法の支配と対話の哲学 : プラトンの政治哲学とソクラテスの精神

抄録

Faced with the unfavourable circumstances of the Athenian public's tacit contravention of the 403 B C Amnesty, Socrates in the Cnto seems to confirm his ideas that the rule of law be obeyed by the citizens of the ideal democratic State The ideas confirmed through his imaginary dialogue with the Athenian Laws(50a-54d) are the realization of the sovereignty of laws (RL(1)), the guarantee of the citizens' right to contest the legitimacy of the laws (RL(2)) and the ensurance of the conditions for citizens' spontaneous assent to the laws(RL(3)) By showing his intention to obey the rule of the Athenian Laws on his own principles of practice, Socrates urges the Athenian citizens to feel a sense of awe and shame-they have, after all, agreed to accept the Athenian Laws including the Amnesty as their ancestral polity In order to realize the RL(1), we should, first of all, continue to ask what is justice of the laws themselves Plato tries to do so through Socrates' dialogue with Calhcles in the Gorgias and the philosophical inquiry to form the just State and the just psyche in the Republic And then, in order to ensure the RL(2) and the RL(3), we should ask how every citizen's concern for his or her psyche is to be realized in the polity Plato, therefore, shows some concrete ways for every citizen to have common ground of argument in the "second" ideal polity of the Laws, for without philosopher-kings or-queens all the citizens must spontaneously obey the rule of law (III 689e-690c), giving to reason's ordering the name of "law" (IV 713e-714a) Now the Athenian visitor in the Laws suggests various means to realize these ideas of the rule of law on the basis of Socratic dialogical philosophy The final means is the Nocturnal Council (NC) constituted as "a means of salvation to our polity and its laws" (XII 960e) The elder members of the NC usually fulfill their proper political functions to realize the rule of law Assembled in the NC, however, they must engage in philosophical dialogues with the younger members independently of their proper functions The NC itself has its three proper functions First, the admonition of the young imprisoned atheists (X 908a-909a) offers them the occasion to contest the legitimacy of the law by which they were judged They provide the NC with viewpoints of a different kind to grasp the possibility of the universal justification of laws Second, the dialogue with inspector newly returned from overseas (XII 951c-952d) offers the NC some external viewpoints to do so And third, the dialectical inquiry with the younger members in "a higher type of education" (961a-968b) offers every member some internal viewpoints to justify his or her legal judgments Thus the philosophical dialogues in the NC are the crucial methods for making the rule of law restore its true nature as the rule of reason and preserving the public confidence in legal judgments in the democratic society where the arguments over justice inevitably arise