THE LOGICAL STRUCTURE OF PLATO’S LAWS

Elizabeth L’Arrivee1

Abstract: Some commentators argue that the Laws does not have a clear organiza-tion, and use this as evidence to show that Plato left the dialogue incomplete or that oldage had decreased the philosophical quality of his writing. However, the Laws can beshown to be answering a lucid question according to a discernable logical structure,and the specific proposals set forth can be understood as corresponding to this struc-ture. The Laws constitutes part of an actual political founding. As such, the dialoguetreats the acts of lawgiving, and not the nature of laws themselves. The Athenianstranger, evidently a philosopher, presents an account of lawgiving that is alternativeto the traditional understanding of lawgiving as transmitted by divinely inspiredpoetry (624b, 747e).

Some commentators argue that the Laws does not have a clear organization,

and use this as evidence to show that Plato left the dialogue incomplete or that

old age had decreased the philosophical quality of his writing.2 Others claim

that inconsistencies in terminology and contradictions between and within

sections of the Laws indicate that Plato’s unfinished dialogue was completed

by a philosophically incompetent editor (or editors).3 Controversy over the

dialogue’s supposed lack of organization and coherence prevents us from tak-

ing the Laws seriously. To be sure, there are those who do treat the Laws as

presenting a coherent and complete argument, but none of these commenta-

tors focuses on the organization of the dialogue per se.4 The extraordinary

HISTORY OF POLITICAL THOUGHT. Vol. XXIX. No. 1. Spring 2008

1 I am grateful to Jamie Muir, Catherine Zuckert and Walter Nicgorski for their gen-erous assitance with this article.

2 See Glenn R. Morrow, Plato’s Cretan City: A Historical Interpretation of the Laws(Princeton, 1960), p. 205; R.F. Stalley, An Introduction to Plato’s Laws (Indianapolis,1983), pp. 4–5; and Christopher Bobonich, Plato’s Utopia Recast: His Later Ethics andPolitics (New York, 2002), p. 114. Those who argue that the Laws was one of the last dia-logues Plato wrote are, e.g.: Eric Voegelin, Plato (Baton Rouge, 1966), p. 215; PaulFriedlander, Plato (Princeton, 1969), p. 387; Gregory Vlastos, Socratic Studies (Cam-bridge, 1994), p. 135; Trevor J. Saunders, ‘Plato’s Later Political Thought’, in The Cam-bridge Companion to Plato, ed. Richard Kraut (Chicago, 1996), pp. 464–92.

3 See Debra Nails and Holger Thesleff, ‘Early Academic Editing: Plato’s Laws’, inPlato’s Laws: From Theory into Practice, Proceedings of the VI Symposium Platonicum ofthe International Plato Society, ed. Samuel Scolnicov and Luc Brisson (Jerusalem, 2001),pp. 14–29; and Christopher Gill, ‘The Laws: Is It a Real Dialogue?’, in ibid., pp. 42–7.

4 Leo Strauss in The Argument and the Action of Plato’s Laws (Chicago, 1975)argues that it is ‘sub-Socratic’. Thomas Pangle argues that the Athenian stranger putsforth a Socratic understanding of politics as an anonymous philosopher in a different set-ting (T. Pangle, ‘Interpretive Essay’, in The Laws of Plato (New York, 1980), p. 379).Seth Benardete in Plato’s ‘Laws’: The Discovery of Being (Chicago, 2000) suggests thatthe dialogue represents the enduring tension between the need for stability in unchanging

length of this dialogue compared to Plato’s other dialogues (the Laws com-

prises approximately one sixth of the Platonic corpus), the variety of subjects

treated (from virtue, piety and symposia to drainage systems, petty theft and

business transactions), and the Athenian Stranger’s less than straightforward

mode of proceeding all make it difficult to see the order of the overall argu-

ment. Yet discerning this order is necessary to understanding what this

longest and most political of Plato’s dialogues has to teach us about politics

and political philosophy.

In this article I show that the Laws is answering a lucid question by means

of a discernable logical structure. Accordingly, the first section of this paper

puts forward my understanding of the main question and subject matter of the

dialogue, as well as a brief summary of the logical structure. I then show that

attempts to conclude that the dialogue is, or significant parts of the dialogue

are, incomplete, incoherent or inauthentic on the basis of the dialogue’s sup-

posed lack of logical structure are wrongheaded.5 Details cited by much con-

temporary scholarship as indicative of Plato’s disorderly and contradictory

mode of proceeding can in fact be better understood as comprising part of the

dialogue’s structured and coherent argument.

IThe Logical Structure of the Laws

The logical structure of the Laws derives from the question the dialogue as a

whole attempts to answer. In order to discern the logical structure, then, we

must first identify the question of the Laws.

The Laws (nomoi), as stated explicitly by the end of Book III (702b–e), is

supposed to constitute part of an actual political founding. As such, the dia-

logue treats in speech the acts of lawgiving, and not the nature of laws them-

selves.6 The Athenian stranger, evidently a philosopher, presents an account

of lawgiving that is alternative to the traditional understanding of lawgiving

as transmitted by divinely inspired poetry. He refers to the divinely inspired

account of lawgiving at the outset of the dialogue (624b), and explicitly con-

trasts it with his own account of lawgiving at 853c, where he observes, ‘But

we aren’t in the same position as were the ancient lawgivers who gave their

laws to heroes, the children of gods (as the present account has it, they were

themselves sprung from gods and legislated for others who had such an

28 E. L’ARRIVEE

laws and the constant change in the people and their circumstances produced by genera-tion. Catherine Zuckert maintains that the dialogue is presocratic in ‘Plato’s Laws: Post-lude or Prelude to Socratic Political Philosophy?’, The Journal of Politics, 66 (2004),pp. 374–95.

5 These views persist despite the fact that the Laws regained its legitimacy as a Pla-tonic dialogue approximately a century ago (Thomas Pangle, The Roots of Political Phi-losophy (Ithaca, 1987), p. 6).

6 The question, What is law?, is taken up by Socrates in the Minos.

THE LOGICAL STRUCTURE OF PLATO’S LAWS 29

origin); we’re humans, and legislating now for the seed of humans’.7 He pres-

ents his human alternative to the Cretan founder Kleinias and his Spartan

companion Megillus, who have themselves been reared in the conventions

and habits of the traditional, poetic understanding (625a).8 If the Athenian’s

understanding of legislation is to be enacted in Kleinias and Megillus’ actual

founding, the Athenian must lead Kleinias and Megillus, as well as the citi-

zens of the regime they found (who will doubtless have also been raised in the

traditional, poetic understanding (cf. 752b–c)), from the traditional under-

standing to his own. The primary question of the Laws can now be identified:

How can a transition from the traditional, poetic account of lawgiving to a

philosophic account of lawgiving be made or brought about in political prac-

tice?9

To answer this question, one must understand (a) what they are changing

from, (b) the process by which the change is made, and (c) what they are mak-

ing a change to. Accordingly, there are three sets of laws in the Laws: (a) the

traditional laws, which are said to have divine origin; (b) the educational, or

7 Quotations are taken from Pangle’s translation, The Laws of Plato.8 The Cretan laws were said to originate in Zeus, who transmitted them to his son, the

demigod Minos, who founded Crete. These laws were regarded by the Greeks as the bestof all laws (Morrow, Plato’s Cretan City, pp. 18–19), and thus, by taking the Cretan lawsas his primary starting point, the Athenian is presenting an alternative to the laws whichtraditionally set the standard for Greek lawgiving generally. Furthermore, if the Laws isunderstood as constituting such a general challenge to Greek lawgiving, the dialogueitself and the city of Magnesia cannot be understood primarily or fundamentally as syn-thesizing the laws of Crete and Sparta per se and Athens per se in an attempt to worktowards ‘convergence on the truth’, as Christopher Gill argues. ‘Plato selects interlocu-tors who represent two different types of political tradition, the Dorian (Spartan-Cretan),based on a community unified by a rigid social hierarchy and conformity to law(eunomia), and the Athenian, based on a large citizen-body unified by shared debate andagreement. The discussion works towards “convergence on the truth” by establishingcommon ground between these different traditions, both as regards the political institu-tions that such participants can be led to accept as (relatively) ideal and as regards to theunderlying ethical and — to an extent — metaphysical principles that they can be led tosee as underlying that political structure’ (Gill, ‘Is It a Real Dialogue’, pp. 43–4). Rather,the transition from a poetic account of lawgiving to his own that the Athenian is attemptingto cause is associated with but not confined to Cretan, Spartan and Athenian lawgiving.

9 This question is reflected in the title and subtitle. Any attempt to understand lawgiv-ing (On Lawgiving) will be taken up by inquirers who have themselves been raised in theconventions and habits of the Laws of their own regime, and any attempt to apply in prac-tice what has been discovered will have to take into account the traditional laws. Theopening drama is also a representation of this question, as they will discuss the politicalregime and the laws as they journey up to the cave of Zeus. The Athenian replaces Zeus,and Kleinias and Megillus replace Minos and Rhadamanthus. The Athenian stranger’saccount of the transition from the traditional poetic account of lawgiving to the philo-sophic account should be compared with the Eleatic stranger’s myth (the transition fromthe age of Cronos to the age of Zeus) in the Statesman (267e–274e), with reference to thevery different dramatic settings of the dialogues.

transitional, laws, including the laws termed ‘preludes’ (prooimion) by the

Athenian; and (c) the laws of the regime being founded, which are said to

originate in intelligence (nous). The subject matter and drama of the Laws are

also structured accordingly. The dialogue opens at dawn with the discussion

of the most venerable (Cretan) laws (624a–632d), proceeds through the tran-

sitional educational laws up to and past high noon (632e–835b), and ends with

the laws of the new colony and the preservation of those laws by the nocturnal

council (835c–969d). I will discuss each part of this logical structure of the

dialogue in turn.

a. The traditional, poetic account of lawgiving (624a–632d)

The Laws opens with the question of whether the source (aitian) of the Cretan

and Spartan laws is a god or human (624a).10 From the discussion that ensues

(624a–632d), we learn the following about the traditional, inspired account of

lawgiving. Demigods and heroes (e.g. Minos, Lycurgus) established the laws

according to the oracles of a god. Different gods are said to be the source of

different sets of laws (e.g. Zeus for Crete, Apollo for Lacedaimonia), and

divinely inspired poets are claimed to be the transmitters of the laws and their

divine origin to human beings (e.g. Homer).

Two universal features of this basic structure of the traditional, poetic account

of lawgiving are implicit in the course of the discussion from 625c–632d.11

First, as the Athenian goes on to discuss the poets Tyrtaeus and Theognis, it

becomes clear that poetic accounts of these divine origins and transmissions

are open to contradictory interpretations (629e–630a). Since the differing

poetic accounts of the origins of the laws are (a) revealed, to (b) a select few,

reason cannot arbitrate between the contradictions within and between these

accounts. In other words, there is ultimately no universal (i.e. potentially

accessible to anyone) criterion by which to demonstrate the validity of the

account. Even the poet does not demonstrate the validity of what was revealed

to him. Thus, a second universal feature of this account is that the authority of

the laws is not based on reason.

Certain consequences follow from the poetic account of lawgiving. These

become evident in what Kleinias understands the aim of the Cretan lawgiver

to have been. Kleinias states that the Cretan laws were set down with a view to

30 E. L’ARRIVEE

10 The first word in the Laws is theos. Strauss takes this as evidence that the Laws isthe most pious of Plato’s dialogues, and connects it to the Apology of Socrates by notingthat the Apology ends with the word ‘god’. He concludes that in the Apology, Socratesdefends himself against the charge of impiety, and that in the Laws, the ‘Athenianstranger devises a law against impiety which would have been more favorable to Socra-tes than the corresponding Athenian law’ (Strauss, Argument and the Action, p. 2).

11 The Athenian elaborates his account of the traditional, poetic account of lawgivingthroughout the course of the whole dialogue. His understanding of its general structure,however, is evident here at the beginning of the dialogue.

THE LOGICAL STRUCTURE OF PLATO’S LAWS 31

victory in war, and that ‘for everyone there always exists by nature an unde-

clared war among all cities’ (625d–6b). The Athenian’s questioning elicits an

accompanying claim, which in Kleinias’ enthusiastic words is that ‘all are

enemies of all in public, and in private each is an enemy of himself’ (626d).

Kleinias’ account of the aim of the laws and the nature of reality reveals that

the laws are established and preserved by force. His account is not an aberra-

tion from or misinterpretation of traditional lawgiving. It is actually a conse-

quence — intended or unintended — of the ‘conventions and habits’ he has

been raised in (cf. 722b–c). The establishment and preservation of the laws

given by the traditional, inspired account of lawgiving, as presented in the

Laws, depends not on reason but on force in two respects. First, since neither

side has access to a universal criterion or criteria, laws can only be legiti-

mately defended from potential or actual external threats through war or the

threat of war. Two communities bound to differing and conflicting poetic

accounts of their laws cannot resolve a fundamental conflict by reasoning

with each other to a compromise, for such reasoning would appeal to some-

thing higher, because more fundamental, than the laws of either side.12 Since

both sides believe that their laws have their origin in the divine, both sides will

reject that there are more fundamental criteria. Second, obedience to such

laws — whose validity cannot be determined by reason — is based not on

rational consent but on force, specifically the threat of punishment for disobe-

dience.13 Though awe before the laws might also seem to be a motive for obe-

dience, it faces the same problems that the attempt to use reason as a

motivation for obedience to the laws does. Contradictory interpretations of

the same laws raise conflicting views about which interpretation one should

be in awe of. In this case, for the same reasons as given above, the conflict

cannot be solved by reason. Such a conflict, derived as it is from the poetic

account of lawgiving, can only be decided by force. Thus force or the threat of

force is ultimately more fundamental than awe.

Because obedience to the laws is motivated primarily by the negative threat

of force, the soul of the citizen under such laws is characteristically divided

between obedience to the laws (or ‘justice’) and what one positively desires.14

Reason, as shall become clearer below, is employed merely to calculate the

rewards and punishments consequent to the choice between the two. In the

traditional, divinely inspired poetic account of lawgiving, therefore, the

required preservation of and obedience to the laws are accomplished by force

or the threat of force. The citizens, including Kleinias and Megillus, are

12 Hence Megillus puts forward victory in war as the criterion for deciding the bestlaws (638a).

13 The Athenian’s primary innovation in lawgiving, as we shall see, is a transitionfrom force as the primary motive for obedience to laws to persuasion, i.e. preludes(722c–e).

14 Socrates and Glaucon call this view the ‘popular opinion’ in the Republic (358a).

characterized by conflict, both within the individual soul and between indi-

viduals and groups.

It is no wonder, then, that Kleinias qualifies his adherence to the poetic

account of the divine origin of lawgiving with ‘to say what is at any rate the

most just thing’ (624a). The justification for, preservation of, and obedience

to such laws are dependent, ultimately, on the poet’s word, the willingness to

use force to defend the poet’s account, and the chances that transgressions

will be punished. This lawful authority is repeatedly pitted against pleasures

and pains whose reality and validity are hard to deny for the one experiencing

them. Kleinias’ own goals as a lawgiver are revealed in his ambiguous answer

to the Athenian’s question of what the laws are given with a view to. At first,

he says that the laws are given only with a view to war. A few sentences later,

he says that the purpose of war is to acquire ‘all the good things of the

defeated’ (626b). Are the laws given with a view to victory or to the acquisi-

tion of ‘good things’? If to victory, then Kleinias ought not to subordinate vic-

tory to gain. The Cretan laws, however, do seem to be given with a view to

victory in war. Kleinias’ subordination of victory to gain then indicates that

he is imposing his own personal desire onto the laws. But since the traditional

account of lawgiving is characterized by a conflict between law-abidingness

(the public stick) and desire satisfaction (the personal carrot), and reason’s

role is limited to calculating the respective benefits between the two alterna-

tives, then it makes sense for Kleinias to consider, if only secretly, the best

resolution to this state of affairs as making the actual end of the laws corre-

spond to the acquisition of ‘good things’ for himself by becoming the law-

giver. A lawgiver who orders the laws with an unqualified view to his own

good is a tyrant. In this way, another consequence of the traditional, poetic

account of lawgiving is the increased potential for tyranny. If the only thing

keeping Kleinias’ unlawful desires in check is his fear before those who wield

power, one wonders how quickly these desires would be unleashed once he

had himself become the force-wielding founder and determined the criteria of

praise and blame.

b. The change from the poetic to the philosophic account of lawgiving

This section of the text, running from 632e–835b, can be divided into three

major parts, all of which contribute to making the change from the poetic to

the philosophic account of lawgiving: (1) the preconditions of rational inquiry

into lawgiving (632e–650b); (2) the education of the lawgivers (652a–724a);

and (3) the education of the rulers (726a–835b). I will discuss each part in

turn.

(1) At this point, we can see that if the Athenian is going to cause a transi-

tion from the divinely inspired account of lawgiving to his own, philosophic

account, he must begin by preparing the souls of the new colony’s founders,

Kleinias and Megillus, for this change. Because the philosophic account of

32 E. L’ARRIVEE

THE LOGICAL STRUCTURE OF PLATO’S LAWS 33

lawgiving is an innovation from the traditional account of lawgiving, because

the old are the safeguards of the traditional account, and because the tradi-

tional laws are upheld with force, the question of how to cause such a transi-

tion is also a question of how to make the elderly Kleinias and Megillus

friendly to the philosophic Athenian. This preparation begins with the articu-

lation of a question, a new subject matter and a new method.

The Athenian first calls into question the Cretan and Spartan exclusion of

the other virtues (moderation, justice and prudence) for one virtue, courage

(629a). Once he has shown Kleinias and Megillus that they cannot say how

the Cretan laws contribute to the cultivation of the other virtues, which he then

enumerates, he suggests that they start from the beginning again (632e–641a).

Whereas the Athenian first asked about the purpose of the Cretan laws, he

now asks whether and how the Cretan laws contribute to each of the virtues

(mentioning that they will put aside the question of how they contribute to the

whole of virtue until later). If the Cretan exclusion of the other virtues were

justifiable given the existence of multiple virtues, the virtue of courage would

somehow have to account for all of the other virtues. As the Athenian’s ques-

tioning of Megillus shows, determining whether courage does so depends on

what one understands the other virtues to be. Is moderation, for example,

really the courageous suppression of unlawful desires? If so, what legislation

trains the suppression of unlawful desires, as spiritedness is trained to sup-

press fears (635c–d)? Or is moderation rather the training of pleasures that are

conducive to friendship and education (640b–1d)? The success of Cretan and

Spartan legislation in inculcating moderation as self-restraint is at least ques-

tionable, given the proliferation of homosexuality among the former, and the

looseness of the latter’s women (636b–7c). Other people, such as the Athe-

nians, have a different understanding of moderation, as their legislation of

drinking parties, a practice which increases desires, shows. In this way the

Athenian calls the traditional account of lawgiving into question, and the

doubt that results from having their own laws called into question makes it

possible for Kleinias and Megillus to consider seriously the goodness of laws

and customs other than their own.

The discussion of drunkenness that follows goes even further, in that it

compels Kleinias and Megillus to consider the benefits of a practice that their

own laws forbid. To determine what is correct in drunkenness, they must

determine what the correct method of inquiry is. The Spartan and the Cretan

are familiar only with methods of reasoning the Athenian holds to be incor-

rect, for they all appeal to standards that are inappropriate for determining the

correctness of things, such as relativism, consensus and victory (637c–8d).

Relativism does not determine the correctness of anything, but is rather used

as an excuse dogmatically to avoid debate or demonstration. An appeal to

consensus indicates only what most people think is correct, not what is actu-

ally correct. Victory shows only who is mightier, not who is more correct.

These standards overlook true reasoning and are forms of calculation which

are consistent with the poetic account, for they are all compatible with the lim-

ited use given to reason: calculating the rewards and punishments consequent

to obeying the law or satisfying personal desires. It is thus clear why the Athe-

nian has to introduce arguments, the correct method of inquiry, as something

unknown to his interlocutors.

This introduction is accompanied by something else previously unknown

to Kleinias and Megillus — a human relation defined not by conflict but by

concord. All three of them, the Athenian proposes, should refrain from either

blaming or praising drunkenness until they have gone through arguments

which will indicate its effect and ‘the way it is administered — in what man-

ner, by whom, along with what, in what condition, and to persons in what con-

dition’ (628c). The Athenian uses the inquiry into drunkenness to teach them

this new, unfamiliar method. Moreover, he presents this method under the

guise of patriotically defending an institution of his own Athens. Kleinias and

Megillus, two old patriots, cannot help but lend an ear to the Athenian

stranger at this point.

The Athenian asserts that the correctness of drunkenness, as well as the

question of the correctness of music to which the discussion of drunkenness

leads, depends on the correctness of education — which becomes the new

subject matter. To cause a transition from the poetic account of lawgiving to

his own, the Athenian brings the rational faculties of his two interlocutors to

reflect on the process by which human beings come to have the opinions they

have and act in the way they do, and the goal which guides the process. This

kind of discussion of education is also new to Kleinias and Megillus, who

have been raised in the poetic account of education. Poetic education does not

cause citizens to reflect on the process by which they become educated. The

philosophic account does.

A transition from the inspired laws to philosophic laws has thus been

shown to begin with a new question (whether and how the laws contribute to

the plurality of virtues), method (arguments and speeches) and subject matter

(education). The Athenian has replaced Zeus as educator of the lawgiver,

indicating two more differences thus far between the inspired account of law-

giving and the philosophic: whereas in the former a god guides the demigod

lawgiver by oracles, in the latter a human educates the human lawgiver with

speeches.

(2) Once the Athenian has established the preconditions for his education

of the two lawgivers, his discussion of the education of the lawgivers contin-

ues until 724a. This education begins with the soul (the musical education

from 652a–674c), is followed by the education of the body (gymnastics, from

676a–718a), and is completed with the explicit introduction of the Athenian’s

primary innovation in lawgiving, the preludes (718b–724a). The inspired

account of lawgiving cultivates a human being characterized by warring

34 E. L’ARRIVEE

THE LOGICAL STRUCTURE OF PLATO’S LAWS 35

parts. If the new laws are to contribute to the cultivation of virtue, the warring

parts must pursue this common end in friendship. While the traditional

account of lawgiving habituates discordance in the soul, philosophic lawgiv-

ing tries, as much as possible, to harmonize it.15

This friendship, also called ‘intelligence’ by the Athenian (689a–c), becomes

the goal of the correct education to virtue in this next stage of the logical struc-

ture. The discussion of education from 652a–724a thus serves three functions:

(1) to identify what the best human being as a whole is; (2) to make Kleinias

and Megillus aware that their own education has not taught them this, and that

there are things that they have yet to learn; and (3) to determine how laws can

attempt to bring about this best human being.

The musical education from 652a–674c treats excellence of the whole soul

of the human being, and the gymnastic education from 676a–718a treats the

needs of the body. The Athenian’s reason for treating soul before body

becomes clear as the dialogue goes on. In the discussion of marriage laws that

is meant to illustrate his primary innovation in lawgiving, i.e. the prelude, he

claims that human beings by nature ‘share in immortality, and . . . it is the

nature of everyone to desire immortality in every way’ (721b–c). Still later in

the text, the Athenian observes ‘that for human beings everything depends on

a threefold need or desire, and that if they are guided correctly by these, virtue

results, while if they are guided badly, the opposite’ (782d–e). This threefold

need is for food, drink and sex, all of which partake in immortality ‘by means

of coming-into-being’ (721c).16 These desires which partake, in different

forms, in the desire for immortality are for the Athenian stranger erotic. The

‘natural erotic longing’ for the engendering of offspring is by far the form that

is greatest. So the three ways the desire to share in immortality, a desire which

is itself divine, is originally expressed is through the body. Since the body

itself is finite, it is the soul’s desires that drive the satisfaction of bodily needs

beyond what is required for mere mortal existence.17 The vicious expression

15 It is possible for a human being living within the traditional account of lawgivingto achieve some type of order by elevating one part of the soul which dominates the otherparts, e.g. controlling reason and desires through spiritedness, or subordinating spirited-ness and reason to desire satisfaction (as the tyrant of Republic’s Book 9 does). But suchorder would more accurately be described as balance between opposing parts than as aharmony of parts working towards the same ultimate end (such as virtue). Harmony ofsoul is also a more stable order than balance, since all that is needed for an overcoming ofbalance is for one part to become a little stronger than the elevated part. E.g., any desirethat is stronger than the spirited part would necessarily overcome the order of a soul inwhich spiritedness dominates.

16 Cf. Symposium, 206e–207a.17 This physical expression of the soul’s erotic longing is expressed in Glaucon’s

desire for ‘relishes and desserts’ in the Republic (372d). The difference here is that theAthenian, engaged as he is in a practical political project with interlocutors of less philo-

of this threefold desire is the attempt to satisfy eros with the feverish acquisi-

tion of limited, material goods. The virtuous expression, and the Athenian’s

alternative, is to lead this threefold desire from the material objects that are

originally desired to a more immortal or divine object. For this reason the soul

is treated before the body. For the soul to be able to attempt to satisfy its essen-

tially unlimited desire without driving bodily desires to excess, the soul’s

desire for immortality must be brought into knowledgeable friendship with

the bodily pleasures and pains. The body, and its goods of wealth, pleasure

and health, are for the sake of the soul (870b).

Since desire for food, drink and sex is naturally a part of what it is to be

mortal, the Athenian does not try to suppress or eliminate this desire. The kind

of being who shares in immortality without desiring immortality would be not

human but a god, and as the Athenian says, ‘we are carrying on a dialogue

with human beings, not gods’ (732e). Unlike the traditional, poetic account of

legislation where a god educates a demi-god or hero, in the human, philo-

sophic account of lawgiving the bodily expression of the desire for immortal-

ity must be taken into account and educated. The Athenian, by treating the

excellence of the soul before the excellence of the body, can prepare Kleinias

and Megillus for the radical innovation that he is introducing. Kleinias and

Megillus are used to continually warring against the mad erotic threefold

longing, and to laws that are merely punitive. But, as we have seen with the

example of Kleinias, this war within the soul does not eradicate these desires,

and when law is used merely as a ‘stick’ the temptation to break the law in

secret or to become a tyrant grows. The Athenian’s transitional laws attempt

to direct the threefold expression of the desire for immortality toward a more

virtuous end, by making the end of the laws immaterial virtue. This new goal

brings the soul from a state of war to a state of friendship by unifying and jus-

tifying, as much as possible, the soul’s mortal and immortal desires to that

part of the human being that shares in divine intelligence.

This change from war to friendship is expressed within the soul of Kleinias.

At the beginning of the dialogue Kleinias is divided between his desire to

become famous for ‘just’ lawgiving (like Rhadamanthus),18 and his desire for

gaining wealth (to satisfy excessive bodily desires) through victory at the

expense of the common good. By the end of the dialogue he can contribute to

the friendship of the regime as a whole by aiming the laws towards virtue and

by ruling in accordance with these laws, and at the same time satisfy his desire

for fame. This change is also expressed in the gradual moderation of Kleinias’

36 E. L’ARRIVEE

sophic potential than Glaucon, cannot present philosophy as the soul’s true satisfaction(as Socrates does).

18 The Athenian’s choice of fame as an example of the human desire for infinity at721b is one of many instances where the stranger conforms his speech to the characters ofhis interlocutors.

THE LOGICAL STRUCTURE OF PLATO’S LAWS 37

spiritedness, often expressed in his contempt for the many, by his becoming

unified in purpose with Megillus, the defender of the many.19

The Athenian identifies his primary innovation in lawgiving, and in the

education of lawgivers and rulers, i.e. the prelude, at noon (722b–3b). This

discussion comes near the end of the first part of the educational laws, which

is the education of lawgivers by the philosopher, and which the Athenian now

claims has itself comprised a prelude. It is shortly preceded by his explicit

identification of the laws with the god, which is intelligence (nous)

(713a–14b). Whereas the inspired account of lawgiving identifies the source

of laws as a god whose will is unknown (644d), the philosophic account iden-

tifies the source of the laws with intelligence, which is potentially accessible

to human beings, who partake (even though in a limited way and to greater or

lesser degrees) in intelligence. What intelligence would teach lawgivers is

that human beings must be persuaded to be obedient to laws, lest the laws

invite the growth of the desire to undermine the laws in the citizenry. Further-

more, these persuasive speeches must appeal to both passions and reason to be

able to direct — and not simply suppress — these motivations for the good of

the whole community.

(3) As the section on the education of the lawgivers began with the soul, so

too does the section on the education of the rulers (726a–734e). But here the

Athenian teaches Kleinias and Megillus what the lawgivers will publicly

teach about the soul. He conforms this teaching to Kleinias’ desire to rule oth-

ers, by presenting it as their common teaching to the rulers. Since the Athe-

nian will eventually enlist Kleinias as a ruler of the colony, and since this

teaching is part of a long monologue given by the Athenian, we know that the

public teaching is really a teaching of Kleinias himself (and Megillus), who

will then go on to teach others what he has learned. This philosophic teaching

playfully employs myth and images as the mode of transmission, thus invert-

ing the subordination of intelligence to myth evident in the inspired account.

The philosopher who possesses intelligence, and who is not motivated to be a

founder of regimes because he does not desire fame (this is, in part, why he is

19 Kleinias’ and Megillus’ differing relations to the many are indicated early in thedialogue. In Kleinias’ first speech, Plato shows him to be contemptuous of the ‘mindless-ness of the many’ (625e). Kleinias’ tyrannical tendencies also indicate that his own inter-est takes priority over those of the many. Plato in Megillus’ first candid speech, in con-trast, shows him saying he believes ‘what is said by many is very true’ (642c). Megillus,moreover, unlike Kleinias does not express mere hesitation at criticizing the Cretan law-giver and then leap at the chance to raise questions. He actively defends the Spartan insti-tutions when challenged by the Athenian (cf. 630d, 635a and 637a).

Plato emphasizes the significance of this change by ending the dialogue with Kleinias’and Megillus’ mutual assurance that they will ‘help’ each other persuade and contrive forthe Athenian to share with them in the city’s founding. The last two words in the dialogueare xullambane (spoken by Kleinias) and xull�psomai, which are from sullamban�,meaning ‘to take part with (one) in (a thing)’.

a ‘stranger’), can be the indirect source of a regime’s laws by bringing the

motivations of non-philosophers, i.e. lawgivers and rulers, into some accor-

dance with intelligence. The order of transmission proceeds from divine intel-

ligence, to the intelligence of the Athenian, to the speeches of the Athenian to

the lawgivers and to the rulers.

What follows is the transmission of the speeches of the lawgivers, which

are written, to the speeches and deeds of the rulers, who can fill in the outline

of the laws, and so complete the bridge between intelligence and the way of

life of citizens (751a–835b). Persuasion through education, specifically the

preludes, continues to be a theme of this section, in the education of children

and the serious play of adults. The whole of the citizenry must constantly par-

ticipate in festivals which are conducive to the development of the whole of

virtue, and thus to friendship. Here in practice, i.e. where bodies can come

into physical contact, however, the Athenian must take into account the con-

sequences of an excess of friendship — the erotic relations between human

beings. The lawgiver who legislates in accordance with intelligence must leg-

islate for human beings, who act according to their motives, and what moti-

vates them most of all is the infinite desire (eros) which humans have by

virtue of being soul. By virtue of being embodied souls, as mentioned above,

eros has different expressions.20 In Kleinias, it is primarily expressed through

his desire for fame, in Megillus, the desire to protect his own. In most people,

it is expressed through the desire to participate in immortality by having chil-

dren. It is for this reason that the Athenian qualified the extent to which all

things should be held in common (justice) by allowing people to have fami-

lies, for human beings will come to be divided between justice and eros when

they perceive justice to infringe on eros. Preludes can harmonize justice and

eros to some extent, by accommodating justice to eros, but the human law-

giver must recognize that it is in the interest of justice not to expect eros to

become fully governed by law. Human beings, who are mortal, cannot per-

fectly legislate the infinite desire for immortality.

The traditional, poetic account of lawgiving undermines itself by ignoring

this human limitation. Attributing the source of the laws to an immortal being

whose purposes are inaccessible to human reason is an attempt to subsume the

demands of eros to the demands of justice. But the preservation and enforce-

ment of the laws requires interpretation, and since human reason cannot

inquire into the reasons for the traditional, poetic laws, the desire for the

immortal can only be controlled through force. Yet as we saw at the beginning

of the dialogue, law cannot simply suppress eros, even if the law is purport-

edly divine.

Thus the Athenian’s transitional laws have been shown to identify the best

human being as one whose threefold desire for food, drink and sex have been

brought into friendship with the ‘divine’ part of the human being, i.e. the

38 E. L’ARRIVEE

20 Cf. Symposium, 208e–9a.

THE LOGICAL STRUCTURE OF PLATO’S LAWS 39

natural desire for immortality. Kleinias’ and Megillus’ souls are brought from

the conflict that characterized them under the traditional, poetic account of

lawgiving into friendship by coming to reflect, under the guidance of the

Athenian, on the nature of erotic desires and being introduced to a new kind of

law, i.e. the preludes, which do not simply suppress eros but through speeches

attempt to persuade citizens to satisfy eros in accordance with virtue by

appealing to their passions and their reason. These laws, recognizing the vari-

ous capacities and types of human beings, employ various methods, such as

myth, images, arguments and practices to achieve their goal. Above all, the

Athenian here legislates in accordance with the limits of legislation. Eros in

political life ultimately exceeds justice, for no city, even a virtuous one, is

immortal (676b–c).

c. The completion of the philosophic account of lawgiving (835c–969d)

The suppression of eros as a part of lawgiving cannot be dismissed outright by

the Athenian, however. The Athenian teaches Kleinias and Megillus to force

those who cannot be persuaded, i.e. those who are uneducable, to obey laws

which are accompanied by force (862d–e; 880d–e). These laws comprise part

of the final section of the dialogue, which treats the laws of the actual regime,

including the laws concerning impiety. The traditional, poetic account of law-

giving required belief in the gods for justice. Here, piety is introduced in the

section on penal laws. Piety in the philosophic account of lawgiving would

then be required for only a part of justice, namely, that part of justice that

requires the use of force. The crimes the Athenian enumerates in this section

are overwhelmingly those that involve objects that cannot be shared in com-

mon, or material property. What cannot be shared can only be ‘mine’ or

‘thine’, and human beings can exceed in their share of ‘mine’ by taking what

is ‘thine’ (906c). The Athenian calls this excess injustice. He earlier stated that,

‘Anyone who uses his reason and experience will recognize that a second-best

city is to be constructed’ (739a). Human reason can recognize that erotic love

of one’s own will limit the city’s justice insofar as the city’s ends cannot be

immortal. The city must aim as much as possible at virtue; it cannot aim at it

entirely:

That city and that regime are first, and the laws are best, where the old prov-erb holds as much as possible throughout the whole city: it is said that thethings of friends really are common . . . Such a city is inhabited, presum-ably, by gods or children of gods (more than one), and they dwell in glad-ness, leading such a life. Therefore one should not look elsewhere for themodel, at any rate, of a political regime, but should hold on to this and seekwith all one’s might the regime that comes as close as possible to such aregime. If the regime we’ve been dealing with now came into being, itwould be, in a way, the nearest to immortality and second in point of unity.(739a–e)

The Athenian concedes that insofar as the city’s laws must aim at the material

goods of property, food, clothing and reproduction, the just distribution of

these goods depends on divinely sanctioned force. In contrast to the poetic

account, however, the Athenian attempts to give some rational grounds for

this divine sanction, and to preserve the use of reason that allows for the culti-

vation of virtue by softening the punishments for impiety (907d–9d).

The other part of this section is comprised of what is necessarily entailed by

the institution of laws in practice — the preservation of these laws in time.

What completes the transition from the inspired account of lawgiving to the

philosophic account of lawgiving is the inclusion in the regime of the ‘nocturnal

council’, which includes the Athenian and hence the philosopher (960b–9d).

This regime can only be instantiated and preserved — as we might expect in

an account of lawgiving which is said to originate in nous — by the continued

inclusion of the philosopher in a role of advisor to the ruler. Whereas Kleinias

and Megillus formerly had to become friendly to the philosopher to found their

city in speech, the Athenian is now asking them to institutionalize this friend-

ship in the city founded in deed. Philosophers do not become kings, but wisdom

and power in the practicably best regime are meant to coincide indirectly.21

In sum, the primary difference between the poetic, inspired account of law-

giving and the philosophic account of lawgiving is that the former is unsuit-

able for human beings in that it does not treat the human being as a mixture of

body and soul. These divine laws thus cause a division in the soul between

obedience and certain desires that is irreconcilable by the poetic account

itself. The philosopher, who knows human motivations, can through a mix-

ture of argument, myth and images educate the legislators and rulers to recog-

nize the limits of legislation, and thus potentially form a citizenry in practice

characterized not by strife but by friendship.

What the Athenian’s educational laws, primarily the preludes, have by the

end of the dialogue achieved in speech goes beyond what the laws of Athens

40 E. L’ARRIVEE

21 As Pangle and Zuckert both emphasize, there is a fundamental tension in the Noc-turnal Council in that it is questionable that the elderly, who do not know the answer tothe question of the unity and diversity of virtue, will be willing to admit their ignorance infront of the youths who will ask this question (Pangle, The Laws of Plato, p. 508; Zuckert,Plato’s Philosophers (unpublished manuscript, 2006), p. 100). Zuckert adds the furtherproblem that the two primary subjects of study of the council, virtue and nature, in theAthenian’s account presuppose two mutually contradictory accounts of the universe:‘The studies of nature (or especially the movements of the heavens) he recommendspoint to the conclusion that everything is in motion, some of that motion is orderly, somenot, which is why there is an immortal war. The other study of the end or purpose of thepolity — understood not to be the mere preservation of the community or race but theachievement of excellence — points not only to the existence of enduring standards, butto the possibility of achieving completeness by ordering the disparate parts within awhole’ (Zuckert, Plato’s Philosophers, p. 103).

THE LOGICAL STRUCTURE OF PLATO’S LAWS 41

had achieved in deed when they condemned Socrates to death.22 The Athenian

has caused Kleinias and Megillus to recognize their need of him, and the dia-

logue ends with their entreaty for him to remain with them in their city.23

However, we are not told if Kleinias’ city in speech, under the guidance of the

Athenian, ever actually came to exist. While the dialogue as a whole answers

the question of how to cause a transition from the poetic to the philosophic

account of lawgiving in practice, the end of the dialogue leaves us with the

question of whether this transition is actually achievable.24 If the transition is

not fully achievable in practice, the dialogue invites its readers to ask which, if

any, of the principles that have been articulated could be applied, in modified

form, in practice to reduce the threat of the established laws to a more philo-

sophic account of lawgiving.

Having thus summarized the logical structure of the Laws, I will next show

that knowledge of this structure can help us to understand aspects of the dia-

logue which have often been considered problematic or incoherent. In this

way, I hope to call into question and propose an alternative to the scholarship

of those who have argued that the Laws is an incoherent, poorly written or

incomplete dialogue. Though it would take a much larger project than this one

fully to refute these scholars, the examples I have chosen are representative of

the kinds of arguments they put forward and thus the following should be suf-

ficient for my intended purposes.

IIA Re-Reading of the Laws

Glenn Morrow, in his work Plato’s Cretan City: A Historical Interpretation

of the Laws, argues that the section dealing with the appointment of the

Guardians of the Laws (nomophylakes) in Magnesia is inconsistent and dis-

continuous, and concludes that this ‘indicates clearly that we have two ver-

sions of Plato’s thought’.25 Morrow’s reasoning for this conclusion is as

follows. The Athenian, responding to the problem of selecting suitable

Guardians of the Laws who have not themselves been reared and educated by

22 See note 10, above.23 The Athenian, as Strauss points out, has nowhere retracted his initial refusal to

become a member of the city (Strauss, Argument and the Action, p. 185). While willing tohelp in the preparation for the Nocturnal Council, the Athenian’s lack of response toMegillus’ and Kleinias’ mutual resolve suggests that Pangle is correct in his observationthat the city is more willing to be ruled by philosophy than the philosopher is willing toaccept political responsibility (Pangle, The Laws of Plato, p. 509). Their entreaty mightthen very well be an unwelcome demand or threat. Plato in the Laws shows an awarenessnot only of the threat the traditional, poetic account of lawgiving poses to philosophy, butof the abuse philosophy suffers when it is constrained to being politically useful.

24 For an account of the problems associated with instituting the city in speech pro-posed in the Laws in practice, see Zuckert, ‘Postlude or Prelude’, pp. 387–94.

25 Morrow, Plato’s Cretan City, p. 205.

Magnesia’s laws, asserts that the Knossians must help the citizens of the col-

ony select thirty-seven men, nineteen from among the colonists and the rest

from among the Knossians. A transitional sentence follows which introduces

the second election of Guardians (753b), but goes on, according to Morrow,

to describe the first election. He claims, ‘for only at the beginning will it be

necessary to select the whole body of guardians at once; since each guardian

holds office until he dies or reaches the age of seventy, later elections will be

concerned only with filling vacancies in the group’.26 The Athenian then goes

on to ask who will preside over this election and conduct the scrutiny of the

candidates (753e), which Morrow takes to be an unnecessary query, presum-

ably because the first group of Guardians has already been identified. Morrow

indicates that the discussion of the difficulties in setting up the first govern-

ment which follows duplicates a discussion two pages earlier in the text, and

notes that the conclusion of this proposal to select one hundred Knossians and

one hundred colonists differs from the former in that these eighteen

Knossians, rather than becoming citizens of the new colony as in the first pro-

posal, now instead return home when their supervisory duties are ended. Mor-

row concludes that there must be an earlier version of the text, comprising the

first account of the selection of guardians, which Plato revised after having

given the problem more thought. Both versions were somehow retained in the

text.27

However, if Morrow had noted the placement of this discussion within the

logical structure of the dialogue as a whole, he need not have drawn this con-

clusion. This discussion takes place within the section of the Laws that I have

identified as dealing with the process by which to make a transition from the

poetic to the philosophic account of lawgiving. The Athenian is here attempt-

ing to cause a transition in practice, with respect to Kleinias especially, from

the poetic account they have been raised in to his own. This is indeed a critical

juncture in the dialogue, for it is the first step in the process of transforming

what have hitherto been speeches into deeds.

Morrow passes over the parts of the text which connect the Athenian’s

intention and mode of proceeding in this section to the logical structure — the

necessity of including Kleinias among the eighteen Knossians, and Kleinias’

hesitation in being included. It is quite apparent why Kleinias must be

included among the eighteen Knossians. As having been educated by the

Athenian himself, Kleinias comes closest to having received the education

and rearing in the laws from an early age that they both agree would best

ensure the survival of the young city (752c).28 Somewhat less evident is the

42 E. L’ARRIVEE

26 Ibid.27 Ibid., p. 206.28 Zuckert notes that this proposal is responding to the practical impossibility of the

Athenian’s initial suggestion that the three of them must themselves stay alive and inpower long enough to raise the first generation of the city, who will then select the magis-

THE LOGICAL STRUCTURE OF PLATO’S LAWS 43

reason for Kleinias’ hesitation, though it too is discernable. The Athenian

anticipates that Kleinias would need to be persuaded or compelled by a ‘mea-

sured amount of force’ to become a citizen of the city and one of the first

eighteen guardians of the laws (753a). Kleinias, in accordance with the Athe-

nian’s expectation, instead of consenting to become a guardian suggests that

the Athenian and Megillus should also be made to join. Fame is dependent

upon the opinions of others, and Kleinias obviously cares more for his reputa-

tion among his fellow Knossians than among the Knossian colonists.29 The

poetic account of legislation that Kleinias has been raised in is still preventing

him from attaching his desire for fame to a city that, though reason may dis-

cover it to be the best practicable, is not his own.

Given Kleinias’ desire for fame, the necessity that he join the regime, and

the placement of this section within the logical structure, we can now under-

stand the two discussions of the election of the guardians not as an earlier and

later version of Plato’s thought, but as a procedure employed by the Athenian

to persuade Kleinias that his desire for fame can be satisfied in a city that

instantiates the philosophic account of lawgiving.30 This persuasion is thus

part of the process of causing a transition in deed from the poetic to the philo-

sophic account of lawgiving. At the beginning of this process (726a–747e),

rather than present himself as teaching Kleinias directly, the Athenian

appealed to Kleinias’ desire to rule others by presenting his teaching of

Kleinias as their mutual teaching of the rulers. In the next stage (751a–771a),

the Athenian must get Kleinias explicitly to establish the office of Guardian

that the philosophic account of lawgiving determines to be best. He makes

this shift more acceptable to Kleinias by retaining, though modifying, the

technique he used in their public teaching of the rulers. He first introduces his

proposal that Kleinias become a ruler with a pronouncement in the style of

this earlier teaching, decreeing to the ‘children of the Knossians’ that eighteen

Knossians must become Guardians (752e). When Kleinias evades directly

accepting the proposal which follows, the Athenian again reverts to describ-

ing the method of selection in terms of the set of guardians Kleinias would

establish the selection process for. The Athenian in this way makes Kleinias

more amenable to becoming a member of the city by ‘sandwiching’ his direc-

tion of Kleinias between two instances of Kleinias ruling others. The Athe-

nian’s question that follows, namely, who will set up the offices and their

scrutinies, is not, as Morrow thought, unnecessary. The Athenian must return

to the question of the first guardians of the laws, because he is attempting to

trates (Zuckert, Plato’s Philosophers, pp. 45–6). The selection of new colonists andKnossians as the guardians of the laws is already a second best.

29 I am indebted to Catherine Zuckert for this observation (Zuckert, Plato’s Philoso-phers, p. 46).

30 Pangle notes that the Athenian is also motivated to give the second account of thefounding because he is alarmed by Kleinias’ readiness to include him (the Athenian) inthe new city (Pangle, The Laws of Plato, p. 465).

get Kleinias to conceive of himself as a member of the new city. His return to

the difficulties of this initial beginning, which Morrow thinks to be simply

repetitive, attracts Kleinias to the job by flattering him — for

in one way or another, they [the first guardians] must be there, and theycan’t be men of little capacity, but of the highest possible. For as the prov-erbs have it, ‘the beginning is half of the whole deed,’ and we all praise anoble beginning, at least, on every occasion; in fact, in my view, the begin-ning is more than half, and no one has bestowed enough praise on the begin-ning that is noble. (753e–4a)

The Athenian’s suggestion, which at first sounded so lowly to Kleinias, now

sounds high and mighty and most worthy of praise; he is not so much sacrificing

his reputation in Knossos, but, as a Knossian ‘parent’ of the ‘child’-colony,

taking advantage of an opportunity to be praised by a population whose good

opinion he now desires (754b). Furthermore, the Athenian’s emendation that

the eighteen Knossians can return home ensures that Kleinias will not be

deprived of an opportunity to be honoured by that city as well.31

Thus however correct Morrow may be in his general claim that knowledge

of the historical context of the Laws is necessary for understanding its propo-

sals, it is evidently not enough. When details in this longest of Plato’s dia-

logues are interpreted without clear reference to the logical structure of the

work as a whole, we distort Plato’s intentions and arguments (not to mention

his intellectual capacities!) and deprive ourselves of the opportunity to learn

what the dialogue attempts to teach.

More recently, Debra Nails and Holger Thesleff have argued in a similar

vein. Noting what they believe to be a lack of coherence in the themes that the

Laws treats, they conclude that the dialogue is an example of ‘Academic accu-

mulation’.32 Plato may have written the bulk of the Laws, but he left it unfin-

ished and it was organized and completed by a less philosophically competent

editor or editors. They identify three kinds of inconsistencies to support this

conclusion: terminological and thematic, both within the dialogue and in rela-

tion to the rest of the Platonic corpus. To be brief, I will deal with only one of

their more general claims, which falls under thematic inconsistencies internal

to the dialogue.

Nails’ and Thesleff’s method of arguing in the example I have chosen is

representative of the kind of argument they make throughout their paper.

First, they isolate two or more sections of text, which are either terminologi-

cally or thematically related. In this instance, Nails and Thesleff select the

44 E. L’ARRIVEE

31 The Athenian does not transfer Kleinias’ attachment to his own city to the new col-ony by convincing him with arguments that it is better. Rather, he begins by presentingwhat is truly better as an extension of Kleinias’ own. The Athenian’s addition of lot tomerit as the criteria of selection of officials which follows reflects this concession(757b–8a).

32 Nails and Thesleff, ‘Academic Editing’, p. 14.

THE LOGICAL STRUCTURE OF PLATO’S LAWS 45

discussion of self-control, sex and love in Book VIII (834d–842e) and the

section on self-control in Book I (644b–5d). They then compare the sections

of text or terms they have isolated. Here they note the thematic differences

between the sections, claiming that the section in Book VIII is ‘very much

more moralistic and anti-hedonistic’ than the previous section.33 Then, with-

out the slightest attempt to understand if there might be some explanation for

the difference offered within the terms of the dialogue itself, they chalk this

difference up as one of the many pieces of evidence that, when accumulated,

prove their ‘Academic accumulation’ thesis.

But can these differences be made sense of if we attempt to understand

them with reference to the internal logical structure of the dialogue? The first

of these sections cited by Nails and Thesleff occurs in the first sub-section

(the preconditions of education, 632e–650b) of what I have identified as the

transitional section of the logical structure, and the second occurs in the third

sub-section (the education of the rulers, 726a–835b). As others have noted, to

be able to get Kleinias and Megillus to take seriously laws and customs other

than their own the Athenian needs, in a manner of speaking, to loosen their

tongues. He achieves this with the discussion of drinking parties, vicariously

getting them drunk, so to speak.34 A discussion of the correctness of drinking

parties is especially appropriate to cause a transition in the two Dorians from

the poetic to the philosophic account of lawgiving, as it forces them to con-

sider both the limitations of organizing a community solely with the aim of

victory in war and alternative — and according to their own laws illegal —

modes of political organization. At this initial point in the transitional section,

it would be self-defeating for the Athenian to attempt to induce even greater

self-control in his two disciplined interlocutors.

The later section occurs at the end of the section on the transitional or edu-

cational laws, within the explicit context of the problem of eros. The Athenian

has already warned near the beginning of this third subsection that human

beings are characterized by infinite desire, and Kleinias has by this point been

sufficiently freed from his attachments to his own laws and conception of

lawgiving to consider the goodness of laws and customs fundamentally dif-

ferent from his own. Thus there is no need at this point to induce Kleinias to

loosen his tongue, but there is need to determine how citizens — including

Kleinias — can be persuaded to partially fulfil their essentially unlimited

erotic desires within the limits of the law without inciting a rebellion against

the government, and without resorting solely to force or the threat of force

(831c–e; 832b–d). It is essential to the preservation of their new city that this

persuasion be successful, for unguided erotic frenzy increases the attachment

to one’s own that threatens to undermine the city’s justice. In other words, the

Athenian, having established the naturalness of eros according to the precepts

33 Ibid., p. 26.34 See Pangle, The Laws of Plato, p. 404; Zuckert, ‘Postlude or Prelude’, p. 380.

of reason, having warned against attempts to suppress it altogether, and hav-

ing shown how eros can be directed towards friendship and virtue, only now

introduces the need for restraints on eros. Understood in this way, it is no sur-

prise that the discussion here sounds more ‘moral’ and ‘anti-hedonistic’ than

previously — if indeed these terms apply at all.

While this one criticism of Nails’ and Thesleff’s article does not prove their

thesis wrong, it gives grounds enough to call their ‘academic accumulation’

thesis into serious question. Furthermore, it encourages approaching the dialogue

with the principle of charity, or in other words, to consider the possibility that

other apparent inconsistencies are actually intelligible.

R.F. Stalley, in his influential work, An Introduction to Plato’s Laws, is

willing to call a reading that emphasizes the inconsistencies and lack of struc-

ture of the Laws ‘superficial’.35 While he himself attempts to find meaning in

the Laws, the evidence he cites in support of the superficial (though wrong-

headed) reading in fact reduces the Laws to a ‘rambling and ill-structured’

dialogue that must have been the ‘product of Plato’s old age’.36 He accord-

ingly attempts to find meaning in the dialogue in spite of its inconsistencies,

and does not attempt to resolve them. Again, to be brief, I will discuss his alle-

gations only in part.

Stalley claims that the almost complete drop of the dialogue form in Book

V is one of those ‘feeble or even embarrassing’ elements in the Laws.37 As has

already been noted above, however, Book V constitutes the first part of the

section explicitly devoted to the education of rulers (726a–835b), and is

located within the larger context of the transitional educational laws. The

Athenian presents this section as constituting what they, the lawgivers, will

publicly teach the rulers about the soul. The reason why this teaching is

related in a long monologue is because it is actually a part of the Athenian’s

education of the lawgiver Kleinias. By presenting the teaching as their com-

mon teaching to the rulers, the Athenian conforms his speech to Kleinias’

desire to rule others; and as we know from the outset of the dialogue, Kleinias

considers himself to be a demi-god or hero legislating for rulers (like Minos

and Rhadamanthus legislating for future rulers of Crete) and resists being

treated as anything less. The exchange of dialogue for monologue is thus not

the blunder of an old man. Rather, it serves a distinct purpose within the struc-

ture and procedure of the argument of the dialogue as a whole, as it is part of

Kleinias’ preparation by the Athenian to cause a transition in practice from

the poetic to the philosophic account of lawgiving. Furthermore, it teaches us

about the kind of rhetoric that Plato believes must be used in an attempt to

bring about philosophically informed political change.

46 E. L’ARRIVEE

35 Stalley, Introduction to Plato’s Laws, p. 4.36 Ibid., p. 5.37 Ibid.

THE LOGICAL STRUCTURE OF PLATO’S LAWS 47

Stalley also asserts that Book XI and the beginning of Book XII read ‘like a

collection of disconnected fragments’.38 But the laws proposed in this section

are connected. Book XI picks up the legislation regarding business transac-

tions that they had begun in Book VIII. Book XI, unlike Book VIII, falls

within the final section of the logical structure, which follows the educational

or transitional laws and completes the philosophic account of lawgiving, in

part, by completing their account of the laws that will be instituted in practice.

The earlier preludes and counsels regarding business transactions seem to be

aimed at those who are pious, in the right way, while the laws articulated now

are aimed at those who are impious. This would indicate that the lawgiver

needs to take not only locale (proximity to the sea and available resources)

into account when legislating business transactions, but also the extent to

which belief in the gods can be employed to deter crime. The fact that most of

the laws regarding business transactions are reserved for those who cannot be

persuaded by preludes and advice would lend evidence to the Athenian’s

claim that human laws, which recognize the human tendency towards becoming

bad — especially when engaged in certain practices that strongly influence

them to become such (such as money transactions) — are most appropriate for

human beings; not the divine laws of the traditional account of lawgiving

which legislate for inherently good demigods or heroes (853c–4b).

By now it should be evident, despite claims to the contrary, that the Laws

does have a coherent logical structure. My hypothesis gains credibility when

we see how it allows us to deal with these problems that those who do not

know the structure have. Plato, attempting to answer the question of how a

transition from a poetic account of lawgiving to a philosophic account can be

achieved in practice, structures the dialogue accordingly. Knowledge of the

three main parts of the structure — the poetic account of lawgiving, the transi-

tional laws to the philosophic account, and the completion and preservation of

these laws in practice — is necessary for interpreting correctly the many pro-

posals set forth in the dialogue. It is especially essential for making sense of

the apparent inconsistencies and contradictions within the Laws.

This longest and most political of Plato’s dialogues has much to teach us

about politics and political philosophy. Our ability to learn depends, in part,

on the extent to which we are able to take the dialogue seriously. One motiva-

tion for doing so is that it puts forward a philosophical conception of the rela-

tion between revelation and reason that has been rejected by liberalism, and

can consequently serve as a point of departure better suited to understanding

challenges and alternatives to liberalism. Religion for Plato was a founda-

tional political category and not merely a matter of private belief, as it was for

Enlightenment thinkers. Such is also the case for one contemporary challenge

to liberalism, namely, Islamic theologico-political doctrine, which tolerates

38 Ibid., p. 4.

no separation between religious and political institutions.39 Plato’s depiction

of the traditional, poetic account of lawgiving and his philosophical alterna-

tive in the Laws can perhaps help us to understand not only some permanent

and universal features of politics, but our own situation today.

Elizabeth L’Arrivee UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME

48 E. L’ARRIVEE

39 A.L. Tibawi, Islamic Education: Its Traditions and Modernization into the ArabNational Systems (London, 1972), p. 19. Cited in James Muir’s ‘Notes on the IsocraticLegacy and Islamic Political Thought: The Example of Education’, The European Leg-acy, 6 (2001), pp. 453–70, p. 460. Al-Farabi, who translated the Laws up to Book IX, evi-dently thought that Plato’s suggestions were relevant to an Islamic nation. Though inadapting Plato’s teaching to Islam he could not (at least explicitly) include a Greek teach-ing about piety.