Argues that Plato in his middle period (roughly at the time of the Phaedo and the Republic) had a radically pessimistic view of non‐philosophers: they could not be genuinely virtuous or happy, and their lives were inevitably deeply undesirable ones to live. This pessimistic conclusion, I argue, rests on Plato's middle‐period epistemology, psychology, and metaphysics. But in the later dialogues (e.g. the Laws and the Statesman), Plato comes to a strikingly different conclusion. At least some non‐philosophers can be virtuous and lead lives that are well worth living. This book traces and explores the backward and forward connections to Plato's new estimate of non‐philosophers’ ethical capacities. On the backward side, these changes rest on significant developments in Plato's psychology and epistemology. In particular, in Plato's late period, he develops a more unified view of the soul's capacities and a richer understanding of how reason structures and influences the rest of the soul's capacities. On the forward side, these differences in non‐philosophers’ ethical capacities have significant implications for Plato's political philosophy. Since non‐philosophers are capable of more, the political and social institutions appropriate for them must also be differ ent. This book thus reads the Laws in the context provided by Plato's other post‐Republic dialogues—especially the Phaedrus, the Philebus, the Statesman, the Theaetetus, and the Timaeus—and tries to show how the Laws’ novel ethical and political conclusions depend on the epistemology, psychology, and metaphysics of these later dialogues.
One of the distinctions that Plato in the Laws stresses most heavily in his discussion of the proper relation between the individual citizen and the laws of the city is that between persuasion and compulsion. Law, Plato believes, should try to persuade rather than compel the citizens. Near the end of the fourth book of the Laws, the Athenian Stranger, Plato's spokesman in this dialogue, asks whether the lawgiver for their new city of Magnesia should in making laws ‘explain straightaway what must and must not be done, add the threat of a penalty, and turn to another law, without adding a single bit of encouragement or persuasion [παραμυθας δ κα πειθος … ἓν] to his legislative edicts’ (Laws 720a 1–2). A few lines later, the Athenian Stranger himself condemns such a procedure as ‘the worse and more savage alternative’ (τò χεῖρον τοῖν δυοῖν κα γριώτερον 720e4). The better method is for the laws themselves to try to persuade (πεθειν) the citizens to act in the manner that they prescribe. And as a means of doing this, Plato proposes attaching preludes (προομια) to particular laws and to the legal code as a whole: such preludes will supplement the sanctions attached to the laws and will aim at persuading the citizens to act in the way that the laws direct for reasons other than fear of the penalties attached to the law. Such a practice, Plato believes, is an innovation: it is something that no lawgiver has ever thought of doing before (722b–e). And we have no reason to think that Plato is here excluding his earlier self, e.g. the Plato of the Republic and the Politicus, from this criticism.
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