Changing laws and the draughts image

Use in the book

The companion's objection has two temporal levels. At 315a he asks why laws change if what is has been discovered. At 315c–d he supplies practices that earlier Athenians followed and present Athenians do not. After Socrates' questions about universal judgments, he returns to the same difficulty: “we never stop changing our laws up and down” (316b–c). The persistence of the objection is part of the dialogue, not a lapse that a sympathetic interpretation should omit.

Socrates answers with the striking suggestion that the things moved about as at draughts are the same. The image distinguishes the identity of what is being moved from its current arrangement, but the speech does not elaborate a formal model of legislation as a game. Nor does it specify which concrete pieces correspond to which legal institutions. Its immediate function is to lead into writings about health. The explanatory burden is carried by the next claim: genuine knowers accept and write the same things about the same things.

At 317b changing usages about the same matters becomes evidence of lack of knowledge. Socrates' answer therefore does more than discover a stable pattern beneath institutional change. It restricts the title “law” to what is right, calling the incorrect “lawless” even when people think it law. Apparent counterexamples are sorted by competence and correctness. This protects the proposed invariance, but it raises the question of how actual good laws are to be recognized independently of their stability.

That question becomes acute with Minos. His laws' immobility is called the greatest sign that he discovered well the truth concerning a city's administration (321b). Earlier, knowledge was said to imply sameness; here enduring sameness is evidence for knowledge. Those directions of inference are not interchangeable without further support. Socrates also invokes poetic testimony, divine education, and the happiness of Crete and Sparta, but the text offers no comparative investigation of legal persistence. The companion's assent is to a reasonable argument, and the close still asks what makes souls better.

The image thus belongs to a larger tension between the familiar alteration of rules and the desired stability of what is right. The dialogue states a strong standard for genuine law; it does not provide an administrative rule that legislators must never revise any provision under changed circumstances. Its repeated qualification is “about the same things.”

Places to read

1. 315aοὐκ ἀεὶ τοῖς αὐτοῖς νόμοις χρώμεθα περὶ τῶν αὐτῶν — The companion joins changing rules to an unchanged subject matter
2. 316b–cἄνω κάτω μετατιθέμενοι τοὺς νόμους — Ceaseless alteration “up and down”
3. 316cταῦτα μεταπεττευόμενα ὅτι ταὐτά ἐστιν — Socrates' things moved about as at draughts
4. 317bΟὐδὲ μεταθήσονταί ποτε περὶ τῶν αὐτῶν ἕτερα καὶ ἕτερα νόμιμα — Knowers will not successively replace usages concerning the same matters
5. 321bἀκίνητοι αὐτοῦ οἱ νόμοι εἰσίν — The laws of Minos are unmoved

Translation in this edition

“Moved about as at draughts” translates the image without identifying the ancient board game with modern draughts in every rule or detail. The note identifies petteia as a game with pieces moved from place to place. “Unmoved” retains the physical vocabulary at the later claim about Minos.

Changing — μετατιθέναι (metatithenai)

μετατιθέναι (metatithenai)

Changing. The repeated alteration of laws to which the companion appeals. Attested: μετατιθέμενοι (316c). Changing laws and the draughts image.

Different replacements — ἕτερος (heteros)

ἕτερος (heteros)

Different replacements. Different lawful usages substituted successively concerning the same subjects; Socrates denies such repeated alteration of people who actually know. Attested: ἕτερα (317b). Changing laws and the draughts image.

Moved about as at draughts — μεταπεττεύειν (metapetteuein)

μεταπεττεύειν (metapetteuein)

Moved about as at draughts. Socrates' board-game image for things whose movements may obscure their sameness; no full theory of the game is supplied. Attested: μεταπεττευόμενα (316c). Changing laws and the draughts image.

Stop — παύεσθαι (pauesthai)

παύεσθαι (pauesthai)

Stop. The companion's denial that people ever stop changing laws. Attested: παυόμεθα (316c). Changing laws and the draughts image.

Think of or recognize — ἐννοεῖν (ennoein)

ἐννοεῖν (ennoein)

Think of or recognize. Socrates suggests that the companion has not recognized the sameness of the things being moved about. Attested: ἐννοεῖς (316c). Changing laws and the draughts image.

Up and down — ἄνω κάτω (anō katō)

ἄνω κάτω (anō katō)

Up and down. The restless or wholesale character of changes to law in the companion's description. Attested: ἄνω κάτω (316c). Changing laws and the draughts image.

Up and down and moved like pieces (contextual phrase)

316c: ἄνω κάτω μετατιθέμενοι; μεταπεττευόμενα. The first expression conveys repeated rearrangement; the second introduces a board-game image in Socrates' reply. These are separately cited expressions, not a single continuous Greek clause. Their vividness should not make the game a technical constitutional model: the argumentative question is whether what is being rearranged is nevertheless the same. See Change and draughts.