Prof. Konstantin Dolgov
Part two

In his Laws, Plato considers also the issues of relations between states, as “the intercourse of cities with one another is apt to create a confusion of manners”.

First of all, he is emphatic that a state ought not to live in isolation: “The refusal of states to receive others, and for their own citizens never to go to other places, is an utter impossibility”. Besides, the intercourse of states are a must for “to be thought or not to be thought well of by the rest of the world is no light matter”, “for the many are not so far wrong in their judgment of who are bad and who are good, as they are removed from the nature of virtue in themselves. Even bad men have a divine instinct which guesses rightly, and very many who are utterly depraved form correct notions and judgments of the differences between the good and bad.”