An Introduction to Plato's Laws (review)

Book Reviews R. F. Stalley, An Introduction to Plato's Laws. Indianapolis, Indiana: Hackett Publishing Company, 1983. Pp. x + 2o8. $18.5o. There are two major works in English on Plato's Laws: E. B. England's two-volume philological commentary' and Glen Morrow's lengthy historical interpretation. 2 What has been needed is a major study of the philosophy of the dialogue. The book under review, whose author is Lecturer in Moral Philosophy at the University of Glasgow, though devoted to the philosophy of the Laws, is an introductory text aimed primarily at students reading the Laws for the first time and, consequently, does not pretend to be this greatly needed work. But it does, nevertheless, partially fill the need. It is.a good book that will be of immense help to an instructor leading a class through the Laws. Its sixteen short chapters discuss the contents of the Laws topic by topic rather than book by book, though topics are treated in roughly the order they are introduced in Plato's text. At the head of each chapter there is a list of references to relevant passages in the Laws and in other dialogues. The book does not have a single footnote, but it does contain a select bibliography and a guide to further reading. Stalley discusses the merits of Plato's views as well as their proper interpretation, and he is sufficiently provocative about both to generate good classroom discussions. Although one can (and, indeed, most commentators do) interpret the Republic without referring to the Laws, it is difficult to interpret the Laws without discussing its relation to the Republic_ The major differences between the city of the Laws and the city of the Republic are that in the former law is sovereign and families and property are private whereas in the latter philosopher kings are sovereign and among the rulers and warriors wives and property are common (8, 13). Stalley, correctly it seems to me, holds that "there is a broad continuity between the political doctrines implied in the Republic and those expounded in the Laws" (14) and that these apparent discrepancies between the two dialogues are not due to "a change of heart on Plato's part" (13). According to Stalley, the relation between the Republic and the Laws is that of theory to practice. In the Statesman and the Laws "the philosopher king remains valid as a theoretical ideal while the rule of law is recommended in practice" (18-19, 92-93). 3 But, according to Stalley, Plato's constancy in political philosophy does not ' The Laws of Plato (Manchester, 19~1). Plato's Cretan City(Princeton, 196o). For references in the Laws to the Republic see 711D6-712AT, 739A1-E5, 8o7B3-C1, 875C3-D5. [249] 250 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY mirror a similar constancy in his metaphysics. In the Republic "[t]he Forms are... treated as paradigms which the things of this world imperfectly resemble" (~l) whereas in the later dialogues, including the Laws (135-36), "the Forms, if they appear at all, are no longer treated as paradigms" (21). Stalley's developmental interpretation of Plato's metaphysics does not mesh well with his unitarian interpretation of Plato's political philosophy. First of all, Stalley says that Plato's point at Laws 739 A-E is that the city of the Republic "would be possible only among gods or children of gods but it isstill theparadigm, or standard, of a constitution" (93, my emphasis). Does Plato, then, in the Laws believe in paradigms but not in paradigmatic Forms? If so, what account are we to give of these paradigms? Secondly, Plato's theory of paradigmatic Forms provides the metaphysical underpinning of the city of the Republic. How can this city remain a theoretical ideal in the Laws when PlatO no longer believes in paradigmatic Forms ? How are we to conceive of the city of the Republic without paradigmatic Forms? Thirdly, there is the question of the metaphysical underpinning of the city of the Laws itself. The laws of this city are "an embodiment or expression of reason" (~8), in particular the reason of the original lawgiver and the senior members of...