CosmosStag ·
Whether or not there was an earlier political philosophy to Plato's, the conflict between nomos and philosophy continues today, with nomos as the clear loser. The success of philosophy over nomos is not necessarily a good thing. Philosophers are capable of producing an endless amount of books to attack us with. The power of the upper class today is the ability to read many books and adopt those which promote their agenda, knowing that the lower class won't have as much time to go through and understand it. For example, ancient governments were said to have a constitution, but they were not written out and designed like the USA constitution. Instead they arose naturally out of the interactions of political coalitions. Such a system could not survive an assault of philosophy, which is why we need to have written constitutions today. Although it may well be true that nomos is superior to philosophy, I have no sympathy for people who want to go back to it. With philosophy we have a situation very reminiscent of Pandora's Box: once it is opened it cannot be closed. We are required to use the methods of philosophy to withstand the attacks from philosophy because we cannot win by looking like a man who cannot justify the system that he represents, as in Euthyphro.