Comment: “For, no law or ordinance is mightier than knowledge.”. (Plato) (1993)
The words belong to the Athenian Stranger in Book IX of Plato’s Laws (875c–d), and their setting is ironic. If a man were born able both to know the common good and always to prefer it, he would need no laws above him, for knowledge must be sovereign and reason should be slave to nothing. But such a nature exists nowhere at all, except in small degree, so ordinance and law must be chosen as the second best. The line is at once the creed of the Republic and its epitaph.
The Sovereignty of Knowledge
- The craft analogy. A physician is not bound to a textbook when the patient’s condition changes. Ruling, too, is expertise about the good.
- The generality of law. The Statesman (294a–c) compares law to a stubborn, ignorant man who repeats one command whatever the circumstances. A general rule cannot fit every case.
- Hence the Republic‘s philosopher-ruler is bound neither by written law nor by public opinion. His checks are formative, not legal: long training, no property, no family.
Why Plato Chose Law Anyway
- The same passage gives two reasons. It is hard to see that the common interest binds a city together, and harder to keep preferring it, because human nature drifts towards grasping (pleonexia) and pleasure.
- The Laws therefore makes officials servants of the law (715d), prefaces statutes with preambles that persuade before they compel, and builds a mixed constitution.
- Knowledge is not expelled but domesticated: the Nocturnal Council studies the principles behind the code and keeps it coherent.
Assessment
- The case for the statement. Mechanical law can produce injustice, which is why Aristotle (Nicomachean Ethics V.10) prized equity as the correction of law where its generality fails. Modern regulators and central banks rest on the same trained discretion.
- Aristotle’s reply (Politics III.16) is decisive for the tradition: law is reason unaffected by desire, and to let a man rule is to add an element of the beast.
- James Madison restated Plato’s own premise: if men were angels, no government would be necessary (Federalist No. 51, 1788). Because they are not, power must check power.
- Albert Venn Dicey (Introduction to the Study of the Law of the Constitution, 1885) set the rule of law against wide arbitrary discretion, and Karl Popper replaced “who should rule?” with how bad rulers can be removed without bloodshed.
The Indian Experience
- In Indira Nehru Gandhi v. Raj Narain (1975) the Supreme Court struck down the clause of the 39th Amendment that put the Prime Minister’s election beyond judicial scrutiny: no office stands above law.
- Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar warned the Constituent Assembly (25 November 1949) that in politics, Bhakti or hero-worship is a sure road to degradation and to eventual dictatorship. The Constitution confers authority by office bounded by law, the Laws‘ answer rather than the Republic‘s.
Conclusion
As an ideal the statement is logically sound: perfect knowledge would need no rules. As a basis for institutions it is dangerous, because no ruler’s knowledge can be verified or his appetite guaranteed. Plato himself drew that conclusion, making law the servant of reason in a world without philosopher-kings.