About the unwritten laws and divine laws

Humans are a very social species, and to live together on the same we need rules.  Those rules take many forms, they can be moral rules, divine rules, laws, and whatever other words you find for them. They say things like don't kill, don't steal, don't do bad things (and you can think about many bad things too fill in and entire list), do one thing or another when the circumstances are met. One can avoid them or at least try to avoid them, and if the other people find about that that person is punished in onw way or another. These Gresham college lectures are speaking us about unwritten laws as legacies from Antigone and Lycurgus, about divine law and the human Prophet: Moses in Hebrew and Greek.

This fist lecture was recorded by Melissa Lane on 20th February 2025 at Barnard's Inn Hall, London. Sophocles’ Antigone refers to “unwritten laws,” as does Thucydides’ Pericles. From the late fifth century BCE, the idea that laws are more effective when learned by memory and observation than when put into writing, forms a distinctive current in political reflections. Plutarch would even claim that the Spartan lawgiver Lycurgus had prohibited the writing down of his laws. This lecture will present Greek authors’ reflections on the interplay between writing and orality remain relevant to debates about ethical formation today.

The lecture chapter are the following:

• 00:00 Marker name
• 00:00 Introduction
• 00:56 Athens versus Sparta: written and unwritten laws
• 07:59 The power of memory and custom
• 11:45 Antigone: When unwritten laws challenge authority
• 26:47 Pericles and the role of unwritten laws in democracy
• 35:55 Sparta’s strict oral tradition
• 41:40 The limits of oral law
• 43:10 Lessons from history

This Gresham lecture was also done by Professor Melissa Lane, and in it she talks abut he Hebrew lawgiver Moses that was compared to ancient Greek lawgivers such as Lycurgus of Sparta and Solon of Athens from the first lecture by the ancient Jewish authors Philo and Josephus—both writing in Greek while living in the Roman empire. This second lecture explores their views of Moses and ancient Greek lawgivers on topics including education, ethical habituation, writing, prophecy and political rule. Early modern authors would inherit and examine these lawgivers, along with others, in their own reflections on law, culture, and politics.

Melissa Lane is Gresham Professor of Rhetoric, Class of 1943 Professor of Politics, Princeton University and is also Associated Faculty in the Department of Classics and Department of Philosophy. Previously she was Senior University Lecturer at Cambridge University in the Faculty of History and Fellow of King’s College, Cambridge. Having previously held visiting appointments at Harvard, Oxford, and Stanford, she will be Isaiah Berlin Visiting Professor in the History of Ideas in the Faculties of Philosophy and History at Oxford University, and a Visiting Fellow of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, in Michaelmas Term 2024.