The Voyage of Existence

20 July 2026

The Voyage of Existence

The Athenian Stanger:  “It is evident to me that what I’m doing here myself is much the same as what a shipwright does in beginning to build ships, when he sketches the shape of ships in outline by laying down the keels.  I’m trying to distinguish the outline of ways of life as they accord with characteristics of soul, and thus really ‘laying down their keels’ – investigating, in the correct way, what device we should use and what characteristics we should at any time incorporate if we are going to be carried through this voyage of existence on the best way of life.  Of course, the affairs of human beings are not worthy of great seriousness; yet it is necessary to be serious about them.  And this is not a fortunate thing.  But since we’re here, if somehow we would carry out the business in some appropriate way it would perhaps be a well-measured thing for us to do.  But whatever am I saying?  Someone would perhaps be correct to take me up in this very way.

Kleinias:  “Indeed!

The Athenian Stranger:  “I assert that what is serious should be treated seriously, and what is not serious should not, and that by nature god is worthy of a complete, blessed seriousness, but that what is human, as we said earlier, has been devised as a certain plaything of god, and that this is really the best thing about it.  Every man and woman should spend life in this way, playing the noblest possible games, and thinking about them in a way that is the opposite of the way they’re now thought about.

Kleinias:  “How’s that?

The Athenian Stranger:  “Nowadays, presumably, they suppose the serious things are for the sake of the playful things: for it is held that the affairs pertaining to war, being serious matters, should be run well for the sake of peace.  But the fact is that in war there is not and will not be by nature either play or, again, an education that is at any time worthy of our discussion; yet this is what we assert is for us, at least, the most serious thing.  Each person should spend the greatest and best part of his life in peace.”

(Plato, Laws, Book VII, translated by Thomas L. Pangle, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1980, pages 192-193, 803a-803d, ISBN: 022667110)

The Athenian Stranger:  “Just as a shipwright at the commencement of his building outlines the shape of his vessel by laying down her keel, so I appear to myself to be doing just the same – trying to frame, that is, the shapes of lives according to the modes of their souls, and thus literally laying down their keels, by rightly considering by what means and by what modes of living we shall best navigate our barque of life through this voyage of existence.  And notwithstanding that human affairs are unworthy of earnest effort, necessity counsels us to be in earnest; and that is our misfortune.  Yet, since we are where we are, it is no doubt becoming that we should show this earnestness in a suitable direction.  But no doubt I may be faced – and rightly faced – with the question, ‘What do I man by this?’

Cleinias: “Certainly. 

The Athenian Stranger: “What I assert is this, - that a man ought to be in serious earnest about serious things, and not about trifles; and that the object really worthy of all serious and blessed effort is God, while man is contrived, as we said above [before], to be a plaything of God, and the best part of him is really just that; and thus I saw that every man and woman ought to pass through life in accordance with this character, playing at the noblest of pastimes, being otherwise minded than they now are.

Cleinias:  “How so?

The Athenian Stranger:  “Now they imagine that serious work should be done for the sake of play; for they think that it is for the sake of peace that the serious work of war needs to be well conducted.  But as a matter of fact we, it would seem, do not find in war, either as existing or likely to exist, either real play or education worthy of the name, which is what we assert to be in our eyes the most serious thing.  It is the life of peace that everyone should live as much and as well as he can.”

(Plato, Laws, Book VII, translated by R. G. Bury, Aquilla Press (a reprint house that specializes in reprints of Loeb editions), 2021, pages 30-32, ISBN: 9798328186223.  I double checked the Aquilla Press reprint by using the online site archive (dot) org which has the 1926 edition, published by William Heinemann in London)

1.  There is a paradox, or a seeming paradox, in this passage which is that the dialogue Laws is focused on taking human affairs seriously enough so that the three old men of this dialogue are spending their time discussing what would be the best laws for the proposed new city of Magnesia.  But the Athenian Stranger puts forth the idea that human affairs, which would include the making of laws, should not be taken seriously. 

I think a passage like this is Plato’s way of reminding the reader that the human context is embedded in a much grander cosmos than appears when we focus on the human situation.  People have the tendency to inhabit the human situation and context in a way that forgets about the overall cosmos in which humans dwell.  I think this is natural; human beings have to cook meals, go to work, take care of children and the elderly, grow food, build buildings, make laws, and so forth.  The body demands that we pay attention to these kinds of activities, a point that Plato makes in a number of dialogues.  Such activities consume most of our time.  The time remaining for spiritual practice, such as contemplation and spiritual reading, is small; and it is a consistent struggle to carve out time for these kinds of activities.

The contrast that Plato makes is between human affairs and God (as an aside, it’s  interesting to me that the Pangle translation uses the lower case ‘god’, while the Bury translation uses the upper case ‘God’.  It’s a small thing, but I suspect it emerges from a difference in the translators’ understanding of the significance of the word in this context.  Classical Greek does not use upper and lowercase letters, so such usage in a context like this reflects the choices the translators are making.) 

Returning to the contrast Plato makes; God deserves to be taken with utmost seriousness while human affairs are not to be taken seriously.  Why does Plato say that human affairs should not be taken seriously, what is Plato getting at?  I think a good example is how, in contemporary democracies, every election is depicted as of great significance and how the fate of humanity will be decided by the results.  Yet the truth is that this is hardly ever the case (I think you could make a case that, in fact, it is never the case).  Elections come and go.  The issues people were passionate about disappear so that after only a few decades only specialist historians will even know what the issues were.  In a society like ours, where ideological thinking saturates the public sphere, it is difficult to see this.  But I think what Plato is getting at by contrasting human affairs with God is that ‘God’ is an indicator of that which is eternal; the contrast is between the ephemeral nature of human activity and the eternal presence of God, of the Divine.  I like to say that the spiritual path involves a shift of attention from that which is ephemeral to that which is eternal and I think that is what is behind what Plato is saying.

2.  My own view is that gaining perspective on this contrast between human affairs and God happens when we become aware of impermanence and the range of impermanence.  That is why I think it is a good idea to study impermanence, to get an understanding of the impermanence so that it saturates one’s understanding.  Plato does not touch on impermanence in this passage, but that is what came to my mind when reading it.

3.  The Athenian Stranger speaks at the opening of this passage with a metaphor of laying down a keel; the function of a keel is to keep a ship from tipping over as it sails to its destination.  I think Plato is communicating to the reader that Plato’s purpose in writing Laws is to point out what kind of life will lead us to the transcendental.  We have to cross the ocean of obstacles by leaving the harbor of material concerns.  To do this we need to align the ship of our lives to the distant shore of serenity and peace.  The laws of Laws are instructions on how to do that.  At times this dialogue appears to be overly detailed, but I’m beginning to think that the details resemble the detailed regulations that we find in a work like the Buddhist Vinaya or some other monastic rules.  The detail is there so that we can understand how the guidance of the law under consideration functions in different circumstances.  Of course not every circumstance can be covered; there are just too many.  But by offering some details of application we are shown how to apply a regulation to multiple situations.

4.  Did Plato think of the dialogue Laws as something that could actually be applied in real life?  Did Plato think of the dialogue Laws as a blueprint for an actual city-state?  I lean toward the idea that this is not an accurate portrayal of what Plato was trying to communicate to the reader.  I think that what Plato is doing in Laws is communicating how to live a life that is serious, a life that is dedicated to the transcendental, to God. 

I think Plato’s view is that aligning with the transcendental, living a life that is focused on that which is eternal, is not easy; and, furthermore, that such a life requires dedication in both large and small ways.  In the quote above Plato is, I think, revealing his purpose, not just for this particular dialogue, but overall.