sehepunkte 25 (2025), Nr. 11

Ryan K. Balot: Tragedy, Philosophy, and Political Education in Plato's Laws

Plato's Laws has of late attracted a great deal of attention from scholars of both political thought and classical history and culture. Ryan Balot is not a recent entrant to this conversation, and has a long record of engagement with this once neglected and misunderstood final major work. In this substantial monograph he seeks to show that the dialogue contains a coherent and unified programme, developing from arguments in Plato's earlier work, and to counter other current readings of the dialogue which see it as bringing together, not entirely successfully, separate accounts. [1]

Balot opens with a criticism of previous critical approaches to the Laws (Chapter 1), insisting on the overall coherence of the work as a philosophical project, in which he follows a Straussian strand of scholarship exemplified by the scholarship of Leo Strauss and Thomas Pangle. [2] He compares their readings favourably with the more contextualist approaches of those he labels as 'classical scholars' (140).

Balot's second chapter sets out his overall reading of the dialogue, identifying its unifying project as the moral development of the Cretan Kleinias, one of the Athenian Stranger's two discussants. This will persuade him away from tyrannical ambition and equip him to take a leading role in the proposed new city. Balot notes that while the Socrates of the Gorgias was unable to persuade Callicles and Polus, the Athenian Stranger appears capable of transforming his Dorian interlocutors. Or at least one of them; Balot has little to say about the Spartan Megillus, less suited to philosophical transformation. Both interlocutors, however, exemplify the 'toxic manliness' (64) of Dorian culture, in which the emphasis on thumos (spirit) leads to the valuation of courage over intelligence.

With his argumentative framework in place, the subsequent chapters lead readers through the dialogue more or less sequentially. The role of culture and performance in Magnesia has been the focus of much recent scholarship, and it is perhaps a little odd that this book has 'tragedy' in the title but spends so little time on Plato's politics of culture. [3] Balot has very little to say, for example, about the role of culture and performance in civic life explored in Laws 2, and implies that interest in this aspect of the work is somehow unphilosophical. Yet for Plato the involvement of Magnesia's citizens in rituals and activities which perform and instantiate cosmic order enables them to participate in the workings of divine reason embedded in the city's physical environment and cultural practices.

His interpretation of Book 3's account of human history (Chapter 3) emphasises its interpretation of Spartan perspectives, and has little to say about its account of Athenian democracy. This reading sets up the dialogue's pivot to the project of imagining the politeia of the new city Kleinias is tasked with developing (Chapter 4). Here and in assessing the Athenian's innovation of persuasive preambles to laws, (Chapter 5), Balot brings together some of Plato's key images - the human as puppet of the gods, the young tyrant, and the free and slave doctors - to conclude that Plato weaves a common thread of surveillance and control throughout these sections.

Balot shows how the detailed laws proposed for education, and for organising citizens and allotting tasks to them are arranged to manage the thumos of the Dorian citizens (Chapters 6-8). He engages his own previous work on courage here, which lends a more contextualist approach to these central chapters as he analyses how the programmes of civic education, and the arrangement of civic offices, dispense honour to citizens in reward for their performance and conformance. [4]

As the themes of legislation and religion come closer together in book 9, Balot's analysis steps up a gear to find unity in the Stranger's discussions, as the principles of punishment in Magnesia's regime consider motive, and so appear to come into conflict with the Socratic paradox that no one does wrong willingly (Chapter 8). Here Balot's focus on the opposition between the values of the Ionian Athenian and his Dorian interlocutors is helpful. Rather than seeing Kleinias' role in these discussions as evidence of Plato's weak characterisation in the Laws, Balot sees it as evidence that the Cretan has been developed and improved by his participation in the discussion.

All this leads up to book 10, with its famous critique of atheism among other faulty ways of treating the gods (chapters 9-10). Balot digs deep into the typology of impiety, concluding that the 'young atheists' whose rejection of the gods is the most problematic in fact represent a pool from which suitable candidates for a philosophical education might be found, eventually placing them at the heart of the regime. They seem a more appropriate audience for these arguments than Kleinias, even if his participation in the dialogue has developed his philosophical skills.

The mysterious Nocturnal council (Chapter 11) takes on a significant role in Balot's elitist interpretation of Magnesia; its philosopher members ensure the presence of reason in the city, deploying intellectual capabilities and analyses not available to the thumoeidetic citizens. While on some accounts this council is an uneasy addition to Magnesia's institutions, Balot positions the whole dialogue as pointing towards its presence.

Balot's chapter 12, an epilogue on the question of what is meant by the 'truest tragedy' (Laws 7.817b), returns to Plato's puzzling claim from earlier in the work, one which has also exercised the classical scholars focused on Magnesia's culture. Balot circles around possible interpretations, layering complexity and eventually finding irony in the Athenian's intellectual predicament. He concludes by turning to Augustine of Hippo as a parallel (342-3); a striking move after his initial rejection of other scholars' 'anachronistic' readings of the work through later liberal traditions (2-3, 8-13).

In contrast with Athenocentric readings, Balot's reassessment of the Laws emphasises that the programme the Athenian Stranger outlines for Magnesia is an elitist one, which provides only a small subgroup of citizens access to reason through their education and so the capacity to rule. He brings his deep understanding of courage as a virtue to the interpretation of the dialogue's account of thumos, and even those who are not persuaded by his framing will find him an invigorating interlocutor in the interpretation of the Laws.

Notes:

[1] M. Schofield: 'The Laws' Two Projects', in: C. Bobonich (ed.): Plato's Laws: a critical guide, Cambridge 2010, 12-28.

[2] L. Strauss: The Argument and the Action of Plato's Laws, Chicago 1975; T.L. Pangle: The Laws of Plato: translated, with notes and an interpretive essay, Chicago 1988.

[3] J. Pfefferkorn: Platons tanzende Stadt: Moralpsychologie und Chortanz in den Nomoi, Leiden 2023; M. Folch: The Polis and the Stage: performance, genre, and gender in Plato's Laws, New York 2016.

[4] R. K. Balot: Courage in the Democratic Polis: ideology and critique in classical Athens, Oxford 2014.