Readers of Plato have often neglected the Laws because of its length and density. In this set of interpretive essays, notable scholars of the Laws from the fields of classics, history, philosophy, and political science offer a collective close reading of the dialogue "book by book" and reflect on the work as a whole. In their introduction, editors Gregory Recco and Eric Sanday explore the connections among the essays and the dramatic and productive exchanges between the contributors. This volume fills a major gap in studies on Plato's dialogues by addressing the cultural and historical context of the Laws and highlighting their importance to contemporary scholarship.
Readers of Plato have often neglected the Laws because of its length and density. In this set of interpretive essays, notable scholars of the Laws from the fields of classics, history, philosophy, and political science offer a collective close reading of the dialogue "book by book" and reflect on the work as a whole. In their introduction, editors Gregory Recco and Eric Sanday explore the connections among the essays and the dramatic and productive exchanges between the contributors. This volume fills a major gap in studies on Plato's dialogues by addressing the cultural and historical context of the Laws and highlighting their importance to contemporary scholarship.
Plato's Laws: Force and Truth in Politics
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Overview
Readers of Plato have often neglected the Laws because of its length and density. In this set of interpretive essays, notable scholars of the Laws from the fields of classics, history, philosophy, and political science offer a collective close reading of the dialogue "book by book" and reflect on the work as a whole. In their introduction, editors Gregory Recco and Eric Sanday explore the connections among the essays and the dramatic and productive exchanges between the contributors. This volume fills a major gap in studies on Plato's dialogues by addressing the cultural and historical context of the Laws and highlighting their importance to contemporary scholarship.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780253001887 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Indiana University Press |
| Publication date: | 06/06/2024 |
| Series: | Studies in Continental Thought |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 254 |
| Sales rank: | 981,029 |
| File size: | 6 MB |
| Age Range: | 18 Years |
About the Author
Gregory Recco is a tutor at St. John's College in Annapolis.
Eric Sanday is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of Kentucky.
Read an Excerpt
Plato's Laws
Force and Truth in Politics
By Gregory Recco, Eric Sanday
Indiana University Press
Copyright © 2013 Indiana University PressAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-253-00188-7
CHAPTER 1
Reading the Laws as a Whole: Horizon, Vision, and Structure
Mitchell Miller
My project in this essay is to orient—or, both more precisely and more modestly, to mine the text in order to provide some suggestions as to how one might orient—a reading of the Laws. To that end, I will offer three sets of reflections, guided by these questions: (1) To begin from the negative, what fundamental dimensions and motifs does Plato exclude from the dialogue, indicating that they lie beyond the horizon of relevant possibilities for thought that delimits the Athenian Stranger's conversation with Cleinias and Megillus? (2) How, positively, does Plato define this horizon itself? That is, with what basic terms, in what basic relations—and conveyed by what allusions, in this case to his earlier major works on polity—does he have the Athenian establish this horizon? (3) Finally, what is the basic force he intends the text of the Laws to have, and what is the structure he has the Athenian Stranger give his discourse as a whole in order that it might have that force?
Trying to get such a holistic purchase on a text as monstrously massive as the Laws is a daunting, not to say hubristic, undertaking. On the other hand, its very massiveness makes the effort all the more, not the less important. If there is in the Platonic corpus a forest that is hidden by the heterogeneity and bulk of its many stands of trees, the Laws is it. Fortunately, there are several passages in the dialogue that seem intended to give us bearings, and we will pay close attention to them. But, of course, to single these passages out risks being just another way of losing sight of the forest. At the day's end I take solace in the thought that providing something that is at least worth disagreeing with will itself have some orienting power for those who share the ambitious project of taking the measure of the Laws as a whole.
I. What lies excluded, beyond the horizon ...
Asking what has been excluded must seem a peculiar way to begin. I am motivated by an experience that I suspect I share with many readers of the Laws, the mounting surprise, as one reads, at the fact that Plato does not invoke almost any of the motifs and projects that in earlier dialogues we have been led to think of as defining the depths of philosophy. He leaves un-introduced, seemingly beyond the reach of the Athenian Stranger, eros as the drawnness of the soul to the face of the beloved and the Beautiful—and, so, to the transcendental horizon of the forms—that we know from the palinode in the Phaedrus and Diotima's ladder in the Symposium, respectively. Nor is there any mention of the "greatest study," the pursuit of the Good, that is the deepest project of the Republic and sets the goal of the "longer way" that proceeds through the development of dialectic in the Sophist and the Statesman and that climaxes, on my reading, in the Philebus. (Nor, it goes without saying, is there any indication of the arguably still more basic notions of the One and of the Great and the Small.) We do, however, get a reminder of the mathematical studies of Republic VII both at the end of the Stranger's discussion of education in Laws VII and, albeit in very compressed form, in the discussion of the "more precise education" (965b) that the members of the Nocturnal Council will need. But this is one of those exceptions that prove the rule: the highest of the mathematical studies explicitly proposed for the members of the Nocturnal Council is astronomy, not harmonics—yet in the Republic it is especially the passage from the study of figure in the geometrical studies, including astronomy, to the study of ratio in harmonics that bridges the philosopher-to-be into dialectic. In the Laws, it seems, astronomy, not harmonics and, so, also not dialectic, is the highest study projected for the members of the Nocturnal Council.
But ought we to have been surprised to find all this—above all, the Good and the forms and the depths of eros and mathematics that open the soul to them—excluded from the world of the Laws? In fact, in the stage-setting opening pages of the dialogue, the text as much as tells us that precisely this is what, in setting its highest aim, it will leave out. There we learn that the elderly threesome are on a walk in the countryside, with lovely shade trees to provide places for rest and relief from the Cretan heat; thus, as in the Phaedrus, they are not only at leisure—they are also outside the city and free from the restraints that propriety puts on exploring the critical and unseemly and perhaps subversive. What's more, the path ascends to a height, the recurrent Platonic symbol of the Socratic/Eleatic quest for the forms, the orienting bounds of the perceptual and political given; and at this height we will come to the sacred source of the laws and the state. But here, of course, is the manifold rub: the height we aim for is a cave, the site not of the light or ether of an upper realm but, rather, of the very absence of such light and clarity, and the source of the laws is the birth-place of, therefore, what is precisely not timeless, hence not the site of the forms and the Good but rather of what is in time and subject to cultural representation, namely, Zeus, the chief of the anthropomorphic Olympian gods. Thus the opening page gives fair warning, at least on reflection, that in the Laws we will be operating within the bounds of the sense of reality not of the philosopher but rather, at best, of the acceptant [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII], the metaphysical "trust," of the thoughtful citizen.
II.... and what marks the horizon: "the god" and the "first" and "second-best" cities
"Is it [a] god or some human being ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]), strangers, that you take to be the cause of the establishing of your laws?" With these, the opening words of the dialogue, the Athenian Stranger indicates the double boundary of this pre-philosophical sense of reality.
On the one hand, there is "god" or "the god." This figure is left both indeterminate and fundamental: only loosely associated with both Zeus and Cronus (see (2) below), he is the presiding power in the world. In the opening words of his imagined prelude to the assembled Magnesians the Athenian puts him first as the god who "holds the beginning and the end and the middles ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]) of all that is" (4:715ef.); he "is always attended by Justice" (ibid.); and he is the "measure of all things" and the being who, in order that we "become dear to him, [we must] do all in [our] power to become like" (4:716c–d). These elevating references leave him shadowy, however. Only in the digression on atheism and the gods in Book 10 will he receive a sharper—and suddenly quite unconventional—portrayal as the good soul possessed of intelligence that, self-moving, sets all else, above all the sun, into motion.
On the other hand, there is the city that is ruled by law. Here we face a thicket of well-known—if not allusions, then at least—pointed resonances of the Republic and the Statesman, in the course of which the Athenian Stranger establishes the status of Magnesia as a "second-best" city. There are four passages to note.
(1) [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] ("... coincide in the same ...," 711e8f.) In a reflection on the interplay of god, chance, and art in Book 4, the Stranger argues that the conditions that would make for "the swiftest and easiest" (712a, cf. 710b, 711c) transformation of an existing city into "the best and with the best laws" would be the partnership of "a lawgiver who knows the truth" (709c) and a young tyrant of moderate character. Still better would be when these are one and the same man, "when the greatest powercoincides in the same [man] ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]), one with intelligence and moderation" (711e8–a2). Can one who knows theRepublic help but hear the resonance of Socrates' paradoxical declaration that the "smallest change" (473b) that would allow his just city to be realized would be for "political power and philosophy [to come to] coincide in the same [man] ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII])" (473d2–3), the philosopher-king? But by the very association that Plato provokes in the Laws by his repetition of the language of the Republic he gives us occasion to notice that the Athenian hopes for something pointedly different from what Socrates did: the "truth" that the Athenian's "lawgiver" "knows" is not what Socrates' figure of the philosopher seeks, the Good and the forms, but rather "the best laws": and so the tyrant the Athenian fantasizes, rather than becoming a philosopher, will make himself the agent who establishes those laws in his city; and since, as the Stranger argues, it is by the example the tyrant sets for his subjects that he can best bring about the transformation of his city, to establish the best laws requires that he begin by subjecting himself to them. Accordingly, while Socrates' philosopher-king rules from above the law, the moderate tyrant will bring it about that all, himself included, are subject to the rule of law.
(2) [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] ("... in the time of Cronus," 713b2). Only a few speeches later, at 713a–714a, the Athenian sets the stage for his prelude to the Magnesians by introducing the "myth" of the age of Cronus. Readers of the Statesman will recognize this as Plato's return—but, again, with several interesting differences—to the great myth that he has the Eleatic Stranger present in that dialogue. Long ago, the Athenian now says, we humans lived under Cronus in a paradisiacal condition, free both from material scarcity and internal strife. How did Cronus manage this? He knew that, "human nature" being what it is, no man can be an "autocrat" over the rest without falling into "hubris and injustice," and so just as we now put ourselves in charge of cattle, he put [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII], "divinities"—that is, beings of a higher species—in charge of us; these divinities, in effect our shepherds, provided us "peace and respect for others ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]) and good laws ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]) and unstinting justice ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII])" (713e). "Good laws" and "justice" are absent in the Statesman myth, where human beings in the age of Cronus are earth-born, and their herdish lives, lacking both "polities" and "the possession of women and children" (Statesman 272a), are thoroughly apolitical. The Athenian Stranger, accordingly, is now reading the presence of "good laws" and the political justice they establish back into the time of Cronus. The general point of this adaptation, the Athenian makes plain enough. We humans can hardly gainsay the god's knowledge of our nature. Accordingly, no one should risk trying to rule autocratically over the rest; instead we must all "imitate" the life we had under Cronus and his divinities by subordinating ourselves to that "within us that partakes of immortality," namely to "the dispensation by [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] (mind) that we call [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] (law)" (Laws 714a).
But if the general point is clear, in its specifics it sets the stage for the rest of the dialogue by raising big questions. Among them: what is it that the god knows about "human nature" that dooms to injustice any man's effort to rule autocratically? What is the sense of "imitation" in accord with which we are "imitating" the rule of Cronus and his divinities by resisting autocracy and holding to the rule of "good laws"? In what sense is "[what] we call [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]" a "dispensation by [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]"? And how may we get our bearings in order to attempt to achieve—and, now as we read the Laws, in order to determine how well the Athenian actually does achieve—this "dispensation"?
(3) ... [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] ("... as much as possible, ... things in common," 739c1–2). We get some help with these questions from the third resonant passage, at 739cff. Here Plato has the Athenian's words echo Socrates' formulation of the principle of the best possible polity at Republic 423e–424a: where Socrates declares that the rulers of his just and good city "will easily discover ... how all ... must be governed as far as possible ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]) by the old proverb ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]) that friends share things in common ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII])," the Athenian declares that "the first" and "best" city will be that in which "the ancient adage ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]) is realized throughout the city as far as possible ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII])," namely, that "friends share things in common" ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]) (739c). And in his detailing of this sharing, the Athenian reiterates Socrates' vision in each of its key aspects: women and children and "every sort of property" will be "common"—that is, there will be no private family or private property—, and this will enable the extraordinary spiritual unity that Socrates celebrates in the Republic, the "community" of pleasure and pain: "everyone," says the Athenian, will "praise and blame in unison, as much as possible delighting in the same things and feeling pain at the same things" (739d). As before, however, so here, and much more explicitly, Plato reminds us of Socrates' city in the Republic in order to mark how the Athenian's project differs from it. A city in which all things are "in common" would have to have, for its inhabitants, "gods or the children of gods" (739d); Magnesia, by contrast, is to be inhabited by human beings and so can only be the "second best" city.
This notion of "second-best" (739a, e) marks the aspiration as well as the limitedness of the city that the Athenian now begins to design, and this double aspect, this sense in which Magnesia is, while only second, nonetheless second-best, is the key to his notion that human polity must "imitate" the rule of Cronus and his divinities; now, however, it is the city of "all things in common" that he declares to be the "model" ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII], 739e1) that we must "hold to" and "seek to realize as fully as possible." Accordingly, even while the Athenian accommodates the humanity of its citizens, their non-divine "birth, nurture, and education" (740a), by accepting private property and separate family units, he also subordinates the private to the common. The land, he declares at 739e, must be divided into separate lots and farmed not in common but by different households; but it is family lines, not individuals, to whom the land is assigned, and this assignment is inalienable and inalterable "for the rest of time" (740b). "Each man who receives an allotment should deem it to be at the same time the common possession of the whole city" (740b), given in irreversible trust. Thus, in this and many other ways, the Athenian sets out to construct a mean, a political order that, even as it falls short, expresses the fullest possible human approximation of the divine.
(4) [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] ("for this reason one must choose the second-best, ordinance and law," 875d3). At 874e–875d, Plato has the Athenian interject a reflection on the status of the rule of law that cannot help but remind one who has read the Statesman of the Eleatic Stranger's subtle and dialectically balanced position on that question—but, again, with telling differences. The Athenian, about to turn to the class of personal injuries in all their inexhaustible empirical variety, acknowledges that law cannot, as true understanding can, address the specificity of each situation; it can only speak [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII], addressing particular situations "for the most part" or "on average" (875d4). And just before saying this he declares that "no law or ordinance surpasses knowledge, nor is it right that mind ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]) be subservient or slave to anything else—on the contrary, it should rule over all things, provided it is genuine and really free to be itself." On both counts he reiterates criticisms of the limitations of law that Plato has the Eleatic Stranger make in the Statesman—but with striking differences in each case. Whereas the Eleatic embeds his criticism of law's directedness to the average within the context of endorsing its usefulness to the true or knowing statesman, the Athenian undermines this whole argument by his bottom-line declaration that "such understanding, genuine and really free to be itself, ... in the present day does not exist anywhere at all, except in fragment." Thus the Athenian declares as a basic truth what the Eleatic instead credits to the ruled, the subjects of contemporary democracy and oligarchy alike, namely, the deep and pervasive suspicion that their rulers do not possess true knowledge of the ruling art and instead pursue their own interests. Accordingly, where the Eleatic, though hardly confident, nonetheless himself remains open to the possibility that a knowing statesman may appear, the Athenian is closed to it and concludes, without qualification, that "for this reason one must choose the second-best, ordinance and law."
In noting these differences, I do not mean to beg the question of Plato's position, nor do I mean, in characterizing the Athenian as closed, to suggest that he is dogmatic or unreasoning. On the contrary, in reaching his position the Athenian goes deeper than the suspicion of the ruled, and he provides the elements of a subtle psychological analysis. To the ruled, as the Eleatic reconstructs their position in the Statesman, their ruler or rulers lack knowledge and instead pursue their own interests; to the Athenian, by contrast, even if one should somehow manage the immensely difficult task of achieving knowledge, nonetheless, he should not be trusted to rule accordingly. For although he would know that "the common binds cities together whereas the private tears them apart" (875a6–7), "his mortal nature ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]) will always drive him toward getting more for himself and [advancing] his private interests ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]), causing him to flee pain irrationally and to pursue pleasure and to put both of these before what is more just and better" (875b6–8).
(Continues...)
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Table of Contents
Introduction
1. On Reading the Laws as a Whole: Horizon, Vision, and Structure
Mitchell Miller
2. 'E and the Laws in Historical Context
Mark Munn
3. The Long and Winding Road: Impediments to Inquiry in Book One of the Laws
Eric Salem
4. Education in Plato's Laws
John Russon
5. On Beginning after the Beginning
John Sallis
6. It is Difficult for a City with Good Laws to Come into Existence: On Book 4
Michael Zuckert
7. "He Saw the Cities and He Knew the Minds of Many Men": Landscape and Character in the Odyssey and the Laws
Patricia Fagan
8. On the Human and the Divine: Reading the Prelude in Plato's Laws 5
Robert Metcalf
9. Being True to Equality: Human Allotment and the Judgment of Zeus
Greg Recco
10. The 'Serious Play' of Book 7 of Plato's Laws
David Roochnik
11. No Country for Young Men: Eros as Outlaw in Plato's Laws
Francisco Gonzalez
12. On the Implications of Human Mortality: Legislation, Education, and Philosophy in Book 9 of Plato's Laws
Catherine Zuckert
13. 'A Soul Superlatively Natural': Psychic Excess in Laws 10
Sara Brill
14. Property and Impiety in Plato's Laws: Books 11&12
Eric Sanday
Bibliography
List of Contributors
Index
What People are Saying About This
An outstanding collection . . . that will inspire others . . . to begin to take the Laws as seriously as they should.
A diverse set of intelligent and original essays on the Laws featuring some of the best names in American scholarship.