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which the text subsequently deviates and argues that careful reading
supports Aristotles claim. We can discern the initial project, he
argues, in the historical reflections in Laws 3 and in the regrettable
recourse to coercion throughout the dialogue. Schofield rightly
compares this realistic project to middle books of the Politics. But
this project is subordinated, he claims, to the idealizing project of
realising a constitution which is second best (Leg. 5, 739a) to
something resembling the Kallipolis of the Republic insofar as it
manages to cultivate the virtues of citizens.
In the second essay, Christopher Rowe takes up Schofields
earlier work on the dialogue by developing an alternative version of
his thesis that the Laws is written for two types of reader: those who
are philosophically experienced, in the sense of being practiced
readers of Plato, and those who are philosophically inexperienced
altogether. Rowe claims to radically depart from Schofield insofar
as he suggests the dialogue presumes familiarity not only with the
methods and approaches of other dialogues, but also with their
arguments and conclusions and even with unwritten Platonic
doctrines. In this way, he suggests, we can more adequately explain
both the frequency of intertextual references in the Laws as well as
its oft-noted dearth of philosophic argument. The dialogue can
speak to practiced readers, and offer them the expected dialectical
justifications, simply by referring to other dialogues or doctrines
where such justifications are provided. At the same time, the text
can speak to unpracticed readers unfamiliar with these texts or
doctrines (or even with philosophical thinking) by frequent recourse
to rhetorically and imaginatively rich explanations.
The following three pieces examine the role of virtue in the
Laws. Richard Kraut writes perhaps the finest essay of the volume,
exploring a theme of special interest to the political theorist and
which deeply fascinated Plato: the relationship between those who
have greater understanding of human value to those with less.
Kraut resists Bobonichs proposal of explaining the Laws move
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Book Reviews
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Works Cited
Bobonich, C. (2002). Platos Utopia Recast: His Later Ethics and Politics,
Oxford.
Halliwell, S. (1984). Plato and Aristotle on the Denial of Tragedy
Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society 30, pp. 49-71.
(1996). Platos Repudiation of the Tragic in Tragedy and the
Tragic, ed. M. S. Silk, Oxford.
(1997). The Republics Two Critiques of Poetry in Platon: Politeia,
ed. O. Hffe, St Augustin.
(2002). The Aesthetics of Mimesis: Ancient Texts and Modern Problems,
Princeton, NJ.
Kahn, C. (2004). From Republic to the Laws: A Discussion of
Christopher Bobonich, Platos Utopia Recast Oxford Studies in Ancient
Philosophy 26, pp. 337-62.
Lorenz, H. (2006). The Brute Within, Oxford.
Philo of Alexandria (1989). Philo: Vol. VIII, trans. F. H. Colson,
Cambridge, MA.
Plato. (1980). The Laws of Plato, trans. T. L. Pangle, Chicago, IL.