review of bobonich

8/10/2019 Review of Bobonich

1/5

BOOK REVIEWS

Christopher Bobonich (ed.) (2010). Platos Laws: A

Critical Guide. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,

viii + 245 pp., $85.00. ISBN: 978-0-521-88463-1.

This important new volume belatedly brings the reflections of some

of the leading lights in analytical ancient philosophy to bear on

what is increasingly considered Platos most important statement of

political theory. While students of Leo Strauss and Trevor Saunders

have long recognised the central position theLawsenjoys within the

Platonic corpus, it has taken Chrisopher Bobonichs masterful 2002

study of the so-called late dialogues to bring its import to the

attention of a wider audience.

This renewed interest in the Laws is reflected in the names he

has brought together here and this volume will no doubt do much

to stimulate further interest in the dialogue, although it does

presuppose familiarity with Platos oeuvre and modern debates

concerning its exegesis. Even so, Bobonich very correctly observes

in his introduction that we are still at the very early stages of

reflecting philosophically on the Laws and expresses hope thatpublishing these articles together will serve to stimulate work that

will bring new illumination to standing debates and that will open

up fresh avenues of inquiry that are not currently available (4).

The volumes first two articles offer global reflections on the

dialogue. Malcolm Schofields piece examines the interesting non-

ideal theory developed in the Laws. He suggests we attend to

Aristotles claim at Pol. 2.6, 1265a3-4 that the Laws initiallyproposes a constitution most suitable to actualpoleis; a project from


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Book Reviews 253

which the text subsequently deviates and argues that careful reading

supports Aristotles claim. We can discern the initial project, he

argues, in the historical reflections inLaws3 and in the regrettable

recourse to coercion throughout the dialogue. Schofield rightly

compares this realistic project to middle books of the Politics. But

this project is subordinated, he claims, to the idealizing project of

realising a constitution which is second best (Leg. 5, 739a) to

something resembling the Kallipolis of the Republic insofar as it

manages to cultivate the virtues of citizens.

In the second essay, Christopher Rowe takes up Schofieldsearlier work on the dialogue by developing an alternative version of

his thesis that theLawsis written for two types of reader: those who

are philosophically experienced, in the sense of being practiced

readers of Plato, and those who are philosophically inexperienced

altogether. Rowe claims to radically depart from Schofield insofar

as he suggests the dialogue presumes familiarity not only with the

methods and approaches of other dialogues, but also with theirarguments and conclusions and even with unwritten Platonic

doctrines. In this way, he suggests, we can more adequately explain

both the frequency of intertextual references in the Lawsas well as

its oft-noted dearth of philosophic argument. The dialogue can

speak to practiced readers, and offer them the expected dialectical

justifications, simply by referring to other dialogues or doctrines

where such justifications are provided. At the same time, the text

can speak to unpracticed readers unfamiliar with these texts or

doctrines (or even with philosophical thinking) by frequent recourse

to rhetorically and imaginatively rich explanations.

The following three pieces examine the role of virtue in the

Laws. Richard Kraut writes perhaps the finest essay of the volume,

exploring a theme of special interest to the political theorist and

which deeply fascinated Plato: the relationship between those who

have greater understanding of human value to those with less.

Kraut resists Bobonichs proposal of explaining the Laws move


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Intellectual History and Political Thought254

towards a more democratic constitution by positing a change in

Platos views with respect to the psychological capabilities of

ordinary people.1Instead, he argues that the Laws merely fills a

(major) gap in Platos political philosophy, without being

inconsistent with the Republic. Kraut ascribes to the author of the

Phaedo, Republic and Laws the view that ordinary people can have

ordinary virtue (d!motik!aret!) without philosophic understanding,

but claims that this idea is only provided justification in the Laws,

making for an interesting contrast with Rowe.

A contribution by Julia Annas then examines the famouslegislative preludes of the Laws in light of a striking tension in the

text. The dialogues philosophical protagonist, the Athenian

Stranger, insists that all citizens and rulers of the city in a speech he

and his interlocutors establish be slaves of the laws (Leg. 3, 700a; 4,

715d; 6, 762e). Yet Plato also seems to expect citizens to develop

virtues and therefore to also be practically motivated by more than

habituation or fear of the laws, as might be expected of slaves.Annas proposes resolving this tension by looking to Philo of

Alexandria whose own reflections on legal philosophy are clearly

informed by the Laws. Philo argues that citizens must understand

the ethical idealembedded in legislative dictates if their spirit is to be

properly followed, 2 and Annas recommends this model for

understanding the preludes of the Laws. This interpretation allows

Annas to follow Bobonich in seeing the citizens of the regime of the

Lawsas virtuous in a fuller sense than allowed on Krauts view.

Terence Irwin rounds out this section by asking whether the

Laws can be read within the natural law tradition. While he finds

that this cannot be done if we understand that tradition in a strictly

deontological sense, Irwin underlines the Strangers claims that law

mimics reason and can be a psychologically internal principle of

1 See Bobonich 2002.2 E.g., Annas quotes from Philos Special Laws IV 134.


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Book Reviews 255

practical rationality as well as an external prescription. Insofar as

the natural law tradition is understood to simply identify morality

with the prescriptions of an internal law-giving capacity, Irwin

suggests we should see theLawsat the head of that tradition.

Two further sets of essays conclude the volume. Articles by

Dorothea Frede, Rachana Kamtekar and Bobonich focus on moral

psychology in the Lawswhile contributions by Thanassis Samaras,

Robert Mayhew and Andr Laks each deal with disparate, but vital,

themes: respectively, the position of women and structure of the

family in the dialogue, the role of theology and the meaning of theStrangers depiction of the regime as the truest tragedy at Leg. 7,

817a-b. Fredes piece attempts to understand the concept of

pleasure deployed in the first two books, arguing that it should be

seen as a kind of process, involving the restoration of health after

painful degeneration, an account consistent with those given in the

Philebus and Timaeus. Kamtekar situates the emphasis on physical

education in theLawswithin the overall program of civic educationespoused by the Stranger and the system of moral psychology of the

late dialogues in general, while Bobonich mounts a critique of the

thesis developed by Charles Kahn and Hendrik Lorenz that non-

rational motivations are limited to animal-like perception devoid

of conceptual (language-like) constituents3.

The closing chapter by Laks stands out from the other

contributions in several respects. Laks makes a refreshing effort to

engage texts outside contemporary exegetical debates in platonic

studies, or at least those debates which typically exercise students of

ancient philosophy. He not only draws upon various texts in the

Platonic and Aristotelian corpora, but also from the reception of

ancient tragedy in German idealism and liberally from Stephen

Halliwells work on Ancient aesthetics. 4 Even Laks thesis is

3 Kahn 2004 and Lorenz 20064 See Halliwell 1984, 1996, 1997, 2002.


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Intellectual History and Political Thought256

distinctive insofar as he insists on reading theLawsas an exploration

of implacable tensions inherent in political life.

Overall, the volume is a fine addition to the growing body of

research on the Laws, although many will be disappointed by the

lack of serious reflection on the dialogues relevance for or

possible challenges to modern political thought.

Robert Ballingall

University of Toronto

Works Cited

Bobonich, C. (2002). Platos Utopia Recast: His Later Ethics and Politics,

Oxford.

Halliwell, S. (1984). Plato and Aristotle on the Denial of Tragedy

Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society30, pp. 49-71.

(1996). Platos Repudiation of the Tragic in Tragedy and the

Tragic, ed. M. S. Silk, Oxford.

(1997). TheRepublics Two Critiques of Poetry inPlaton: Politeia,

ed. O. Hffe, St Augustin.

(2002). The Aesthetics of Mimesis: Ancient Texts and Modern Problems,

Princeton, NJ.

Kahn, C. (2004). From Republic to the Laws: A Discussion of

Christopher Bobonich, Platos Utopia Recast Oxford Studies in Ancient

Philosophy26, pp. 337-62.

Lorenz, H. (2006). The Brute Within, Oxford.

Philo of Alexandria (1989). Philo: Vol. VIII, trans. F. H. Colson,

Cambridge, MA.

Plato. (1980). The Laws of Plato, trans. T. L. Pangle, Chicago, IL.

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