Review of Myrthe L. Bartels, Plato's Pragmatic Project: A Reading of Plato's Laws, Stuttgart 2017, in BMCR (2018.04.34). (original) (raw)
Related papers
In the past decade, the Laws have achieved a prominent position in scholarship on Plato: the number of recent monographs and collec-tions on this work is considerable. After his "Médiation et coercition. Pour une lecture des Lois de Platon" (Villeneuve d’Ascq, Presses Universitaires du Septentrion, 2005) André Laks, a leading expert on the Laws, has now published a second monograph on the dia-logue. The new book aims to “articulate the conceptual net that the Laws weave around the term ‘law’” (p. 154), but shares with the earlier one a very similar scholarly perspective and a focus on persuasion and the preambles. The book is subdivided into an introduction, ten chapters, a summary, followed by three ap-pendices, notes, bibliography, and two indices.
Understanding the Role of the Laws in Plato's Statesman
Prolegomena, 2010
In the Statesman, Plato seems to be advocating that in the absence of a true king who will rule independently of laws, the next best thing as far as just rule is concerned is to adhere rigidly to existing laws, whatever they are. The rule of the true king is given as an example of virtuous rule in the sense that virtue politics or jurisprudence holds that laws cannot always deal justly with particular cases. But Plato's view of what we must do when there are no true kings forthcoming seems to preclude a virtue theoretical understanding of politics and laws. In this paper I will investigate the view that the image of the true king, who relies on written laws for convenience only, provides a model for a more realistic appeal to virtue in jurisprudence, that is, a respect of laws that is compatible with equity, in the sense understood by Aristotle.
A Counterpoint to Modernity: Laws and Philosophical Reason in Plato’s Politicus
The modern rationalist idea of rule of law, and modern rationalism in general, owes much to Plato and to Platonism. However, Plato's stance towards the laws of the city is all but clear. On the one hand, we have the seemingly 'totalitarian' Plato of the Republic, a dialogue which defends the absolute authority of philosophical wisdom over all prescriptions that are ensuing from existing cities and their laws. On the other hand, we have the 'more liberal-democratic' Plato of the Laws, a dialogue which promotes a combination of philosophical wisdom with rule of law. This ambivalence as to the issue of laws permeates one of the most enigmatic of Plato's works, the Politicus, a dialogue that was written after the Republic and before the Laws. The present essay rejects both the 'totalitarian' and the 'liberal-democratic' understanding of Plato's stance towards the laws of the city. The author defends the thesis that laws in the Politicus do not constitute a static Form that works against or with philosophical wisdom and/or democratic selflegislation, but a factor that generates a series of inescapable philosophical and political ambivalences. This approach corresponds with many of the findings of the so-called 'post-modern jurisprudence'. That is, it brings to the fore the immanent aporias of philosophical dialectics, it emphasises the irreducible un-decidability between violence and consent as foundational elements of the law, and it stresses the adiakrisia (our inability to discriminate) between the poisonous and the healing effects of laws as regards the attainment of conditions of social and political justice.
Platonic Legislations: An Essay on Legal Critique in Ancient Greece
Plato’s corpus is not systematic, but dramatic. This chapter introduces the drama of legal critique in his dialogues. Following a brief introduction to Plato and his chronology, with a glance at Platonism in the longue durée, the motif of legal critique is then traced up the dialogues that concern us in later chapters. Plato’s dramatization of the trial and death of Socrates (Euthyphro, Apology, Crito and Phaedo); his sustained critique of legal positivism and his first law-code (Gorgias and Republic); and his formal critique of law and second law-code (Politicus and Laws) are introduced in concise, original résumés. This chapter therefore retraces the chronological arc of Plato’s dialogues – from the Apology to the Laws. It is proposed, in conclusion, that Laws XII ends with a dark coda. Socrates’ trial is chillingly reprised in the last pages that Plato ever penned.
Plato's Laws: A Critical Guide
Journal of Hellenic Studies 132 (2012), 262-264, 2012
This is my critical book review of Christopher Bobonich (ed.), Plato’s Laws: A Critical Guide, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010 for the Journal of Hellenic Studies 132 (2012), 262-264. I was given more space than usual to provide an overview and/or critic of each of the contributions.
Myrthe Bartels, Plato's Pragmatic Project
Two seemingly distinct uses of history are contemplated here, in the juxtaposition of Del Mar's essay and Getzler's. One represents an epistemological refinement, a sharpening of the conceptual tools of legal theory in a manner seemingly innocent of polemical intention. The other represents a doctrinal innovation, a bid to insinuate specific possibilities into the contemporary law of obligations by recourse to a relatively remote past, in a manner which foregrounds the failings of a predominant theoretical school and challenges its ascendancy without going on to prescribe a distinct alternative. Both of these essays stop short of aligning themselves with the historical school of jurisprudence whose renewed salience this volume seems to indicate. And indeed it may be that these three developments remain distinct and separable: the sharpening of legal theory's tools, the sounding out of possible new paradigms in the law of obligations, the revival of interest in the " historical " school represented by Savigny, Maine and Mannheim. Readers of this volume are left with work to do to join the dots; an effect of the novelty and boldness of the enterprise, but one which nevertheless gives this volume a provisional and uneven feel. But alongside earlier interventions by Brian Tamanaha
Legislation, Legal Development and Anomie in Plato’s Philosophy of Law
Hiroshima Law Journal , 2024
The purpose of the present paper is to explore and comment on Plato’s views on legal development as a key element of social development, with particular attention being paid to his works Apology of Socrates and Crito. Although the focus of the discussion will be on the positive aspect of legal development, Plato’s notion of lawlessness or anomie and its effects on the legal order will also be examined.