"The Laws" and the Danger of Innovation

Plato worried about the deleterious effects of innovation, in terms of the canons of rhetoric, of invention. The arts were particularly suspect, because the arts, music and dance, were the means by which the young were taught virtue. Thus, innovations were suspect because they might lead the next generation away from the virtue of the present generation. Once a city, and the people of the city, had become virtuous, any innovation could only lead to a loss of virtue. 

In Book III of The Laws he warns against music and the theater, which introduce an "evil sort of theatrocracy" through rampant innovation. "For what is this shamelessness, which is so evil a thing, but the insolent refusal to regard the opinion of the better by reason of an over-daring sort of liberty?"

The solution is a static culture with no innovation. In Book II, the Athenian Stranger holds up Egypt as the prime example: 


Cle. And what are the laws about music and dancing in Egypt?
Ath. You will wonder when I tell you: Long ago they appear to have recognized the very principle of which we are now speaking-that their young citizens must be habituated to forms and strains of virtue. These they fixed, and exhibited the patterns of them in their temples; and no painter or artist is allowed to innovate upon them, or to leave the traditional forms and invent new ones. To this day, no alteration is allowed either in these arts, or in music at all. And you will find that their works of art are painted or moulded in the same forms which they had ten thousand years ago;-this is literally true and no exaggeration-their ancient paintings and sculptures are not a whit better or worse than the work of to-day, but are made with just the same skill.
Cle. How extraordinary!
Ath. I should rather say, How statesmanlike, how worthy of a legislator! 

Plato and Democracy

We generally see Plato as being anti-democracy, preferring oligarchy. in the third book of The Laws he sounds more balanced. But then, he may have seen oligarchy as the "measure" of both.


"Hear me, then: there are two mother forms of states from which the rest may be truly said to be derived; and one of them may be called monarchy and the other democracy: the Persians have the highest form of the one, and we of the other; almost all the rest, as I was saying, are variations of these. Now, if you are to have liberty and the combination of friendship with wisdom, you must have both these forms of government in a measure; the argument emphatically declares that no city can be well governed which is not made up of both."  

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Trail Running Disney World

These pictures were taken along an old jeep trail about a quarter mile west of the Grand Floridian Resort. Complete run, eight miles there and back.