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 the Laws enjoys 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 that
publishing 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 nonideal theory developed in the Laws. He suggests we attend to
Aristotles claim at Pol. 2.6, 1265a3-4 that the Laws initially
proposes a constitution most suitable to actual poleis; a project from

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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 in Laws 3 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 Schofields
earlier work on the dialogue by developing an alternative version of
his thesis that the Laws is 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 their
arguments 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 Laws as 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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towards a more democratic constitution by positing a change in

Platos views with respect to the psychological capabilities of
ordinary people.1 Instead, 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 (dmotik 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 famous
legislative 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 ideal embedded 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
Laws as 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
2

See Bobonich 2002.

E.g., Annas quotes from Philos Special Laws IV 134.

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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 the Laws at 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 Laws while 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 the
Strangers 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 the Laws within the overall program of civic education
espoused 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 nonrational 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
4

Kahn 2004 and Lorenz 2006

See Halliwell 1984, 1996, 1997, 2002.

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distinctive insofar as he insists on reading the Laws as 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 Society 30, pp. 49-71.
(1996). Platos Repudiation of the Tragic in Tragedy and the
Tragic, ed. M. S. Silk, Oxford.
(1997). The Republics Two Critiques of Poetry in Platon: 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
Philosophy 26, 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.