Book Review—
THE LAWS, by Plato (Penguin Group, New York: 1970, 1975) with translation and introduction by Trevor J. Saunders, Preface by Richard Stalley
By Rev. Dr. Larry Delano Coleman
Sunday, July 22, 2012
I bought this book on a whim from a now-defunct Borders Bookstore several years ago. It was on sale. So, I scooped it up, along with another by Cicero, with the noble intention of possibly enriching my solo law practice, by their utilization.
Ha! Such illusions and idealism!
Plato’s The Laws was about as useful to a "grind’m out" lawyer—like me--as a swift kick in the knee!
However, to a student of ancient history and philosophy, also like me, it is a marvel and a masterpiece! Of course, I only had time to finish it after a stroke in 2010 peremptorily, prematurely, now permanently, terminated my 33 year law practice in Kansas City, Missouri.
I had read that Plato had studied in Ancient Egypt, as had countless other Greeks. That African nation's primordial, civilizing greatness is yet reified in stone pyramids and megaliths, mathematics, navigation, astronomy, philosophy, music, medicine, art, and agriculture. That united nation--land of the red and white "double crown"-- was already flourishing well over 2000 years before the existence or founding of "Greece," that collection and loose confederation of independent city-states and islands. I was curious to read what Plato had to say about that iconic nation of blacks. It was formed by alluvial, annual Nile siltation, washed downstream, like its people, from inner Africa. Thus, its proper name, is "Kemet," or "KMT--sans vowels--meaning "land of the blacks."
Plato (427-347 BC) did not disappoint! Writing about "Artistic Censorship in Egypt," he states: "…Long ago, apparently, they realized the truth of the principle we are putting forward only now, that the movements and tunes which the children of the state are to practice in their rehearsals must be good ones. They compiled a list of them according to style and displayed it in their temples. Painters and everyone else who represent movements of the body of any kind were restricted to these forms; modification and innovation outside this traditional framework were prohibited, and are prohibited even today, both in this field and the arts in general. If you examine their art on the spot, you will find that ten thousand years ago (and I’m not speaking loosely: I mean literally ten thousand), paintings and reliefs were produced that are no better and no worse than those of today, because the same artistic rules applied in making them." Pp.47-48.
Then, this fabled teacher of Aristotle, who attended Plato’s Academy in Athens, continues his description of education in Egypt in his chapter entitled "Mathematics."
Ironically, Plato is credited by some so-called authorities in "the West" with practically founding mathematics, a canard he never asserts! He writes:
"Total ignorance over an entire field is never dangerous or disastrous; much more damage is done when a subject is known intimately and in detail, but has been improperly taught…So we should insist that gentlemen should study each of these subjects to at least the same level as very many children in Egypt, who acquire such knowledge at the same time they learn to read and write. First, lessons in calculation have been devised for tiny tots to learn while they are enjoying themselves at play: they divide up a given number of garlands or apples…they make uses of elementary arithmetic an integral part of their pupils’ play, so they get a useful introduction to the art of marshaling, leading and deploying an army, or running a household; and in general they make them more alert and useful persons. Next, the teacher puts the children on to measuring lengths, surfaces and solids—a study which rescues them from the deep-rooted ignorance, at once comic and shocking, that all men display in this field…I blushed not only for myself, but for Greeks in general." P.267
Plato, the famed student of and successor to Socrates, who was condemned to death by 500-man jury by poisoning (hemlock) for teaching "foreign ideas" to the youth of Athens, curiously disparages "the sons of Old Father Nile" who were less hospitable to "aliens" than their forebears had been of old. P. 464. Such a nostalgic honorific--"Old Father Nile"--bespeaks a familial homage to, a profound affection for, and a deep familiarity with this African land: its evolving customs and trends relating to foreigners and aliens, now being much less welcomed than before.
There is so much, much more to the book than I have excised and highlighted here! It is rich! One can easily see how "Plato stands with Socrates and Aristotle as one of the shapers of the whole intellectual tradition of the West," both sacred and secular, as book’s preface asserts.
Plato spoke and wrote the truth. He had no reason to lie. It is the latter-day racial ideologues who lie, trying to support their contrived doctrine of "white supremacy." Such "white supremacy" would have been an absurd doctrine to Plato, given his admiration for the black founders of ancient Egypt's arts and sciences of which he wrote and from which he imbibed so tellingly!
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