In Plato’s Laws, the Athenian Stranger maintains that law should consist of both persuasion (πειθώ) and compulsion (βία) (IV.711c, IV.718b-d, and IV.722b). Persuasion can be achieved by prefacing the laws with preludes (προοίμια), which make the citizens more eager to obey the laws. Although scholars disagree on how to interpret the preludes’ persuasion, they agree that the preludes instill true beliefs and give citizens good reasons for obeying the laws. In this paper I refine this account of the preludes by (...) arguing that the primary purpose of the preludes is to motivate correct action, and that for citizens who lack rational-governance this is achieved via useful false beliefs. That is to say, in many cases, the prelude functions as a “noble lie” (γενναῖον ψεῦδος). (shrink)

This paper argues that there are three distinct senses of possibility at play in the Republic’s discussion of whether the best city is possible: natural possibility, possibility for existing cities, and ideal possibility. It is argued that Socrates makes different claims about each of the three political proposals in Book v. (1) Women guardians are argued to be naturally possible. (2) Socrates considers it an open question whether the common family of guardians (the so-called ‘community of women and children’) is (...) naturally possible. He argues, however, that it is ideally possible. (3) The philosopher-king is claimed to be possible in the strongest sense: it is not only naturally possible, it is also possible for existing cities. It is for this reason that the common family of guardians is ideally possible. This clarifies the sense in which the best city is best. (shrink)

Julian’s Letter to Themistius is one of our most valuable sources for understanding Julian’s political thought. More specifically, it is perhaps our most valuable source for investigating the extent to which Julian’s approach to governance was or was not influenced by his philosophical commitments. Here I focus on this question and argue that, understood in its proper intellectual context, the Letter provides us with good reason for thinking that Julian’s political philosophy (and the programme that he implemented as emperor) was (...) profoundly influenced by the Platonist tradition. While Julian does distance himself both from the philosopher-king of the Republic and the lawgiver of the Laws, this should not be taken as a wholesale rejection of the possibility of an applied Platonist political philosophy. A standard Platonist doctrine by Julian’s time distinguished between not two but three levels of political reform: the divine ideal of the Republic, the second-best state of the Laws, and a third state, arising from reform. A careful reading of the Letter provides support for the idea that Julian aimed at the latter. (shrink)

Late antique political Platonism was not unoriginal in its thought. The paper takes as an example the Justinianic dialogue On Political Science (ca. 550), which creatively engages with Plato’s political works. It shows that the dialogue tries – and manages, as I argue – to combine two apparently inconsistent Platonic models: what I call the “divine” model, in which a philosopher-king endowed with divine knowledge rules unhindered by civic laws; and the “human” model, characterized by the rule of law. The (...) divine model comes mostly from Plato’s Republic and Statesman; the human one, from the Laws. On Political Science demonstrates that its (anonymous) author was acquainted with these three Platonic texts, in addition to other texts. That is philologically noteworthy, but also philosophically interesting: the dialogue manages to integrate the two models into a common framework. It puts forward an original political model, in which a philosopher-king, although endowed with divine knowledge, still has to be bound by civic laws because of his human frailty. The article concludes by discussing the polemical import the dialogue could have had in its Justinianic context. (shrink)

In Plato's Laws, the Athenian Visitor says that the best constitution is a mixture of monarchy and democracy. This is the theoretical basis for the institutions of Magnesia, and it helps the citizens to become virtuous. But what is meant by ‘monarchy’ and ‘democracy’, and how are they mixed? I argue that the fundamental relations in Plato's discussion of constitutions are those of authority and equality. These principles are centrally about the extent to which citizens submit to the judgment of (...) an authority and the extent to which they decide for themselves respectively—the extent to which they are ruled by themselves or ruled by another. The institutions of Magnesia reflect these principles in practice and provide a more nuanced way to understand Plato’s assessment of democratic institutions. (shrink)

The modern rationalist idea of rule of law, and modern rationalism in general, owes much to Plato and to Platonism. However, Plato’s stance towards the laws of the city is all but clear. On the one hand, we have the seemingly ‘totalitarian’ Plato of the Republic, a dialogue which defends the absolute authority of philosophical wisdom over all prescriptions that are ensuing from existing cities and their laws. On the other hand, we have the ‘more liberal-democratic’ Plato of the Laws, (...) a dialogue which promotes a combination of philosophical wisdom with rule of law. This ambivalence as to the issue of laws permeates one of the most enigmatic of Plato’s works, the Politicus, a dialogue that was written after the Republic and before the Laws. The present essay rejects both the ‘totalitarian’ and the ‘liberal-democratic’ understanding of Plato’s stance towards the laws of the city. The author defends the thesis that laws in the Politicus do not constitute a static Form that works against or with philosophical wisdom and/or democratic self-legislation, but a factor that generates a series of inescapable philosophical and political ambivalences. This approach corresponds with many of the findings of the so-called ‘post-modern jurisprudence’. That is, it brings to the fore the immanent aporias of philosophical dialectics, it emphasises the irreducible un-decidability between violence and consent as foundational elements of the law, and it stresses the adiakrisia between the poisonous and the healing effects of laws as regards the attainment of conditions of social and political justice. (shrink)

Among the educative games of Plato’s Cretan city, choral performances have a prominent role. This paper examines the function of play (παιδιά) in the choral education in virtue in Plato’s Laws. I reconstruct the notion of play as it is elaborated throughout this dialogue, and then show how it contributes to solving the problem of virtue acquisition in the Athenian’s account of moral education through songs and dances. I argue that play in the Laws is best understood as an imitative (...) activity that is intrinsically pleasurable, ordered by rules and patterns of repetition, and undertaken for its own sake by a player whose psychic condition is childish. Thus interpreted, we are in a better position to see why choruses must be engaged in playfully. Because the self-likening process (ὁμοίωσις) choral performances aim at requires pleasure and because pleasure normally obtains when there is a concordance between one’s character and the imitations, virtue acquisition is best secured if the imitations of virtue in choruses are performed or spectated playfully. (shrink)

In Laws 5, the Athenian argues in favour of virtuous over vicious lives on the basis that the former are preferable to the latter when we consider the pleasures and pains in each. This essay offers an interpretation of the argument which does not attribute to the Athenian an exclusively hedonist axiology. It argues for a new reading of the division of ‘types of life’ at 733c-d and suggests that the Athenian relies on the conclusion established earlier in the Laws (...) that we humans take pleasure in harmony and order. Virtuous lives exhibit just such harmony and order and are therefore always more pleasant than and preferable to vicious lives. (shrink)

Virtue and Law in Plato and Beyond, by AnnasJulia. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017. pp. 234.