Current main project / Dissertation
The Role of Law in Plato’s Cities
My dissertation, The Role of Law in Plato’s Cities, shows law’s essential role in ruling ideal cities and sustaining non-ideal cities in the Republic, Statesman, and the Laws. It demonstrates Plato’s recognition of the importance of the system of law in good governance and good life. Despite the strong criticism of law in the Statesman, Plato nevertheless finds law to be a vital part of ruling. Moreover, it also shows, against the view that Plato’s allegedly new interest in law in his final dialogue—the Laws—is due to his change of mind about the practicability of the rule of reason, that ruling with reason and ruling with law are not necessarily conflicting ideas. It thereby resolves the so-called conflict between the early-middle dialogues and late dialogues of Plato. Finally, my dissertation is also the first part of my larger project to bring Plato back into the history of the philosophy of law. Plato’s contribution to the history of the philosophy of law has not been acknowledged enough, which is not surprising if we consider how the role of law in Plato has been mostly overlooked until recently. I draw these implications from the analysis of Plato’s original understanding of law, the necessity of law in the ideal city, the function of law in non-ideal cities, and two novel elements of law added by Plato.
Under Review
Ruling with Knowledge vs. Ruling with the Laws
Unlike some scholars who argue that there is no need for law in Plato’s best city and others who argue that law is a useful tool in the city, this paper argues that law is a necessary tool not only in cities without genuine political experts but also in the best city ruled by the experts. Law is necessary even in the best city because it serves as the mechanism that delivers the experts’ knowledge in a way that can reach the lives of ordinary citizens. The law in the best city has peculiar status as a necessary but inferior tool to political expertise, and this status can be explained through the description of the best city as law-possessing, law-abiding by default, and sometimes law-overruling.
Work in Progress
Socratic Attentive Shame and Its Role in Political Life
In this paper, I defend the value of shame in political life through the model of Socrates’ experience of shame. Against the view that Socrates is immune to shame, I argue that his seeming immunity to the experience of shame results from his high attentiveness to his sense of shame. Building on the view that the sense of shame is essential to Socratic elenchus in bringing his interlocutors to acknowledge their incoherence and feel ashamed, I argue that Socrates is not only in the role of shamer but also with his own shame experiences. I categorize the shame experiences of Plato’s different characters into three types: ‘Avoiding,’ ‘Confronting,’ and ‘(Socratic) Attentive’ shame. ‘Socratic Attentive Shame’ is distinguished from the other two by constant deliberation and immediate constructive reactions, which enables shame to be generated internally rather than externally and bring about positive changes to the ashamed. Examples of each type of shame in Plato’s dialogues illustrate how Socratic Attentive Shame can serve as a positive model for the role of shame in our political life.
In Preparation
– Platonic Philosophy of Law and Modern Jurisprudence
– Law and Virtue in Platonic, Confucian, and Legalist Philosophies
– The Role of Shame (αἰδώς and 羞惡) in Virtue Cultivation in Plato and Mencius