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot.

Saunders, T.J. (1991), Plato’s Penal Code. Tradition, Controversy, and Reform in Greek Penology, Oxford: Clarendon.

Schefold, B. (1989), ‘Platon und Aristoteles’, in J. Starbatty (ed.), Klassiker des Okonomischen Denkens 1: Von Platon bis John Stuart Mill, Munich: Beck, pp. 19-55.

Shuchman, P. (1963), ‘Comments on the Criminal Code of Plato’s Laws’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 24 (1), 25-40.

Stalley, R.F. (1983), An Introduction to Plato ^,s Laws, Oxford: Basil Blackwell.

Stigler, G.J. (1992), ‘Law or economics?’, Journal of Law and Economics, 35, 455-68.

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Source: Backhaus Jürgen G. (ed.). The Elgar Companion to Law And Economics. Second Edition. Edward Elgar,2005. – 777 p.2. 2005

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