Christopher Bobonich, ed.: Plato's Laws A Critical Guide.
Mouracade, John
Christopher Bobonich, ed.
Plato's Laws A Critical Guide.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2012.
vii + 245 pages
$82.00 (cloth ISBN 978-0-521-88463-1)
The first two articles in this anthology address how to read the Laws. The approaches provide an illustrative way of thinking about the entire anthology. Malcolm Schofield advocates a view of the Laws from within, using the resources of the dialogue to develop and defend Plato's project. Christopher Rowe, by contrast, believes the Laws to be radically incomplete and expects us to supply the necessary philosophical material from other dialogues. The articles that follow more or less fall into one of these two methodological camps.
Malcolm Schofield's "The Laws' Two Projects" responds to Aristotle's complaint that the Laws describes an ideal state and a less than ideal state with no clear relationship between the two. While Schofield provides an interesting resolution of this problem, the methodology he employs serves as the focal point for this essay, since how we approach the Laws is more important than any particular view of this dialogue. Schofield does not discuss methodology, but there are two closely related ideas that govern his approach. (1) Puzzles and questions raised in the Laws should be answered, if they are at all answerable, by uncovering resources internal to the dialogue. (2) The Laws should be read independently of philosophical doctrines peculiar to any one dialogue or group of dialogues. Schofield turns to the Laws to find the basis for Aristotle's criticism. He identifies the distinct projects objected to by Aristotle in Book III and Book V. Schofield focuses on the relevant passages and their contexts to develop a solution based on the common element between the projects, the maximization of friendship within the polis. Schofield weaves together a variety of passages and major focal points from the Laws to provide greater insight into the philosophical material contained in the Laws.
Christopher Rowe rejects both (1) and (2). Rowe claims that Plato expects readers of the Laws to be familiar enough with the other dialogues that the reader supplies those dialogues' doctrines or arguments when needed. Rowe's view is that Plato in the Laws works on many different levels simultaneously. There are those who read the Laws and are satisfied with the work as it stands. But there are also readers who expect philosophical justification. Those readers are intended to supply the philosophical material from other Platonic works.
There are four problems with Rowe's approach. The first is that it invites a superficial reading of the Laws supplemented by philosophical material and views worked up in other dialogues, which Plato scholars know so much better. Given that the Laws is not as well known, well read, or well discussed as the rest of the Platonic corpus, Rowe's strategy relegates the Laws to that status in perpetuity. Second, as scholars approaching the Laws, we cannot determine what is lacking from the dialogue until we have a fuller understanding of what is there. In other words, we cannot reasonably employ Rowe's methodology until we have a very sound grasp of the Laws on its own. Rowe prohibits the Laws from employing new dialectical and philosophical ideas. It requires that Plato is stagnant in his thought and only concerned with a different audience or purpose. Finally, there is a textual problem. The Athenian reiterates how important it is that they are at leisure to have a full discussion and shouldn't leave out any details. Many chapters in the anthology serve to show the problems in Rowe's approach.
Richard Kraut in "Ordinary Virtue from the Phaedo to the Laws" develops a view of the virtues acquired by the citizen that departs from the Republic's dialectical context. Since the Laws differs dialectically from the Republic, Kraut can use Plato's silence on certain philosophical topics, not to fill in with doctrine from the Republic, but to mine the Laws for the philosophical view that fits within that context. Kraut does an excellent job of this, drawing from claims in the Laws about the citizenry, such as their participation in selecting rulers, their lack of freedom to travel abroad without permission, and the prohibition on professing atheism to provide an account of ordinary virtue that is unique to the Laws.
Terence Irwin in "Morality as Law and Morality in the Laws" examines the Laws to discern the extent to which Plato portrays morality as an internal natural law. Irwin's project exemplifies the ways in which the Laws deals with different issues than what Plato has taken up before. To grasp this adequately requires a rejection of Rowe's method. Thus, Irwin argues convincingly for a Platonic conception of law that is limited to the Laws. In particular, he argues for law as necessary for a well-functioning society, as a rational order, and law as second best to knowledge. Although Irwin supports this last claim from the Statesman and Republic, he provides evidence from the Laws for the supremacy of knowledge over law.
Thanassis Samaras in "Family and the Question of Women in the Laws" discusses the implications of the inalienability of land and common meals on the family structure. He notes that Plato promises to give an account of how the common meals will be organized but never does. Now, on Rowe's account, we look to other dialogues for an answer. But no other dialogue explains how to set up common meals for an entire citizenry. Samaras argues that the lack of an answer leaves us with a tension in the Laws between Plato's commitment to strong household units and his commitment to communal meals. Having dealt with the role of the household, Samaras then provides a defense of Plato's status as a proto-feminist. Samaras argues from the Laws that women are as capable of being virtuous as men, that they have equal opportunity to become virtuous in Magnesia, and that women are eligible for high office in Magnesia. Consequently, Plato's Laws maintain the progressive (for its time) view of women put forward in the Republic. It is noteworthy that Samaras does not fall back on the Republic's view, but carefully sifts through the text of the Laws to come to this conclusion, thereby foregoing the shortcut offered by Rowe and truly enriching our understanding of the Laws.
Robert Mayhew in "The Theology of the Laws" rejects Rowe's method: "If the Laws is to shed light on this discussion, however, its theological views must be brought out from the shadow of these other works and examined in their own right, unconnected to the central interpretive issues of other dialogues." Mayhew then advances a view of the theology of Books 4 and 7, which he reconciles with the more complicated theology of Books 10 and 12. Mayhew argues that the focus of Plato's theology turns out to be political. Plato proves the existence and goodness of god, which is identified with virtuous reason or the rational soul. Having established the existence of a good god, Plato can easily dispense with heretical views. Mayhew identifies a key element in Plato's theology, which is that by identifying the god(s) with right reason, Plato establishes them as rulers over the cosmos. In spite of his efforts, Mayhew concludes that the theology of the Laws is vague and incomplete. Rather than turning to other dialogues or criticizing Plato for this, Mayhew makes the case that the incompleteness results from Plato's dialectical context in the Laws. Since they are legislating for ordinary citizens who are not governed by philosopher rulers, there is no need for tackling the difficult theological issues and perhaps an inherent danger in attempting to do so.
Andre Laks in "Plato's 'truest tragedy': Laws Book 7, 817a-d" focuses on the Book 7 passage when the Athenian considers allowing tragedians to enter Magnesia. In light of the tragedians' request, the Athenian claims that the legislators are engaged in the truest tragedy. Laks rightly insists that we ought not to look back to the Republic's view of tragedy, but should instead undertake to discover the Laws' view. Laks proposes two conflicting ways in which the legislators are tragedians. He suggests that Plato means for us to consider both of these incompatible accounts of legislative tragedy, thus leaving us with a problem in need of further resolution.
Julia Annas's "Virtue and Law in Plato" investigates how a life of slavery to law, as advocated in the Laws, can foster virtue. After posing this question, Annas goes outside of the Platonic corpus to find an answer, using the work of Philo of Alexandria to find a model for the laws in Magnesia. The connections between Plato and Philo (who wrote commentaries on the Old Testament) are interesting, especially in light of Numenius' claim that Plato is simply Moses speaking Greek. However, the methodology is suspect. While an appreciation of Philo might make a reader sensitive to ideas in the Laws that were unnoticed before, the basis for understanding Plato's Laws ought to be found as close to the text as possible. Thus, the appeal to Philo is either unneeded, because we have good textual basis for the views we develop, or unhelpful, because Philo is too far removed to provide substantive insight.
Dorothea Frede in "Puppets on Strings" offers an account of Plato's moral psychology from Books 1 and 2 with a focus on the analogy of the human soul to a puppet. Although Frede's account depends on a close reading of Laws 1-2, her approach runs afoul of a proper reading of the Laws for two reasons. First, although she takes pains to differentiate the Laws from the moral psychology of Plato's other dialogues, she fails to avoid the expectation that the Laws is engaged in the same sort of project as those dialogues. The very expectation that there is a moral psychology in Laws 1-2 indicates an insensitivity to the context of that discussion. And Frede seems to realize this, as she says that "the puppet analogy serves only a limited purpose and may not fully disclose Plato's psychology in the Laws." The analogy is introduced to explain moderation and put to use only in a brief discussion of the educational function of drinking, thereby giving no indication that we should expect anything like the moral psychologies we see in other dialogues. Also, Frede limits her account to Books 1-2, ignoring an abundance of passages on pleasure and pain that must be considered in developing an account of moral psychology from the Laws.
Rachana Kamtekar in "Psychology and the Inculcation of Virtue in Plato's Laws" examines the contribution of physical education to virtue in the Laws. After noting deficiencies in the literature to explain this matter, Kamtekar points out that the Laws provides little by way of giving an account of the soul and decides that we ought to rely heavily on the Timaeus. Thus, her paper is more about defending a view of soul from the Timaeus than the Laws. Her view is that physical education gives us a first step on the ladder to virtue by teaching us to take pleasure in order. While this seems right, the reliance on the Timaeus is unmotivated if not unnecessary.
Christopher Bobonich in "Images of Irrationality" argues for a conceptualistic over an imagistic view of non-rational motivations in Plato's later dialogues. Bobonich mentions the Laws a couple of times, but largely ignores that dialogue as he works almost exclusively with the Timaeus and simply assumes that the carefully worked out view he develops can be attributed to the Laws as well. While this is a good paper on Plato's moral psychology, it certainly isn't a paper about the Laws. All references to the Laws could easily be dropped without changing the philosophical nature of the paper. Bobonich provides a worst-case scenario of Rowe's method. His articulate and carefully reasoned work on the Timaeus is attributed to the Laws without any substantive attempt to defend this as part of the Laws philosophical framework. Or, to look at it the other way around, it is a best-case scenario for Rowe's approach, as the silence in the Laws on a theory of the soul simply makes room for the theory of the Timaeus.
John Mouracade
University of Alaska Anchorage
