Politics discussion

I used both Keith Quincy's Plato Unmasked and Leo Strauss' On Plato's Minos for this one. I've read all of Plato multiple times in the past, and it's burning me out this time around...

The intention of the dialogue is to stress the universality of law. That is, a law reflects a reality which we can all recognize. If the law is not consistent with reality, then it is not applicable or just, thus not recognizable as a law.

I think the issue here is with the definition. In a society, a law is something that attempts to control behavior, which carries authority with it. Whether or not law is good or bad, the authority aspect still holds because it went through the same pipeline as any other law. Socrates would respond that this is unjust authority, which is not law. His definition of law is different, so, we can't debate if we can't agree on a definition.

We're locked into an existence that is largely governed by natural obstacles. Law exists to modify behavior in response to these obstacles. Rather than simply living in maximum harmony with this state of existence, we have become able to manipulate our surroundings to create different states of existence. Now we can fly, live longer, and so on. Laws which would not have been reflective of life in Plato's day are suddenly reflective in the present day. Similarly, there are nations presently, which seem to exist in entirely different timelines than us. Recognition is again destroyed at SOME level.

But Socrates' answer would probably revolve around the answers being there already, and simply not yet discovered by those living in the past. Seems like an irrelevant distinction, and difficult to prove outside of introducing mathemagic in another dialogue (strawman by necessity). When we create law, and whether we miss the mark due to not accurately reflecting reality due to ignorance or a change in situation, we are still in the process of refining and improving. That's not in doubt. The issue I have is that the improvement and the status of law as "not yet perfect" does not reach the category of the unjust. Removing refinement from the equation, you are left with a static law vs. no law, of which neither could be considered just when lawmakers begin with limited knowledge. With continuing refinement, law begins looking a lot more like philosophy.