Did Plato intend the laws of the Laws to change? While most scholars agree that there is to be legal change in Magnesia, I contend that this issue has been clouded by confusing three distinct questions: (1) whether there are legal mechanisms for changing the law in Magnesia, (2) what the attitudes of Magnesian citizens towards innovation and legal change are, and (3) whether Plato thinks the law is always the ultimate political authority. Once we separate these issues and look (...) at the relevant texts more closely, we see that the Athenian Visitor is primarily concerned with supplementing the original lawgiver’s laws and that any innovation that occurs should be consistent with this lawcode. This does not settle the question about whether it is always right to act in accordance with the existing laws, though it does provide a valuable framework for understanding a central aspect of Platonic political philosophy. Thus, although Plato’s ideal places knowledge above the law, in practice the laws of Magnesia will be fixed and authoritative for those people living under them. (shrink)

This essay first examines the issue of intersubjectivity in terms of the paradigmatic relationship between I and You. From a grammatical standpoint this relationship seems asymmetrical as well as necessarily performative: I implies the speech act of the speaker. You exists only as I's interlocutor. This helps us understand the very different status of what is called the 3rd person--and which would more accurately be called a nonperson, as Benveniste explains. This nonperson marks the position of a Third Party. I (...) propose to show that the same Third Party--whether a living being or a thing--is also involved in the traditional ceremonial gift-exchange relationship discussed by Marcel Mauss. The relationship between the partners in gift-exchange is mediated by the being or the thing given, which is for the recipient a token and substitute of the giver. What this involves is the reciprocal public recognition of the partners. In modern societies this function is performed by the law and by the institutions of the arbiter-State as they emerged in the formation of the Greek city. (shrink)

This paper explores two ideas in Aristotle: the idea that a just person is necessarily a lawful and law-abiding citizen, and second, the idea that the virtuous person necessarily cares about the common good. In this paper, I show that justice and its concern for the common good is central to Aristotle’s conception of the virtuous agent, and that justice, in turn, cannot be understood apart from the various laws that states devise for the common benefit.