The Minos and the Socratic Examination of Law
Mark J. Lutz
American Journal of Political Science, 2010, vol. 54, issue 4, 988-1002
Abstract:
The Minos is said to initiate the natural law tradition because it claims that an unjust law is not truly a law. But the dialogue also shows that reason cannot recognize that a given statute, as such, is a law. Along with this criticism of law, the Minos shows why the Socratic inquiry into law must consider whether divine law is based on a kind of knowledge through which law can be recognized as authoritative. Thanks to the Minos, we see that Plato's Laws begins by examining the kind of knowledge that underlies divine law and that throughout the dialogue the Athenian Stranger is testing whether human reason can know and establish divine law. In the end, the Minos and Laws establish a once influential but now neglected Socratic tradition of inquiry into law.
Date: 2010
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:
Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-5907.2010.00466.x
Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.
Export reference: BibTeX
RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan)
HTML/Text
Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wly:amposc:v:54:y:2010:i:4:p:988-1002
Access Statistics for this article
More articles in American Journal of Political Science from John Wiley & Sons
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().