For human society, the greatest faith is to abide by the law and obey the law, because the law is about what should be done and what should not be done that is recognized by the vast majority of people in society, and it is necessary for individuals to act strictly according to it. --Kun Peng Theory
With the deepening of the study of the Republic, and then compared with spartan political system and social life, it is not difficult for us to find that in this ideal city-state built by Socrates with ideas, the shadow of Sparta flashes everywhere.
Why did Socrates (Plato) hold Sparta so high?
As Kun Peng said before, in their time, Athens was in decline, while Sparta was becoming stronger, and this gap made them involuntarily go to their opponents to find answers, and even think that as long as they were contrary to themselves, they were better than themselves.
In addition, Kun Peng theory believes that the following three points should also be added:
First, since homer's time, Sparta has been at the forefront of the entire Greek world, both in reality and mythology.
And in these two different categories Reeparta reached the essence of aggression and deprivation respectively:
In Homer's Epic, the Spartan king Menelaeus conquered the city of Troy and became the victor admired by all of Greece.
In reality, after the defeat of Athens in the two Greek-Persian Wars and later the Peloponnesian War, Sparta became the ultimate conqueror of the entire Greek world.
It is also in myth and reality that Sparta's highly powerful state apparatus deeply influenced Plato, who, based on Sparta, creatively praised in the Republic the sparse villages of spartan city-states without walls and simplicity, in which he described the life of its inhabitants as the feeling of ancient times - the inhabitants were brave, strong, kind and pure, not corrupted by greed, not to be victims of low-level political struggles, and people were poor and happy than humans of any age.
Later philosophers and writers, such as Plutarch, Tacitus, Rousseau, Nietzsche, and the first group of National Socialist scholars, who, like Plato, were tired of and fearful of the vulgarity and chaos of democracy, fled from reality and turned to the worship of Spartan social order and law, using this military totalitarian regime as an ideal model for hype.
Second, respect, obedience, and fear of the law.
Earlier, Kun Peng talked about many spartan advantages, such as: strong, brave, dead-eyed, self-denial, temperance, and so on.
Especially bravery and moderation, they are inscribed on the inscriptions of the temple of Apollo and are the motto of the Greeks.
However, the former was often practiced, while the latter could only be seen in peasants, philosophers, and saints, for example: the Athenians were basically hedonists and did not have any guilt in hedonism.
In addition to the above, what are the most important qualities for a person to gain the trust and respect of others?
Kun Peng theory believes that it is faith, trustworthiness, and credit, and to put it bluntly is to do what you say, and to spit on a nail.
If you think back to the literary works we have read, no matter how different the heroes in them are, their common trait is faith.
For human society, the greatest faith is to abide by the law and obey the law.
Because the law is about what should be done and what should not be done that is recognized by the vast majority of people in society, it is the whole that is spoken, and it is necessary for individuals to act strictly according to it.
If obedience to the law is a virtue, there is no doubt that the virtue of the Spartans exceeds that of most people in ancient and modern China and abroad.
The Spartan king de Maratos once told the Persian king Xerxes: "Although the Spartans are free, they are not free in all matters, because there is a law above them, and they fear the law more than your people fear you." ”
Kun Peng theory believes that if a society wants to exist and develop well, the key is that people must at least have one fear, otherwise it will be disorder, chaos, and eventual collapse.
With the exception of the Romans and the Jewish peoples of the Middle Ages, I am afraid that few peoples have ever been as united by respect for the law as Sparta.
At that time, the law of Sparta was the Code of Lygouges formulated by Lygouges.
Lyguez was born around 700 BC and died in 630 BC.
He was the uncle and guardian of King Charilus, a spartan royal family.
Legend has it that he was the founder of Spartan political reform, the Spartan education system, and military training.
It is said that once Guguez was forced to leave Sparta because of rumors, traveled to Crete, admired his system, and studied the local law; then he traveled all over Egypt and tried to learn the laws there.
Upon his return, he was greatly welcomed by the Spartans and asked him to reform the state administration.
In this way, Lygugus was able to practice what he had learned and overhaul the law.
All of the reforms that were finally attributed to Lygues include:
Renouncing the use of gold and silver to make coins and replacing them with iron money;
Everyone eats together, and unmarried people live together in simple barracks;
Demolish the walls to improve your combat skills;
Redistributed spartan land and compulsorily cultivated by the Hilotes;
a system of government in which power is distributed among the king, Spartan citizens, parliamentarians and ombudsmen;
A Spartan education system was created, with juvenile militarized units responsible for raising children (even deliberately not to feed them so that they could learn to steal food to feed themselves, thereby developing their military viability).
Later, Gugus prepared to go to the temple of Delphi in the Holy Land of Greece to consult the priests, and before leaving he made a vow with the people that he could not change his laws until he returned.
When he came to Delphi, the priest told him that his laws were excellent, and that "he thought that a politician had a sense of responsibility for dying well, and if possible, that his death should be considered a service to the state", so that the Comegugus went on hunger strike and committed suicide, thus making it easier for the Spartans to abide by their laws.
After Plato sang the praises of Sparta through the Republic, another peak of praise came from the Roman Greek writer Plutarch 400 years later.
In his book Biography of a Greco-Roman Celebrity (or Greco-Roman Hero), Plutarch described the style of the Lygugus.
He portrayed Gugus as a reformative legislator, a benevolent king, who convinced the people of Sparta that their existence had a noble purpose in the service of the country and that it was the reason for making the homeland better and happier...
Plutarch writes: "[Lyguers] is training his people in a way that ends their solitary life, uniting them forever, just as the swarm surrounds the queen bee... Not only did they free themselves from their otherwise complicated labor and enjoy a great deal of rest and ease, but they also drew people to the habit of not engaging in boring trade with a more conscious tendency (the concept of war) and made wealth a useless thing on the national scale. ”
The more common view of modern academics as to whether there was such a person as Lygouge in history is that it is not so much individual legislation as it is about adjusting and elaborating some customs, making them into law, and then, for convenience, naming them in the name of the drafter or compiler.
Ancient laws, on the other hand, were often changed by habits, personified and shortened, and this change did not happen overnight, requiring many writers and years in between.
Whether or not spartan's code was entirely written for Lygugus, sparta remained strong under its rule and persuaded all Peloponnesians to accept its leadership, and the Peloponnesian confederation maintained peace on the island for almost two centuries (560 BC to 380 BC).
Moreover, the government and army of Sparta were praised throughout Greece, and they turned to it for help when they wanted to abolish the tyrannical regime of expropriation.
Kun Peng theory believes that all this, especially the special power and social prestige it enjoys, stems from respect and obedience to the law, which boils down to one word: faith.
Socrates (Plato) highly admired this point of the Spartans, such as:
The reverence for legislators is that they are the wisest human beings.
After Socrates was sentenced to death, he had the opportunity to escape, but he insisted that "evil law is also law", that it is legal and just to abide by the law and to fulfill the covenant, and that as long as it is a citizen of the city-state, it is necessary to obey and serve the law, whether the law is good or bad, which Kun Peng theory has shared in "Reading Plato's Early Works to Understand Socrates (Middle)".
In the Republic, we can also see that Socrates repeatedly stated that this legislation, that legislation, and eventually it must be written into the laws of the city-state and strictly enforced.
Third, morality and solidarity.
Whether the Spartans lived in groups since childhood, because they were in the community, and their habits became natural, in short, they were incomparably united to outsiders.
And their simple social life, similar to that of communism, makes them appear to always put the interests of the collective, the city-state above all else, and the pursuit of personal self-interest is regarded as shameful.
The opposite is the Athens in which Socrates and Plato lived, when Athens was by no means a model of morality, and the progress of knowledge had taken many of them out of the ethical tradition and almost transformed them into immoral people, who, though lawless, had few ideas of benefit, did things that harmed others, and seldom felt uneasy in their conscience.
In the earlier parts of the Republic, Gelaokong and Adimantu both stated that they "heard all they heard were Selassimako-like arguments," such as:
It is said that "the life of the unjust is indeed much better than that of the righteous";
"Those who carry out justice are not willing, but because they do not have the power to do injustice";
"Those who do not have the power to avoid victimization feel that it is better to make a contract with each other for the benefit of all, neither to do unrighteous things nor to suffer injustice, and this is the beginning of legislation and covenant-making among people, who call the observance of the law lawful and just";
"The origin and essence of justice — a compromise between the best and the worst, the so-called best is to do bad things without punishment, and the so-called worst is to be victimized and unable to retaliate";
……
It is precisely on the basis of these typical wisdom concepts that the Athenians, although they verbally admit that honesty is a virtue, are basically hopes and demands of others, but they always try their best to be opportunistic.
For example, merchants adulterated goods, withheld pounds, manipulated and deceived people, etc.; politicians, too, in the Athenian civil service circle, were not accused of using despicable means.
Plato once commented: "The love of money makes people obsessed, and what they think is always their own money, and the soul of every citizen hangs on it." ”
The historian Thucydides said that people would rather be called shrewd than let people say they were honest, because in their view, honesty = stupidity.
The Athenians were too shrewd to conform themselves, they despised stupidity more than they hated evil, and they were able to compete with the Jews in cleverness, cunning, and deceit.
At that time, if anyone was proved to be honest, it was simply a sensational news, almost regarded as a monster, and the cynic philosopher Diogenes daytime lantern appeared in the bustling bazaar street, and kept shouting: "Man, where are you?" People are gone! But he couldn't find the second person.
He found:
After abundant material pleasures, the "man" is gone;
In the pursuit of luxurious and luxurious life, the "person" is gone.
Diogenes was described by Plato as "a mad Socrates", and he also believed that if he wanted to avoid the degeneration and loss of human nature, he must make every effort to get rid of the control of material desires, away from the fame and fortune of the world, become self-sufficient, return to a natural and simple life, so as to achieve the ultimate in virtue and obtain perfect happiness.
It is under such distorted morality that it is not uncommon for Greeks to be willing to betray their country, and "there is no shortage of traitors in Greece at any time," said the Greek travel and geographer Pausenias.
In addition, even morally, the Greeks confined it only to their own tribes, and Xenophon, a Greek historian and general and one of Socrates' students, in one of his educational treatises, directly suggested that deception and coercion should be used in dealing with the enemy, which is obviously the view of his teacher and classmate Plato, who repeatedly stressed that it is possible to lie to the enemy and to be cruel to the enemy.
Of course, such a concept is not only Athenian, but basically the whole of Greece, as is Sparta, which, in the case of a peace treaty, also recklessly occupied the cathedral of Thebes, and when someone asked its king whether it was reasonable and just to do so, he was answered: "But to ask whether it is beneficial, everything that is beneficial to our country is reasonable." ”
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