While delving into the scholarship on Plato’s Laws, I have found myself stalwartly disagreeing with is the idea that Laws is trying to improve on The Republic.
Many of the scholars pick up on how Laws abandons the communism of The Republic and conclude that the purpose of Laws is to either abandon Plato’s earlier city or, at least to adapt it to reality.
Much can be objected to here. Moderns really have trouble fathoming the ancient views of authority. But the biggest objection to this interpretation is that it leads to poor reading. The question should not be, ‘What does Plato try to say in Laws that he does not say in The Republic?’ but ‘What is the plan of Plato’s work?’
One scholar, Malcolm Schofield, argues that there are two plans in Laws: one in which Plato continues the idealizing project of The Republic, and one in which he adapts it to a more realistic setting. Schofield makes a lot of good points, but are we really to read this work as moving in and out without any notable literary breaks?
It is entirely plausible that Plato was working with a more unified project. Here is an example to consider: suppose a political conservative writes a book called The America that Might Be. In this book, public schools are reformed, the U.S. military abandons its imperial ambitions, and the regulative state is massively curtailed.
Now, let us further suppose that in the middle of this book, the author imagines not just the ideal world, but also compromises that can get us to this ideal world. Suppose he proposes reforming the schools under the cover of higher government financial support? Would we say that such a compromise is in tension with the rest of the book’s project?
In some ways, there would be a contrast but it would not be a contrast of varying levels of political realism but of varying stages in a desired process. There would not be “two projects” as Schofield claims, but one project, with different stages.
So is there a unified structure to the Laws? The dialogue begins with an Athenian, a Spartan, and a Cretan going on a long walking trip and planning out how to create a city. By book 12, they are putting the last touches to their laws for the city. The unified point of the work is a thought experiment: what does a good city look like? And what are the conditions that make it possible?
The central point of Laws is disarmingly simple: How do you create a society in which people are self-controlled and thus useful citizens who put the common good above their private good? This work is not really about Plato creating a general set of principles that any statesman can use as a handbook for creating a city. It is just as much an idealizing project as the Republic. The real point is about fleshing out what The Republic would look like.
Historical fiction engages in a similar project to what I think Plato is doing. For instance, if you read a novel about Napoleon that tried to dramatize his life, thoughts, and feelings, you would not read it as a straightforward historical commentary. But neither would you read it as an ironic or philosophical commentary on Napoleon. That is because you understand that historical fiction is an imaginative experiment: what would it have felt like for Napoleon to be beaten at Waterloo?
In the same way, Plato is writing neither an instructions manual nor a fairy tale. He is instead writing a what-if. It’s a philosopher’s dream, but it is not one that Plato felt was entirely out of reach.
This explains one of the most difficult things for modern readers: how Plato goes on and on about the details of the city government. Whereas in The Republic the government of the city is subservient to the allegory of the soul and the argument about justice, the Laws really is interested in the mundane workings of a just city. The details are not illustrations of a philosophic point; they are the point.
The best interpretation that I have read of Plato’s Laws is Julia Annas’s Virtue and Law in Plato and Beyond. This is how I would describe the basic argument of her book:
There is a tension between the Laws and the Republic, since the Republic is nowhere near close to existing in the real world and thus cannot create the kind of virtuous citizens that can create or even improve a virtuous city. How can a city be fashioned that creates citizens who live virtuous lives?
Plato presents the Spartan and Cretan moving away from their particular local customs which prevent their cities from being truly virtuous. The Athenian begins with Spartan or Cretan virtue and builds upon those notions to correct the excesses and vices particular to their cultures. Laws solves a catch-22: good cities are only made by good citizens, but you cannot have good citizens without previously existent good cities. However, by moving from what is good within already existent cities, Plato shows how we can reform or remove poor and deformed customs. The contrast between Republic and Laws is not between philosopher kings and laws or between an unattainable ideal and a realistic compromise, but rather between the philosophically described goal and the realistic path to that described goal.
The Athenian expects the citizens of this city to be unquestioningly obedient to the laws. However, this is not merely to be an unthinking obedience, but a conscious, rational one. The Athenian thus includes preambles to the laws not merely to argue the citizens into obeying the laws. Annas makes the incredibly useful point that not all the laws use rational argumentation, but some use myth-making and even spells. Annas argues that the point of the preambles is to basically instruct the citizens in the spirit of the law and not just in the mere rule-keeping. In other words, the laws and customs of the city are meant for training in righteousness.
The purpose of the religious customs of the city will also inculcate true piety in its citizens, who will know that God is good and generous, and that He ought to be feared and worshipped. In fact, the virtues of moderation and reasonableness and law-obedience are rooted in the divine nature, which is itself orderly, reasonable, and spiritual.
The project of the Laws is to present a society in which citizens are so trained by customs and laws that they live virtuous and fulfilled lives.
This is the basic summary of Annas’s book, and if you enjoy a scholar interpreting a book in a manner that, above all, seems unforced, then I heartily commend it to you. Here are some of my reflections on it.
I concur with Annas that the Laws is basically a portrait, and not an attempt to take an idealizing project and half-heartedly try to realize a second rate version. Plato is not grudgingly conceding things to obstinate peasants, who cling to their marriages and private property, but rather he continues to think about how peasants can be brought to the level of virtue of which they are capable.
I really like points 3-5, but have some misgivings about point 2, since, as one scholar put it, Annas ends up on the side of those who see the Laws as resolving a problem or tension left unresolved in the Republic.
The strongest point in favor of point 2 is that Annas can offer a literary interpretation that explains the half-hearted interlocuters and what Plato is doing with them. But it still seems like Annas is finding a loose end in the Republic, which makes me want to think further about this before adopting her interpretation.
Regarding point 3, Annas is absolutely right that the Laws are about cultivating virtue, not rule-keeping. Many scholars try in vain to argue that persuasion or argumentation are the defining features of the preambles, but as Annas lucidly points out, the laws try to discourage murder by a myth about the murdered ghost haunting you and attempt to freak people out about marrying for money through spells. Hardly instances of carefully reasoned argumentation or rhetorical persuasion.
Whenever a scholar offers a complicated explanation for what an ancient is saying, always go for a simpler one. As Annas rightly understands it, the Laws are trying to teach people to have their senses trained. Plato is offering a reflection on how laws and social customs can help us become virtuous. Annas shows how this is not mere conditioning but can be a genuine education that teaches citizens how to recognize good and evil, rather than simply following the crowd.
Annas’s treatment of religion in point 4 is great, but I would like more clarification on the idea that imposing order on chaos according to reason is godlike. For instance, is participating in the cosmic reason something that is primarily orderly, non-physical, or moderate/measured, or a combination of the above.
Annas’s central thesis is sound: the Laws is an assay at creating a city that inculcates virtue in its citizens. In books 1 and 2, Plato explains the goal of the city is temperance. The symposia in book 2 explain what genuine self-control is. It is not mere repression or rule-keeping. After dealing with the origins of law, Plato dives into the fun part: imagining a city in which citizens are educated in virtue by the customs of the city. This project lasts until book 10, which expresses the heart of the book, where civic virtue is rooted in religion. Interestingly, if Annas is right that civic virtue is inculcated by training citizens to recognize the good, and not just be conditioned in it, then Plato’s refutation of atheism fits perfectly here. Even ordinary citizens need to know why they are doing what they are doing, even if they cannot offer the kind of detailed arguments Plato offers. The Laws concludes with an account of the guardians, the safeguards of the city. It is sort of like putting the king at the end of a political treatise: if he fails, everything falls apart.
The biggest compliment I can give to Annas is that I usually found her easier and more fun to read than Plato.