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Completing Plato’s Laws, I see his focus on education as part of his political philosophy, and in it, I can see how people see Plato’s work that as both the birth of a formal, systematic philosophy and also political philosophy.

In Laws, Plato presents education as the foundation of a well-ordered society, inseparable from his broader political vision. For Plato, the laws of a city must cultivate virtue in its citizens, and this is achieved primarily through education, which extends beyond formal schooling to encompass cultural norms, religious practices, and civic rituals. Unlike in Republic, where an elite guardian class receives a specialized philosophical education, Laws envisions a more universal system in which all citizens are shaped from childhood to embody the virtues necessary for a stable state.

Education in Laws is both moral and civic, instilling piety, self-discipline, and a respect for authority. It begins in early childhood with music and physical training, reinforcing communal values and habituating citizens to the legal and ethical framework of the city. The goal is to create not just knowledgeable individuals but ones whose desires and character align with the good of the state. In this sense, Plato treats education as a mechanism of social control, guiding citizens toward virtue through carefully structured laws and customs.

Politically, Laws departs from the idealized philosopher-king of Republic and instead outlines a mixed constitution that balances monarchy and democracy. The state is governed by law rather than by the absolute rule of philosophers, yet these laws themselves function as a form of education. The legislation serves to instruct and correct behavior, shaping citizens into participants in a rational and harmonious order. Law, then, is not merely coercive but pedagogical—it teaches by setting moral and practical boundaries.

In connecting education to politics, Laws reflects Plato’s belief that no distinction exists between private virtue and public order. The stability of the city depends on the moral education of its people, and thus, legislation must actively cultivate wisdom and discipline. The result is a legal system that functions as an extended educational program, ensuring that citizens internalize and perpetuate the principles necessary for a just society.

Plato’s Laws assumes education can align the individual and the state, but a Hegelian view sees freedom emerging through contradiction, not preordained harmony. For Hegel, ethical life (Sittlichkeit) develops through struggle, not passive habituation. Law in Laws is static, imposing unity rather than allowing the dialectical movement of Geist.

Žižek would go further—Plato’s system masks its own ideological function. The attempt to mold desire into virtue is a fantasy of total control, repressing the inevitable return of excess. The state in Laws operates like ideology: it presents its own constructed order as natural, obscuring the tensions it cannot resolve. Education here does not form free subjects but preemptively forecloses political antagonism, making it a tool of domination rather than enlightenment.

Plato investigates the universality of the law. Should the law be the same in every city or local? This idea reminded me of how cybersecurity is applied to corporations, where some companies use certain policies but not others, varying in levels of stringency. Plato resolves the universality-locality tension by advocating for laws that are grounded in universal justice but tailored to specific conditions through careful and reasoned judgment. In cybersecurity, this could be seen as the role of frameworks like ISO/IEC 27001 or NIST, which provide universal standards but allow for customization based on organizational needs.

Thus, for Plato, the law is not a rigid construct but a dynamic tool that must bridge the ideal and the practical – a lesson equally valuable for modern cybersecurity strategies.

Plato makes a distinction between voluntary and involuntary adherence to the law. He emphasizes the role of education and persuasion to encourage voluntary compliance, while acknowledging that enforcement mechanisms (punishment or deterrence) are necessary for those who fail to follow the law involuntarily. This dual approach provides a useful framework for understanding the application of cybersecurity policies within organizations.

Voluntary adherence to security policies can be achieved through training programs that educate employees about risks (e.g., phishing, weak passwords) and the importance of compliance for the collective good. Tools like gamified training or regular phishing tests can make this process engaging and impactful. Encouraging voluntary compliance involves creating an ethical culture where employees feel personally responsible for maintaining security. For instance, developers might prioritize secure coding practices because they value protecting users, not merely to meet policy requirements.

For those who fail to comply voluntarily, Plato acknowledges the necessity of enforcement mechanisms, including punishment or deterrents. Similarly, in cybersecurity, involuntary adherence ensures that even the less cooperative or negligent actors are held accountable.

Enforcement mechanisms like mandatory multi-factor authentication (MFA) or automated access controls compel users to comply with policies, even if they are unwilling or unaware of the risks.

Monitoring tools like intrusion detection systems (IDS), network activity logs, and endpoint detection platforms ensure users comply with policies. Regular audits further reinforce adherence and address gaps.

Structural controls like firewalls, data encryption, and role-based access restrictions reduce the potential for security breaches, regardless of user intent.

The Timaeus dialogue contains many fascinating ideas: the craftsman, the soul, and the cosmology. However, what struck me most was its discussion of how the world is repeatedly destroyed and rebuilt, with gods founding their own settlements. This provides a justification for the nation-state as something rooted in natural law.

This idea is easy to dismiss. Athens cannot be expected to rise again and again, and I neither believe in gods nor feel compelled to take their existence seriously. While the author frames this cycle as plausible, I think it’s something we can disregard. What I find more compelling is how this cycle of destruction and renewal mirrors everyday human experience—not on a divine or apocalyptic scale, but in the span of a lifetime. It’s visible in the rise and fall of governments, organizations, and individuals like celebrities and politicians.

It made me reflect on how people appear, grow into their roles, and eventually fade away, replaced by a new generation with fresh ideas about continuity and identity. On a broader scale, even the concept of national identity seems to dissolve and reform over time. Generations forget parts of their shared history while attempting to preserve the notion of a national character, constantly reinterpreting what it means to belong.

A problem with Plato is how dense each book is. Without summarizing what happened throughout the series of volumes, I set on the importance of secret affairs of civilian private lives (Book VIII: 841e). In this segment, the Athenian wishes to direct the private lives of citizens in the imagined Cretan colony.

What I found interesting in this portion wasn’t the push for the specific conditions of marital intimacy but the hidden exception to the rules: “he [transgress] without any other man or woman getting to know about [his transgression].” The concealment of the supposed legal vice has an interesting interaction with what Plato is considering with “natural law.” He seems to recognize that a natural man would feel the urge to break a stricter rule. Therefore, within the law itself, the act of breaking it is anticipated.

This idea reminds me of Žižek’s work, particularly “The Inherent Transgression.” In this piece, Žižek examines how the emergence of certain values, which serve as points of ideological identification, inherently rely on their transgression. He argues that ideology depends upon the ‘gap’ produced by the symbolic order between itself and the subject, an effect of bringing the latter into being as a subject of language [https://philpapers.org/rec/ZIZTIT].

I see a similarity then between Žižek’s work and Plato’s laws, where the expectation of secret transgressions serves to reinforce the authority of the law itself. By acknowledging the inevitability of such transgressions, the legal framework incorporates them, thus maintaining its overarching control.

This blog was created in order to track my progress through the Great Books. An earlier version of this existed on the web that I lost control of and deleted. Regardless, I’ve returned back to the online project for my sake and with the hope that it may interest others.

The name of the website comes from a hash of my name. As a cybersecurity engineer, I’m interested in topics of cryptology and broke many codes in graduate school while studying Computer Science. However, this project is not one to discuss computing. On this site I will discuss the Great Books canon and continue its reading until likely I am gone.

Why am I reading and writing? The purpose of writing is to apply thought to the reading with hopes the engagement will deepen my interaction with the text.