Plato Utopia SC

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Plato on utopia
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Plato on utopia
First published Thu Dec 5, 2002; substantive revision Wed Dec 2, 2020
The Laws is one of Plato’s last dialogues. In it, he sketches the basic
political structure and laws of an ideal city named Magnesia. Despite the
fact that the Laws treats a number of basic issues in political and ethical
philosophy as well as theology, it has suffered neglect compared with the
Republic. In recent years, however, more scholarly attention has been paid
to the Laws. This entry discusses some of the most important issues
arising in recent scholarship and suggests avenues for future research.
1. Authenticity and Chronology

2. Overview
3. The Laws’ Relation to the Republic
4. The Social and Political Institutions of Magnesia
5. Preludes in the Laws
6. The Nocturnal Council and Political Participation
7. Poetry and Education
8. Theology
9. Ethics
10. Plato’s Later Epistemology, Metaphysics, and Psychology
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Plato on utopia
1. Authenticity and Chronology

In the more exuberantly speculative days of the 19th century, the
authenticity of the Laws was rejected by various figures: even the great
Platonist, Ast, held that “One who knows the true Plato needs only to read
a single page of the Laws in order to convince himself that it is a
fraudulent Plato that he has before him.”[1] Such skepticism is hard to
understand, especially since Aristotle refers to the Laws as a dialogue of
Plato’s in numerous passages and today no serious scholar doubts its
authenticity.
On the question of chronology, two external references are helpful:
i. Aristotle tells us that the Laws is later than the Republic, (Pol. 2.6)
and
ii. Diogenes Laertius (3.37) reports that it was unfinished at Plato’s
death (and the text of the Laws itself shows some signs of
incompleteness and lack of revision).[2]
Platonic scholars also frequently appeal to stylometry (that is, the

quantitative study of the features of Plato’s prose style) to help to date the
dialogues. Although the usefulness of stylometry is sometimes questioned,
it is widely accepted and the agreement of many such studies allows us to
divide the dialogues, with some confidence, into three groups.[3]
Group 3: Critias, Laws, Philebus, Sophist, Statesman, and Timaeus
Group 2: Parmenides, Phaedrus, Republic, and Theaetetus
Group 1: the rest
Drawing upon other evidence, it is reasonable to see the dialogues in

Group 3 as the latest. Given the length of the Laws (it is the longest of the
2 Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

dialogues and is, roughly 20% longer than the Republic), it seems likely
that its composition overlapped with the composition of at least some of
the other dialogues in Group 3.
2. Overview
The Laws comprises a conversation in 12 books, set on Crete, among three
interlocutors: an unnamed Athenian Visitor (Plato’s spokesman in the
Laws), Megillus, a Spartan, and Kleinias, a Cretan. The Athenian proposes
that the three discuss governance and laws as they walk along the long
road to the temple of Zeus. The first two books of the dialogue consider
the proper goal or end (telos) of legislation, which turns out to be the
virtue of the citizens. They also contain discussion of topics, such as
ethical psychology and education, which will help them to understand how
a city could achieve this goal. The third book turns to a discussion of the
origins of political systems (politeia) and of changes in those political
systems, and attempts to draw lessons for the lawmaker from the histories
of various actual states, including Persia, Sparta, Crete, and Athens. At the
end of Book 3 (Laws 702B4–D5), Kleinias reveals that he has a practical
use for just the kinds of discussions they’ve been having: the cities of
Crete have decided to found a new city, to be named Magnesia, in a long
abandoned part of Crete, and he, along with nine others, is to be
responsible for doing so. He asks the Athenian to help in the construction
of the new city’s constitution and laws. The Athenian agrees, and proposes
that they use a new method of law-giving – one in which preludes which
aim at persuading the citizens come before the laws themselves. Books 4–
5 contain an argument for the use of preludes and the Great Prelude to the
laws in general. The Great Prelude to the laws in general ends in the latter
part of Book 5, after which the Athenian proceeds to sketch, often in
considerable detail, the constitution, the political and social institutions,
Winter 2020 Edition 3

Plato on utopia
and the laws of this new city, along with the political and ethical principles
that justify them.
A brief sketch of the content and structure of the first 5 books of the Laws
follows. From that point on (after the end of the Great Prelude), we will
organize our discussion topically rather than going book by book.
Book 1
The dialogue begins with an investigation into the reasons for the laws and
social practices of Sparta and Crete. The Athenian argues that laws ought
to be justified not by reference to war – which is how both Megillus and
Kleinias first attempt to justify the laws of their own cities – but rather by
reference to what is best, which is complete virtue (that is, courage,
justice, moderation, and wisdom, rather than courage alone). In fact, the
Athenian says that the complete virtue of the citizens as a whole should be
the single goal of the lawgiver (Laws 630C3–6; see also e.g., 705D3–
706A4, 963A).[4] The Athenian also tells us that laws are true laws insofar
as they promote the happiness (eudaimonia) of the citizens (Laws 631B;
see also 715B, 743C–D). Immediately after he first makes this latter claim,
he draws a distinction between human and divine goods and tells us that
the human goods – like wealth and health – are dependent upon the divine
goods, of which wisdom is first, then moderation, then justice, and finally
courage; he later describes this dependency by saying that the human
goods are good for someone who is virtuous but bad for bad men (Laws
661B–C). The dependency thesis helps Plato bring together the two
characterizations of the goal of the laws in terms of the citizens’ virtue and
happiness, respectively: if virtue is necessary for benefit and thus for
happiness, promoting the happiness of the citizens will require making
them virtuous. This dependency thesis, as well as the dual characterization
of the goal of the laws, raises but leaves unanswered questions about the

precise relation between virtue and happiness, however: for example, is

virtue actually sufficient for happiness, or is it simply necessary?[5]
The remainder of Book 1 is concerned with ethical psychology and

education: that is, with beginning the project of showing how a city could
produce citizens who possess complete virtue. This discussion heavily
emphasizes the importance of feeling pleasure and pain correctly; the
Athenian, in fact, claims that “[For] human beings who inquire into laws
almost their entire inquiry concerns pleasures and pains, in cities and in
private dispositions. These two springs flow forth by nature, and he who
draws from the right one, at the right time, and in the right amount is
happy.” (Laws 636D5–E1). This phase of the discussion begins with the
Athenian announcing his intention to discuss the institutions which
promote courage, which he swiftly notes should cover the ability to resist
pleasure in addition to the ability to resist pain. He proposes controlled
symposia (drinking parties) as the institution which will train this ability to
resist pleasure, to the surprise of his interlocutors. As this sort of training
will serve as an important part of ethical education, this suggestion leads
the Athenian to discuss education in general. Education involves the
direction of a child’s pleasures, desires, and love towards his adult
occupation; in the case of the citizens, education must draw their souls to a
desire and love of being a perfect citizen who rules and is ruled in
accordance with justice (Laws 643C–D). Pleasure is clearly central to the
account of ethical psychology and education in the Laws, and one
important question to ask of the Laws is why this is so. Is coming to have
the correct pleasures simply of instrumental value (insofar as it blocks one
route to akratic action and vice or focuses the child on the things which he
must come to find valuable), or are at least some of these pleasures good
in their own right, e.g. in virtue of their contents?[6]
The discussion of Book 1 closes with a model of the soul which, the
Athenian says, will make it clearer what virtue and vice are, and will help

Plato on utopia
us to understand what effects various sorts of educational practices, such

as the symposia, should be expected to have on the human soul (Laws
645C).[7] The model is one of a puppet (thauma)[8] made by the gods,
possessing three cords, two, hard and iron, representing the expectations
of pleasure and pain, and one, soft and gold, representing reason or
calculation (Laws 644D). This model differs in noteworthy ways from the
image of the soul as composed of a human, a lion, and a hydra-headed
beast in the Republic and the charioteer and two horses of the Phaedrus.[9]
The three elements in the puppet image are affections rather than
possessors of affections; and the most important division here is between
the two iron cords and the golden cord, with no fundamental difference (of
the sort that we see when spirit is called reason’s natural ally in the
Republic) between the two iron cords. How to explain the differences in
the model of the soul that we get here from the ones we get in other
dialogues is another important question for interpreters of the Laws.[10]
Book 2
Book 2 begins by returning to the definition of education; the Athenian

here tells us that education consists in training a child to feel pleasure and
pain, and to love and hate, correctly, before he can understand the reason
why (Laws 653B–C). Education in music and gymnastics is particularly
crucial for the project of ethical education. The Athenian tells us that
young children naturally desire to move and to make noise, and are
naturally capable of taking pleasure in order in movement and sound
(Laws 653D–654A); one explanation for the centrality of music and
gymnastics in the educational program, then, could appeal to the role of
music and gymnastics in training this capacity to perceive and take
pleasure in order.[11] Book 2 focuses primarily on musical education and
the standard of correctness in music; Book 7 returns to the topic of
education in gymnastics, and lays out the rest of the educational program.

These topics will be discussed further in section 7 of this article (Poetry

and Education).
Part of the discussion of poetry in Book 2 deals with its content. The
Athenian praises the Spartans and the Cretans for compelling poets to
teach that the good man is happy and for giving no attention to the bad
man; he also asserts that the poet ought also to teach that human goods are
dependent upon virtue and that the most pleasant life, the most just life,
and the happiest (most eudaimôn) life coincide (Laws 662C–E). This latter
doctrine has great significance given that, as the Athenian says next, no
man will voluntarily do anything unless it involves more pleasure than
pain; this passage has also been thought to provide evidence that Plato
remains a rational eudaimonist in the Laws.[12] The Athenian tells us that
the views that the poet is to be compelled to espouse are both most true
and most useful for persuading the citizens to live virtuously (Laws 664C).
Book 3
Book 3 abruptly moves to a discussion of the origin of government,

beginning from the disorganized condition in which human beings would
have been left after one of the great catastrophes which the Athenian takes
to have destroyed human society over and over again. After describing
how cities would have first come about out of this disorder, the Athenian
turns to the discussion of the histories of actual states. He first focuses on
the histories of Sparta, Argos, and Messene, with particular attention to the
features of the Spartan constitution which saved it from the corruption
which afflicted its neighbors. This discussion highlights the destructive
power of ignorance about what is to be valued (Laws 688C) and the
danger of entrusting too much power to a single, corruptible, individual
(Laws 691C–D). The Athenian then turns to a discussion of Persia and
Athens. The Athenian begins this discussion by reminding us that a
lawgiver ought to aim at his city’s being free, wise, and a friend to itself

Plato on utopia
(Laws 693B). He then claims that there are two forms of constitution from
which the rest are derived, monarchy and democracy, and attempts to
show the virtues of the moderate forms, and the vices of the extreme
forms, of each constitution by considering Persia’s development from a
moderate to an extreme monarchy and Athens’s development from a
moderate to an extreme democracy. The moral of this discussion is that
only a mixture of monarchy and democracy can allow a state to be both
wise and free (Laws 693E) – a state which is strikingly characterized in
the case of the earlier, more moderate form of Athenian democracy, as
voluntary slavery to the laws (Laws 700A).[13] After this discussion has
been completed, Kleinias announces that the discussion has had a practical
point: he, along with nine others, is to craft laws for a new Cretan colony.
He asks for the help of the Athenian and Megillus in building up the laws
and institutions of this new state, which is the project of the rest of the
Laws.
Book 4
Book 4 opens with a discussion of the way in which the geographical

location and features of the proposed city of Magnesia affect the ease or
difficulty of creating a virtuous city. It then turns to consider the method of
settlement of the proposed city, and the practical challenges of forming a
group of settlers (whether they be from one or many states) into a
genuinely new society. Here, the Athenian suggests that the easiest way to
form new and good institutions in a society is for it to be blessed with a
good tyrant who wishes to create institutions conducing to virtue. The
Athenian moves on to ask what type of polity they ought to form; he
answers by saying that the best ruler a city can have is god, and that they
ought to imitate the rule of god by ordering their city in obedience to
reason, the immortal element within themselves. These regulations set
down by reason are to be called law (Laws 714A).[14]

The Athenian then imagines their address to the new settlers. He begins by
emphasizing the power of god over human affairs and suggests that each
man ought therefore to become dear to god. The way to do this, he says, is
to come to be like god, i.e. to become virtuous (Laws 716A–E). After
discussing the worship of the gods and the veneration of parents, the
Athenian pauses to reflect on the way in which the laws that he is
beginning to describe are to make the city happy (Laws 718B). He
distinguishes between two methods of law-giving, one appropriate to free
men and another to slaves, illustrating this by means of a distinction
between a slave doctor who simply prescribes what he thinks to be right to
each of his patients, and a free doctor who investigates the ailment with
his patient and instructs him as to the nature of his disease as much as
possible, prescribing a treatment only with the patient’s consent (Laws
720A–720E). The analogous method in the case of law-giving, the
Athenian tells us, is to offer preludes to the laws that aim at persuasion,
and it is this method that he proposes to follow in establishing the laws of
Magnesia, condemning the alternative as the employment of mere force
(Laws 722B–C). After illustrating this ‘double method’ in the case of
marriage laws, the three decide to proceed systematically for the rest of
the dialogue, giving first the preludes and then the laws. Issues connected
with the preludes will be discussed in greater detail in section 5 (Preludes
in the Laws).
Book 5
Book 5 continues the Great Prelude to the laws in general which started
with the discussion of gods and ancestors in Book 4. The Athenian begins
this next phase of the address by telling the citizens that they ought to
honor their souls above all their other possessions, as their souls are both
most their own and the most divine of all their possessions. To honor one’s
soul, he tells them, is to follow virtue and, in general, good things, rather

Plato on utopia
than to allow it to satisfy any desires and to enjoy any pleasures it might
want; and, at the end of the discussion, this ability of the soul to follow the
good is identified as that which explains why the soul is to be so highly
honored. Next on the list comes the body, which ought to be honored by
being put in a moderate state, as that is what best supports the good state
of the soul; third are money and property, which also ought to be held in
moderation, for the same reason. After a very brief discussion of relations
with friends and strangers, the Athenian turns to the character of the
person who leads the finest or most noble (kallista) life. There, he
describes various praiseworthy or blameworthy traits of character, before
giving a general warning to all citizens to avoid excessive self-love as “the
greatest of all evils” and “the cause of all of each man’s wrongdoings on
every occasion” (Laws 731D6–E5). Instead, he encourages each citizen to
love not himself or his own possessions but rather what is just, whether it
belongs to himself or to someone else. This claim will be discussed further
in section 9 (Ethics).
The prelude then moves from the “divine things” with which it has been
occupied to the “human things”, chief among them pleasure and pain,
explaining that “to these every mortal animal is, as it were, inextricably
attached and bound in the most serious ways” (Laws 732E5–7). The
Athenian then sets out the types of pleasures and pains which
characterizes moderate and immoderate lives, with the aim of arguing that
those which characterize the moderate life should be preferred and thus
that the life of virtue is the most pleasant life. This ends the Great Prelude
to the laws in general, and the Athenian announces that they must now
sketch the organization of the state (Laws 734E). The rest of Book 5 is
concerned primarily with the citizens’ properties – the number of
households there shall be, the degree of variance in wealth that the citizens
shall be allowed to attain, and the way that the citizens should engage with
money – and with justifying those precepts with reference to the citizens’

happiness. The rest of the Laws continues to describe and to justify the
organization and the laws of this new city.
3. The Laws’ Relation to the Republic

As we’ve seen, the Laws undertakes to create a good city and to discuss
political theory, ethics, psychology, and other topics relevant to the
creation of such a city. This makes it very natural to ask what the relation
between the Laws and the Republic is. The predominant view, until fairly
recently, holds that the Republic is Plato’s statement of what the ideally
best city is; the Laws, on the other hand, describes the city that would be
best, given less optimistic assumptions about what human nature is
capable of. This position has two variants, depending on one’s view of
whether Plato at the time of the Republic thought that its political program
was compatible with human nature. If one thinks that even at the time of
the Republic, Plato thought that its ideal city placed too great demands on
its citizens to be psychologically realizable, then one can hold that the
Laws is entirely consistent with the Republic: they could, at least as far as
their philosophical positions are concerned, have been written at the same
time.[15] If, on the other hand, one thinks that Plato held that the city of
the Republic was psychologically possible, even if difficult to realize, it is
natural to see the Laws as the outcome of a change in Plato’s views about
human nature.[16] The first view faces two challenges:
i. providing evidence from the Republic that Plato did not think its ideal
city was realizable, and
ii. either explaining why the Republic does not at least gesture in the
direction of the arrangements of the Laws as the best humanly
possible option or arguing that we can find such evidence.
The second view should explain why Plato becomes more pessimistic
about human nature. The need for such an explanation is especially

Plato on utopia
pressing, since the most common attempt to do so by appealing to Plato’s

experiences in Sicily is philosophically quite unsatisfactory.[17]
In recent years, it has been argued that there are deep and pervasive
differences between the Republic and the Laws (and more generally
between the dialogues of Group 3 and those of Group 2) on ethical and
political questions.[18] The debate over these claims is just in its initial
stages and no scholarly consensus has yet emerged. Among other topics
relevant to the interpretation of the Laws, this entry sketches a few
important topics of contemporary controversy and then points to lines of
future research. To begin, perhaps the most important passage in the Laws
directly bearing on its relation to the Republic comes in Book 5. There, in
what is nowadays perhaps the most famous passage in the Laws, the
Athenian announces that they are to engage in the construction of a
“second-best” city.
Anyone who uses reason and experience will recognize that a

second-best city [deuterôs … pros to beltiston] is to be constructed
… That city and that constitution are first, and the laws are best,
where the old proverb holds as much as possible throughout the
whole city: it is said that the things of friends really are in
common. (Laws 739A3–740C3)
The traditional assumption is that Plato here endorses the city sketched in
the Republic as the best possible city, but now thinks that the demands it
places on its inhabitants are too high: the city in the Laws is the second-
best, but is the best that is likely to be compatible with human nature. It is
also sometimes thought to follow from this that Plato still endorses the
basic elements of the Republic’s political and ethical theory.
But such an interpretation misreads the passage. Even if Plato were to

endorse the political arrangements of the Republic as the best possible

ones, it would not follow that he also endorses all the claims concerning
political theory made in the Republic, much less that he endorses all of the
Republic’s claims in ethics, psychology and epistemology. The political
arrangements of the Republic are entailed by, and are consistent with,
many different sets of premises, some of which are mutually inconsistent.
Nor does the present passage endorse all of the political structures of the
Republic, rather it endorses the community of property, women and
children and the goal of making the city as unified as possible. But what is
most important is that this passage does not in fact endorse the Republic’s
method for making the city one by introducing a certain kind of
community of property and families. In the Republic, these institutions are
restricted to the first two classes, but are rejected for the third class, the
producers. The Laws passage presents as the “first-best” city, not that of
the Republic, but one in which there is, throughout the entire city, a
community of property and of women and children. So the claim that the
city sketched in the Laws is second-best does not suggest that the Republic
still represents Plato’s ideal political arrangement.[19] What the Laws
represents as the ideal – that is to be approximated as closely as possible –
is a city in which all citizens are subject to the same extremely high ethical
demands.
4. The Social and Political Institutions of Magnesia

This section provides a brief overview of the basic social and political
institutions of Magnesia. Magnesia will be located in a part of Crete that
has been left empty by an ancient migration and is about ten miles from
the sea. The site is basically self-sufficient in resources without having
much excess to export. Plato sees this unsuitability for active commerce
and distance from the sea as advantages: they discourage the maritime and
commercial activities that corrupt cities by fostering a love of money-
making in the citizens and by allowing close contact with foreigners who

Plato on utopia
bring innovation and have not received the good ethical education
afforded to Magnesians.
The city will be relatively populous: its number of households is to remain

permanently at 5,040.[20] Immigration and emigration policies are
designed to avoid population excess and deficiency. Each household will
have an allotment consisting of two plots of land: one nearer the city’s
center and one nearer its borders. Each household’s allotment is intended
to be equally productive (Laws 737CE, 745CD) and to support a
comfortable, although not luxurious, life for the household’s members.
The households and land are not owned or farmed in common, but each
shareholder must consider his share to be at the same time the common
property of the whole city (Laws 740A3–6). Part of the sense in which the
lot is in common is that it is inalienable and cannot be divided or
aggregated: the assignment of the lot to a household is intended to support
the household throughout the generations. (There are also restrictions on
the use of the land.[21] ) Further, each household will help, out of its own
resources, to fund Magnesia’s system of common meals.[22] Plato
establishes four property classes: the members of the top or first class have
assets worth between three and four times the value of the lot (and the
tools and animals needed to farm it), the second class between two and
three times this value and so on.[23] Anything accumulated over the
highest amount will be confiscated by the city (Laws 744D–745A). Such
assets do not include gold and silver, since these may be possessed only by
the city; there will be only a token currency (Laws 742AB).[24]
Many of Magnesia’s inhabitants are not citizens. There is a considerable

slave population (including both public and private slaves) and they, of
course, are not citizens. Also found within the city are transient foreigners
and resident foreigners (metics) who may stay for twenty years. Slaves
and foreigners are an economic necessity for the city for they will carry on
the trading, manufacturing and menial occupations that are barred to

citizens. The lot holders or heads of households are citizens, but

citizenship is not restricted to them and owning land is not a necessary
condition of citizenship. The sons and heirs of lot holders are called
“citizens” and are liable to military service at age 20, can participate in
elections at that age and can serve in office at 30.[25] They will not inherit
the household lot, however, until their father dies. What of women? In
Magnesia, the private family is not abolished. Although women lack an
independent right to own property, they are liable to military training and
service and attend their own common meals (Laws 780D). The Athenian
holds that they can attain the four cardinal virtues and for this reason
requires that they be educated (Laws 804D–805A). For Aristotle, women
are not citizens of the ideal city, since they are excluded from political
office. But in Magnesia, women can participate in elections and hold
political office and the Athenian explicitly counts them as citizens (Laws
814C2–4).[26]
Let us turn to the political system or constitution (politeia) of Magnesia.

Magnesia has a rich variety of offices, but the main ones are: the
Assembly (koinos sullogos, ekklêsia), the Council (boulê), the magistrates,
especially the guardians of the laws (nomophulakes), the courts and the
Nocturnal Council (nukterinos sullogos). The Nocturnal Council is
discussed in more detail below in section 6.
The Assembly is the main electoral authority in the city; it is composed of

all citizens, or more precisely, all those who have served or are serving in
the military. The Assembly is responsible for the election of most of the
city’s officers and magistrates. The other functions explicitly given to it
are
i. a role in judging offenses against the public,

ii. making awards of merit,
iii. extending the term of residence for metics, and

Plato on utopia
iv. passing on proposed changes in the laws, at least those regarding

dances and sacrifices.
It may also have other responsibilities in connection with foreign affairs.

[27]
The Council is composed of 90 members chosen by election from each

property class for a total of 360 members. Men are eligible for office at
age 30, women at age 40. Members serve one-year terms. The Council
exercises ordinary administrative powers, such as calling and dissolving
the Assembly, receiving foreign ambassadors, supervising elections and so
on.
The guardians of the laws (nomophulakes) are composed of 37 citizens, at

least fifty years of age who serve from the time of their election until age
70 (Laws 755A). There are four ways in which the nomophulakes guard
the laws:[28]
1. Although they do not seem to have the authority to discipline other

magistrates, they are assigned the general task of supervising them
and are expected to bring appropriate cases to the attention of the
proper officials.
2. They exercise wide supervisory powers over citizens in general and,
for example, are charged with fining those who spend excessively,
granting permission to travel abroad and overseeing the care of
orphans.
3. They possess various judicial functions and are in charge of
especially important or difficult cases involving the family, property
and the abuse of laws.
4. Perhaps their most important task is the revision and supplementation
of the existing laws, although the extent of revision possible is
controversial.[29]

Finally, there is an extensive system of courts in Magnesia, both public

and private. One of Plato’s major innovations, compared with Athenian
law, is the elaborate structure of appeals in judicial cases. It is worth
noting that Plato holds that citizens, in virtue of their standing in the
political community, may legitimately expect to have a share in the
administration of justice (Laws 767E9–768B3).
5. Preludes in the Laws

A significant part of the impetus for interpretations that see considerable
differences between the Republic and the Laws comes from the presence
in the latter of “preludes” to individual laws and to the lawcode as a whole
that are available to all the citizens. In Plato’s own view, one of the most
important innovations in the political theory of the Laws is the
requirement that good lawgivers try to persuade the citizens and not
simply issue commands to them by means of laws (Laws 722B5–C2).
Plato compares the lawgiver in Magnesia to a free doctor treating free
people. Slave doctors who treat other slaves merely give them orders and
then rush off to other patients. Free doctors treating free people must
explain to their patients the condition they have and the rationale for
treatment before prescribing (Laws 722B–723B). In doing so, they will
“educate” the patients and use “arguments that come close to
philosophizing” (Laws 857C2–E5). Similarly, Plato thinks that the
lawgiver in Magnesia should not merely issue legal commands: law
without persuasion is condemned as mere force (722B). Drawing on
Plato’s programmatic remarks in Books 4, 9, and 10 the preludes should
have the following features.
1. What the person who is to be persuaded is asking for is to be

“educated” or “taught,” that is, to be given good epistemic reasons
for thinking that the principles lying behind the legislation are true
(Laws 885DE).

Plato on utopia
2. What the lawgiver and the preludes actually do is characterized as

“teaching,” that is, giving reasons to the citizens and bringing it about
that they “learn” (Laws 718CD, 720D, 723A, 857DE and 888A).
3. The preludes are thus designed to be instances of rational persuasion,
that is, attempts to influence the citizens’ beliefs by appealing to
rational considerations. They are not intended to inculcate false, but
useful beliefs, or to effect persuasion through non-rational means.
4. The preludes are meant to provide quite general ethical instruction.
The lawgiver is to be a primary source of instruction about what is
fine, just and good. Thus the citizens will learn why the laws are fine
and just and should also learn why following the laws and, more
generally, acting virtuously is good for them. They are to receive a
true and reasoned account of what is good for human beings.
The view that this use of preludes marks a significant difference from the
Republic depends on two claims.
I. The Laws advocates the use of preludes, along with other methods, to
educate the citizens and give them some rational understanding of the
laws and, more generally, an understanding of ethical truths.
II. The Republic does not intend to provide, except to its highest class,
the philosopher-rulers, an education that can result in such a rational
appreciation of basic ethical truths.
With respect to (II), advocates of the change interpretation point to

passages from the Republic such as the following.
Therefore, to insure that someone like that [one whose reason is

not strong enough to rule himself] is ruled by something similar to
what rules the best person, we say that he ought to be the slave
[doulon] of that best person who has a divine ruler within himself.
(Rep. 590C8–D1)

The education provided to the two lower classes, it is argued, thus does
not succeed in enabling them to be ruled by their own reason and leaves
them in the state of slaves. In Republic Book 7, Plato considers whether
the musical education the auxiliaries receive (which is the most advanced
education that they get) tends to the good of leading the soul out of the
Cave and toward the “intelligible” or “knowable region.” The answer is
that it does not, since musical education
educated the guardians through habits. Its harmonies gave them a

certain harmoniousness, not knowledge; its rhythms gave them a
certain rhythmical quality; and its stories whether fictional or
nearer the truth, cultivated other habits akin to these. But there was
nothing in it that aimed at any such subject as you are now seeking.
(Rep. 522A4–B1, cf. 484C3–D10 and 516E8–517E2)
Thus all citizens, other than the philosopher-rulers, remain within the
Cave.
Both (I) and (II) are, however, quite controversial. With respect to (I),
some have argued that despite the fact that Plato’s programmatic remarks
about the preludes suggest that they are designed to further a rational
appreciation of ethical truths, what is actually provided for the vast
majority of the citizens is, primarily, rhetorical persuasion appealing to
their sense of honor and shame. This gap is then explained either by the
hypothesis (i) that Plato is being deceptive, or his mental capacities
declined in old age; or (ii) that the programmatic remarks represent an
ideal that Plato makes it clear cannot be realized in actual practice.[30]
Evaluating the acceptability of (II) will require careful examination of the
education provided to the Republic’s auxiliary and money-making classes
and, in particular, consideration of what the auxiliaries’ “musical
education” provides them with.[31]

Plato on utopia
Interpretations that see the main aim of the preludes as providing, along
with the rest of the citizens’ education, a rational, although less than fully
philosophic, grasp of basic ethical principles need not hold that this is the
only aim of the preludes or that there is only one kind of prelude. Plato
does include some preludes – e.g. those to laws pertaining to murders that
are especially heinous in that they are fully voluntary and committed out
of desire for pleasure, envy and so on – that work primarily by rhetorical
means or appeal to myths that Plato probably did not accept as literally
true (e.g. 870D–871A). Such preludes are designed, as Saunders notes, for
those citizens who have badly failed to benefit from Magnesia’s
educational system (Saunders 1992, 210–11). Such preludes are a last
resort before the infliction of punishment and are aimed at the inevitable
failures among the citizens. Interpretations stressing the rational aim of the
preludes argue that Magnesia’s education is intended to give the citizens
as a whole the ability to follow the more sophisticated preludes and that
such preludes are not restricted to an elite sub-class of citizens.
Further progress in resolving these disputes might be made by continued

research on three topics. First, we must consider the preludes in light of
the broader context of the citizens’ education in the Laws. What sort of
education is provided for them and what cognitive and ethical abilities will
such education foster? Second, we need to examine Plato’s views about
education in the other late dialogues, especially the Statesman.[32] Finally,
the issues concerning citizens’ education are intimately linked to deep
questions in Plato’s psychology and epistemology. In order to understand
what kind of education is required in order to have a rational grasp of
ethical principles we must consider the nature of ethical learning, given
Plato’s epistemology and psychology, in both the middle and late periods.
This issue is discussed a bit further in section 10.

6. The Nocturnal Council and Political Participation

A second, more longstanding, controversy about the Laws concerns the
role of the body known as the “Nocturnal Council” which is so-called
because it meets daily from dawn until sunrise when everyone has the
most leisure from public and private activities (Laws 961B6–8).[33] The
Nocturnal Council is first explicitly mentioned in Book 10 (but is alluded
to earlier at Laws 632C4–6 and 818A1–3) where it is assigned an
educational function. Those who have violated Magnesia’s impiety laws
due to ignorance, rather than bad character, are to be imprisoned for five
years. During their imprisonment, the members of the Nocturnal Council
meet with them in order to reform their beliefs by teaching (Laws 909A).
The Nocturnal Council’s membership seems to include:
i. the 10 oldest guardians of the laws,

ii. the current supervisor of education and his predecessors,
iii. examiners (officials who check the qualifications of those entering
office and audit them when they leave office) and other citizens who
have won awards of honor,
iv. certain citizens who have traveled abroad under official auspices to
gather knowledge and have been invited to participate by the
Nocturnal Council itself, and
v. each of the above members is to nominate for membership (whose
acceptance is subject to the approval of the other members) a younger
associate between the ages of 30 and 40 (Laws 951D4–E5 and
961A1–B6).
In Book 12, the Athenian returns to the Nocturnal Council and emphasizes
its great importance for the city. The following passage from Book 12 has
encouraged some to think that Plato here grants the Nocturnal Council
very great, or even unlimited, political power.

Plato on utopia
If this divine council should come into being for us, dear friends,
the city ought to be handed over to it [paradoteon toutôi tên polin]
(Laws 969B2–3, cf. 960B5–E11 and 961C3–6)
Some scholars have held, on the basis of these passages, that Plato intends
the Nocturnal Council to be the main political authority in Magnesia. On
this view, either it will have the same powers as did the philosopher kings
in the Republic to change laws and institutions as it sees fit or the extent of
its powers will simply be left to the Nocturnal Council itself to determine.
[34] Such an interpretation has, however, quite high costs. As its main
contemporary proponent concedes, it requires us to see the Laws as

inconsistent: the earlier provisions of political authority to various offices
are incompatible with assigning such unlimited powers to the Nocturnal
Council.[35] Further, such a grant of power is at least in serious tension
with one of the Laws’ basic political principles. Repeatedly in the Laws,
Plato emphasizes that allowing any magistrate or political body unchecked
authority runs too great a risk of the abuse of power. Such a risk is still too
great even if the possessors of power have genuine knowledge: even those
with full knowledge are subject to corruption in such circumstances.[36]
Other interpreters, such as Glenn Morrow, have suggested that the

Nocturnal Council’s role is primarily informal.[37] This Council is to
possess various sorts of knowledge and it must also educate its own
members. Even without possessing powers beyond those explicitly
assigned to it, the Nocturnal Council should exercise a considerable
influence on Magnesia’s governance. Its members include some of the
city’s most important officials. Plato would certainly expect that these
officials’ administration of the laws and revision of them – if this is
permitted – will be informed by their studies. Perhaps even more
important, the younger associate members of the Nocturnal Council will
come to fill many offices of the state and will exercise an informal, but
still significant, influence on other citizens in the deliberations that play

such an important role in Magnesia’s system of government, as well as in

their other contacts with their fellows.
There is, however, a third option. Morrow adopts his “informal”

interpretation in part because Plato does not explicitly assign to the
Nocturnal Council any powers beyond those we have noted. But one could
hold that the Laws is not intended to provide a fully determinate blueprint
of the just city.[38] On this interpretation, there is an open texture to the
political and social institutions that Plato sketches and we should allow for
a range of ways of implementing the basic structure. For example, Plato
appears to assign to the “guardians of the laws” (the nomophulakes) some
important role in revising Magnesia’s laws. In his Book 12 discussion,
Plato describes the members of the Nocturnal Council as “those who will
really be guardians of the laws” (Laws 966B5). The members of the
Nocturnal Council will, if properly educated, be “made into guardians
whose like, with respect to the virtue of safekeeping, we have not seen
come into being in our lives previously” (Laws 969C2–3). We need not
see these claims as a volte-face on Plato’s part, if we allow for a range of
ways in which the outline of Magnesia sketched can be realized that fall
between excluding the Nocturnal Council from any political role at all and
seeing them as philosopher kings in disguise. We can thus allow that the
Nocturnal Council is intended to have genuine political authority going
beyond its explicitly stated responsibilities that still falls well short of
autocratic power, without expecting the Laws’ text to make this authority
fully determinate.
But in addition to the specific issue of the extent of the Nocturnal

Council’s powers, there is a deeper question. The more political authority
that is assigned to the Nocturnal Council, the more politically passive most
citizens of Magnesia will be. Thus the question about the power of the
Nocturnal Council has significant implications for our evaluation of the
ethical capacities of non-philosophical citizens. If their education really

Plato on utopia
does give them some rational appreciation of the principles underlying the
laws of Magnesia, we should expect that they can, to a significant degree,
be free from detailed regulation and supervision by others. Further, not
only is it the case that they will be capable of being free from such
regulation, but we should expect that deliberating and acting upon their
grasp of ethical principles forms an important part of their own good.[39]
If, however, their political activity is reduced to the level of the two lower
classes in the Republic, who have little or no part in political deliberation
or judicial administration, we might think that Plato has the same fairly
low estimate of the ethical capacities of ordinary citizens in both works.
Resolving the issue of the Nocturnal Council’s powers thus has broad
implications for our understanding of Plato’s later ethics.
7. Poetry and Education

The goal of the city of the Laws, as we’ve seen, is to produce citizens who
possess complete virtue (Laws 630C3–6; see also e.g. 705D3–706A4,
963A). The education in virtue of the citizens is, therefore, of central
importance for the Laws: we are told early on that well-educated men will
turn out to be good men and thus that it is of great importance for a state to
educate its citizens well (Laws 641B). This makes the education of the
citizens a topic of great importance for interpreters of the Laws as well,
especially insofar as understanding what effect the educational program of
Magnesia can be expected to have on the citizens will help us to
understand what sort of virtue the citizens can be expected to have.
The educational program of Magnesia begins with music and gymnastics,

and Plato emphasizes the deep importance of this part of the educational
program in various parts of the Laws.[40] The right nurture of children
begins in the womb, and is described as “pre-natal gymnastics”: pregnant
women are to walk, and, later, nurses are to carry the children, so as to, as
much as possible, have the children moved as though they were being

constantly rocked by the sea (Laws 789B–790C). From the ages of three to
six children are to play at prescribed games (Laws 797B; but see also the
claim, at 794A, that the games arise from natural instinct). Plato in fact
insists that childrens’ games are of decisive importance for legislation, as a
change in the games will, he thinks, lead to a change in the childrens’
standards for propriety and impropriety; this will, in turn, lead to a change
in their characters and in the laws they desire to be governed by.[41] At the
age of six the sexes are to be divided and lessons in music and gymnastics
begun. Both music and gymnastics include imitations of virtuous people
engaged in virtuous activities or exhibiting virtuous traits, such as fighting
courageously or feeling moderate pleasures (see e.g. Laws 655A–655E,
660A, 795E–796C, and 814E–816B); what it is to be well-educated in
choristry is to delight in and to hate the imitations that one ought, more so
than to be able to execute certain songs and dances skillfully (Laws 654C–
D). This education in music and gymnastics is a lifelong process: citizens
of Magnesia are meant to sing and dance in age-specific choruses for the
rest of their lives, and are told that it is their duty to constantly encourage
in themselves an appetite for ethically improving songs (Laws 665C). The
oldest chorus members participate in symposia in addition to singing, at
least in part with the goal of making their souls soft and youthful, and thus
once again capable of being molded by the legislator (Laws 671C–D).
In addition to music and dance, children are given a literary education, are
taught to play the lyre, and learn arithmetic, geometry, and astronomy
(Laws 809C). The Athenian warns against having children read the poets,
as, he says, each has said some things badly, but declares that the text of
the Laws itself and whatever other prose, poetry, or speeches should
resemble it are appropriate for the children to study (Laws 811B–E).[42] In
arithmetic and geometry, the Athenian emphasizes how shameful it is for
the citizens to be ignorant (as so many Greeks then were) of
incommensurability (Laws 819E–820D). The situation is even worse in
astronomy: there, the common belief that the planets wander rather than

Plato on utopia
traveling the same circular path is not only shameful but also impious, as it
is a mistake about the gods (Laws 821A–D).
One striking feature of the educational program in the Laws is its emphasis
on music and gymnastics, from the very beginning up to the very end of a
life. What sort of impact does this type of education have on the soul and
how can we explain why it is so central to the educational program? In
considering these questions, it is worth thinking about the educational
program in the Republic as a contrast case: there the musical education
given to the auxiliaries is said to be an education through habits which
cannot produce genuine virtue (Rep 522A4–B1, cf. 484C3–D10 and
516E8–517E2).[43] If we think that Plato wants the educational program
of Magnesia to produce something approaching genuine virtue in the
citizens, then we’ll need to give an account of how music and dance can
do more than produce good habits in the citizens. (This is not to say that
habituation does not or cannot play an important role in the educational
program: see e.g. Laws 656B.)
One recent strategy[44] that might explain the centrality given to education
in music and gymnastics in the Laws begins with the following passage:
[A]lmost without exception, every young creature is incapable of keeping

either its body or its tongue quiet, and is always striving to move and to
cry, leaping and skipping and delighting in dances and games, and
uttering, also, noises of every description. Now, whereas other creatures
are devoid of any perception of the various kinds of order and disorder in
movement (which we term rhythm and harmony), to us men the very gods,
who were given, as we said, to be our fellows in the dance, have granted
the pleasurable perception of rhythm and harmony, whereby they cause us
to move and lead our choirs… (Laws 653D7–654A3)

This passage tells us that human beings are capable of perceiving order in
sound and motion and that they have natural tendencies towards moving
and making noise which provide the opportunity for that capacity to
perceive order to be trained. Insofar as good order is what makes things
fine,[45] then the pleasurable perception of the good order in sound and
motion will be a way of appreciating finemaking properties, which could
in turn help the child to acquire or refine the concepts of fineness and
goodness. And if this perception and resulting comprehension of order is
cognitively continuous with the grip on order that is involved in genuine
virtue, then this also helps us show how this education could be part of the
acquisition of genuine virtue.[46], [47]
Citizens of Magnesia, as we’ve seen, also get a sophisticated education in

mathematics and astronomy. The particular results that this education aims
to impart may be significant. As Ian Mueller has pointed out,
incommensurability is itself a non-sensible property: two (physical) lines
which represent incommensurable magnitudes will nonetheless appear to
someone who measures them carefully to be commensurable.[48]
Understanding the fact that there are some incommensurable segments
thus crucially involves a grip on non-sensible properties, which is essential
for coming to grasp genuine value properties.[49] The results aimed at in
astronomical education are also significant: circular motion is the motion
associated with reason and thus the circular motion of the gods is related
to their status as paradigms of reason and of goodness.
We’ve seen, then, that there are robust resources available for an
interpreter of the Laws to show how the educational system of Magnesia
could produce something like genuine virtue: their education in music and
dance may serve to give students an appreciation of order which will help
them to grasp value concepts, and their mathematical and astronomical
education may be designed to allow them to articulate those concepts and
to see their role in structuring the cosmos. There are, however, also

Plato on utopia
reasons to worry about how robust the virtue established by the

educational system of Magnesia really is. The lifelong nature of education
– and, in particular, the striking claim that old men must participate in
symposia so as to make their souls young and malleable again – suggests
that the virtue of the citizens is fragile enough to require constant upkeep.
[50] The way in which we account for what does or can go wrong to make
the citizens’ virtue need reinforcement will also help us fix on the nature of
that reinforcement and thus on the way in which the educational system
affects the souls of the citizens more generally. More research, then, is
needed into the two interrelated questions of the way in which the
education given to the citizens of Magnesia has its effect and of what sort
of virtue the educational program of Magnesia can or tends to produce.
Plato also offers some discussion of the standards of music and poetry in
their own right in the course of his discussion of education. As in other
works, Plato is quite critical of the ethical content of poetry and the ethical
knowledge possessed by the poet (see e.g. Laws 719A–C, 811B–E) and
heavily censors the poetry that will be allowed into the city (see e.g. Laws
657B, 719B–D, 796E–802E). Plato also here offers a somewhat obscure
discussion of the standard for correctness in music, saying both that it
must be judged by the pleasure of the virtuous man (Laws 659A) and that,
because music is imitative, the standard must involve not pleasure but
truth, and that correct music is music which resembles the imitation of the
beautiful (Laws 668A–B).[51]
8. Theology
The Athenian opens the dialogue by asking Kleinias and Megillus whether
god or some man is responsible for their laws, and they answer that, for
each of them, it is a god (Zeus for the Cretans and Apollo for the
Spartans).[52] God is thus presented from the very start of the dialogue as
the appropriate source of law and human institutions. This notion of god

as the lawgiver or ruler for a city returns in Book 4, when the three are
considering what sort of constitution to give to their new city: there, the
Athenian claims that the best ruler for a city to have is god, and that they
ought to imitate the rule of god by ordering their society in obedience to
the immortal element within themselves, namely reason, which here will
have the name of law (Laws 714A; see also Laws 762E, where service to
the laws is said to be service to the gods). God is also presented in the
Laws as the appropriate model for a human life. In the address to the new
settlers, they are told that they ought to become like god, and that to do
this is to become virtuous; in fact, the Athenian claims that god is the
measure of human affairs, where this means that god, by possessing the
virtues, embodies the standard to which we should aim (Laws 716C–D).
[53] It is also worth noting that the early books of the Laws often present a
fairly traditional theology: we’re encouraged to pray to the gods, the gods
are presented as having the power to intervene in human affairs, and the
Athenian happily uses the names of the Olympian gods (see e.g. Laws
717A, 828B–D).
Book 10 takes up the existence and nature of the god(s) as its main theme,
and it is here that we get the most sophisticated theology the Laws has to
offer. The bulk of the book is presented as the prelude to impiety laws, and
consists in an argument against three beliefs which are the characteristic
causes of impiety: (1) that the gods do not exist; (2) that the gods are not
concerned with human beings; and (3) that the gods can be influenced by
prayers and sacrifices.
The Athenian begins by addressing those who believe that the gods do not
exist. He attributes to these people the view that it is material substances
which exist by nature and which are the causes of the motions we see in
the cosmos, and says that what they’ve failed to understand is the nature
and power of soul – that is, the fact that soul is “among the first things”
and older than bodies, and that “it more than anything governs their

Plato on utopia
changes and all of their transformations” (Laws 892A2–7).[54] He begins

by arguing that soul, which he here defines in terms of self-motion, must
be the source of all other motions, as none of them have the capacity to
move themselves. Soul is not simply the original source of all motion,
however; the Athenian also claims that it governs the motion of all bodies
which are in motion by using its own characteristic motions (e.g., wishing
and believing) to take over the secondary motions of bodies.[55] As soul
governs the motion of bodies in general, it must govern the motions of the
heavens in particular (896E); and as those motions are orderly, they must
be governed by a good soul possessing reason rather than a bad soul
(897B–898C). The Athenian then says that such a soul – one possessing
reason and governing the orderly motions of the heavens – ought to be
regarded as a god (899A–B). This concludes the argument with someone
who thinks that the gods do not exist. The Athenian then turns to argue
that god (or, the gods) care for human beings and cannot be bribed. These
arguments crucially appeal to a characterization of god as a craftsman and
a ruler: god would be a poor craftsman indeed if he did not attend to even
the small parts of the whole (i.e., human beings), and a bad ruler if he
could be bribed with prayers and sacrifices.[56]
These arguments raise a number of questions:
The Athenian goes back and forth, in the entire text of the Laws,
between speaking of ‘god’ and ‘the gods’. How many gods are there,
and, if more than one, is there one which is somehow supreme?[57]
What is the nature of a god? Plato’s argument demonstrates that there

are gods by identifying a certain sort of soul – one that possesses
reason and governs the heavens – as a god. Are all gods like this, or
can there be a god without soul? Plato also claims that soul is “among
the first things to have come into being” (892C4). Do some or all
gods come into being, or is there a god who has always existed?[58]

Soul is said to be the cause of all motions and, thus, “of good things
and bad” (896D6), and Plato suggests the hypothesis of an evil soul
precisely to explain bad things (896E). On the other hand, Plato
elsewhere explains the existence of evil in other terms[59]; and soul
and especially god are deeply linked to reason and good order in this
discussion. Is a cosmic soul (either good or bad) responsible for evil
in the Laws, or is there some other cause of evil?[60]
How do cosmic souls govern the motions of the celestial bodies? Is it

by being within them, by acting on them by means of some external
matter, or in some other way?[61]
Finally, how does the theology of the Laws relate to the theology of
other late dialogues such as the Timaeus, Philebus, and Statesman?
[62]
What is clear from the theological discussion in Book 10, however, is that
god is something which governs the cosmos, by using reason, in a way
that aims at its best state. This adds richness to the idea that god and god’s
rule provides a standard for law and for individual human lives: just as
god governs the cosmos, so too law governs a society and reason an
individual, in all cases for the sake of their best state.[63]
9. Ethics
There is a strong case to be made that Plato, as in other works, accepts
rational eudaimonism in the Laws: that is, that he believes that each
individual’s goal, insofar as he is rational, is his own happiness or well-
being (eudaimonia). Some of the most explicit evidence for this can be
found at Laws 662C–E, in which the Athenian presents as appropriate the
demand that the life that is recommended by an ancestor or a god be the
happiest and most pleasant life[64]; but the emphasis the Laws places on

Plato on utopia
the happiness of the citizens as the aim of the laws and the importance it
gives to showing that virtue conduces to a happy and a pleasant life also
suggest that Plato remains within a eudaimonist framework. The Laws
also offers some discussion of what it is that is good for a human being (as
we would expect if Plato remains a rational eudaimonist). Plato
distinguishes between human goods such as health, beauty, and wealth,
and divine goods, namely the virtues, and claims that human goods are not
good independently of virtue. Instead, they are good for the good man, but
bad for the bad man (661B–C; cf. 631D). There are important questions
here about the precise nature of human eudaimonia and the precise way in
which the human goods benefit the good man and fail to benefit or even
harm the bad man. Is virtue sufficient or only necessary for eudaimonia?
[65] Do the human goods benefit the good man only insofar as they
increase his capacity to act virtuously, and harm the bad man only insofar
as they increase his capacity to act viciously, or is there additional value
and disvalue in the possession of human goods, e.g. are they genuinely
good in a way that can only be appreciated by those who are virtuous?[66]
What is clear from this discussion, however, is that virtue is an essential
component of human happiness and a precondition for all other benefit.
Several passages in the Laws suggest that the sort of virtue that Plato
thinks the citizens of Magnesia ought to exhibit involves an impartialist
sort of regard for the good of the cosmos as a whole rather than a special
regard for one’s own good. Perhaps the most striking of these passages
occur in the midst of the theological discussions in Book 10. Immediately
after the Athenian’s arguments that god does not neglect men, he goes on
to give a short speech in which he declares that the cosmos has been put
together by god with a view to the safety and virtue of the whole, and that
the parts of the cosmos – including human beings – have come to be for
the sake of the eudaimonia (happiness or well-being) of the whole
cosmos[67] (Laws 903B–D). This passage suggests that what it is proper
for human beings to do, insofar as they are parts of the cosmos and

generated for the sake of its eudaimonia, is to aim at its eudaimonia; and
this suggestion is confirmed by a passage which follows closely upon this
one, in which the Athenian portrays human beings as the allies and the
possessions of the gods in a cosmic battle of good against evil (Laws
905E8–906B3). Finally, towards the beginning of the Great Prelude to the
laws in general, Plato warns about the evil of self-love and suggests that
what each man must do instead is to love “neither himself nor his own
belongings, but things just, whether they happen to be actions of his own
or rather those of another man” (Laws 731D–732A). This looks like a
rejection of partiality to oneself as such, and a requirement to instead love
what is of value. The argument turns on the thought that a lover is a bad
judge of value, as he is necessarily partial to what he loves. If this is right,
the conclusion is very radical indeed: any sort of love that is directed at
anything other than the just and good and fine will be problematic, and this
will include love of family, friends, and fellow-citizens, except insofar as
they are just, good and fine. While these three passages are different in
detail, the picture that emerges from them is one on which what we are
meant to do is to orient ourselves towards what is of genuine value and,
perhaps as a consequence, to aim at the well-being of the cosmos as a
whole, rather than to be oriented towards our own narrowly-construed
good or the good of particular individuals as such.
The discussion of these passages is still at a very early stage and no

consensus about how to understand them has yet emerged. However, if we
do think that they show that Plato held impartialist ethical views in the
Laws, we will be left with important questions about how to reconcile
those views with his eudaimonism. What conception of an individual’s
own happiness or well-being could yield as a conclusion that one ought to
aim at the happiness or well-being of the cosmos as a whole rather than
one’s own (narrowly construed) happiness? And what assumptions would
make it plausible to think that my aiming at the well-being of the whole
would necessarily correspond to something that was worth calling my own

Plato on utopia
good?[68] (Why, for example, couldn’t my aiming at the well-being of the

whole call on me to sacrifice myself to the good of others to the extent that
I was no longer able to cultivate my own virtue and thus could not,
according to the Dependency Thesis, be benefited by anything at all?[69])
We might also profitably compare Plato’s ethical views in the Laws to

those which he expresses in the Republic. Plato in the Republic famously
claims that the philosopher-kings will return to rule as a matter of
necessity, and there is a large literature exploring just how this fits into a
eudaimonist framework, given that it looks like the narrowly-construed
good of the philosopher-kings would be best served by contemplation of
the Forms. It would be worth exploring the relationship between the two
dialogues on this point, especially given that the Laws seems to endorse a
conception of an individual’s well-being which could lead them to set
aside their own, narrowly-construed well-being in just as, if not more,
radical a way than the Republic.
10. Plato’s Later Epistemology, Metaphysics, and

Psychology
With respect to the specific controversies we have examined, for example,
that over the role of the preludes and that concerning the powers of the
Nocturnal Council, we have found that the issues under dispute have
important connections to Plato’s epistemology and psychology. This
should not, however, be surprising. To understand the nature of ethical
learning and what ethical cognitive states can be produced by different
kinds of education, we must ultimately turn to Plato’s epistemology,
metaphysics, and psychology. Further, since the appropriate political role
for citizens depends in large part on the kinds of ethical character and
knowledge (or true belief) they can acquire, we can only understand

Plato’s later political philosophy by understanding its connections with his

later epistemology, metaphysics, and psychology.
The idea that Plato’s ethics and politics rest, at least in large part, on his
views in these other areas of philosophy is not novel. Much of the best
work on the ethical and political theory of the Republic tries to draw such
connections.[70] But this has not yet happened to anything approaching the
same degree with respect to his later ethics and politics.[71] This is due
perhaps primarily to the fact that while the Republic provides within itself
an account articulated in some detail not only of Plato’s ethics and politics,
but also of the psychology, epistemology and metaphysics on which they
rest, the Laws is comparatively lacking in extended argumentation on
these basic philosophical issues. But Plato is not trying in the Laws to
provide a comprehensive philosophical statement of the sort found in the
Republic. Questions of psychology, epistemology, ethics and metaphysics
(including the metaphysics of value) are explored in great detail and with
extraordinary sophistication in the other later dialogues. Indeed, they are
treated in much more detail and with greater philosophical power than in
the middle period. And it is these later dialogues that provide the
indispensable background for understanding the Laws. Thus we should
read it together with, for example, the Philebus’ metaphysics of value and
account of pleasure and with the epistemology and psychology of the
Timaeus.[72] More cautiously, we should look for connections with the
epistemology, metaphysics and psychology of other dialogues which are
plausibly thought to be post-Republic, but do not fall into the final group
of six, such as the Phaedrus and the Theaetetus.[73] By examining Plato’s
philosophical positions in these later dialogues, we can work out the
deeper justification for Plato’s vision of political and ethical community in
the Laws. And by articulating this vision, we gain greater understanding of
the other later dialogues on which it rests.

Plato on utopia
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Notes to Plato on utopia

1. Guthrie (1987, p. 322).
2. Stalley (1983, p. 3). On authenticity, see Guthrie (1987, pp. 321–2).
3. For discussions of stylometry, see Brandwood (1976, pp. xvi–xviii),

(1990), Brandwood in Kraut (1992, pp. 90–120), Kahn (1996, especially

Plato on utopia
pp. 36–70), Keyser (1991), (1992), Ledger (1989), Nails (1992) and
Young (1994).
4. Also see Laws 660Dff., 696B–697C and 742D–744A. Note that justice
includes wisdom (phronêsis), 631C5–8. There will be citizens, to be sure,
in whom the law fails to instill the whole of virtue, but Plato never
suggests that the laws fail in the case of every non-philosopher. Indeed, he
expects that there will be quite a few successes, see, e.g., Laws 630C,
631CD, 641BC, 647CD, 705E–706A, 707D, 731E–732B, 734E–735A,
742C–743C, 770C–771A, 790B, 807CE, 817BC, 818CD, 822E–823A,
853BC, 876CD, 878AB, 913BC, 921D–922A, 945BE, 946E–947B, and
963A.
The Republic (e.g. 419A–421C) holds that the goal of the laws is to bring
about the greatest possible happiness in the city. The Laws (e.g., 631B3–6,
718B2–4, 743C5–6, 806C3–7) still holds that the ultimate end of the legal
system is to bring about the greatest possible happiness in the city. This
agreement between the Republic and the Laws that the goal of the laws is
to make the city or its citizens as happy as possible is compatible with the
claim that such happiness is realized in quite different ways in the two
dialogues and, in particular, with the idea that they disagree about whether
non-philosophical citizens can be become genuinely virtuous.
5. Annas (1999, pp. 31–51) argues that, in the Laws, virtue is the only
component of happiness. Bobonich (2002, pp. 210–215) disagrees, and
gives a detailed discussion of the options.
6. For more on these issues, including further references, see Bobonich

(2002, pp. 350–373) and Frede (2010).
7. There is some disagreement about what precisely this model of the soul
is meant to explain and, thus, what range of psychic phenomena we can
understand by reference to this model. See e.g. Kamtekar (2010, p. 130)

and Frede (2010, p. 118) for suggestions that this model is not meant to
capture all of Plato’s psychology in the Laws.
8. Dorothea Frede suggests (2010, p. 116) that “puppet” is a misleading

translation if it suggests that external forces pull the strings, and that Plato
has something like a wind-up toy in mind instead.
9. There is, of course, controversy over whether to take the division of the
soul in the Republic to involve agent-like parts or something more like
aspects. For those who take the Republic to be committed to agent-like
parts, however, the Laws Book 1 model will be strikingly different. For
discussion of partitioning, see Bobonich (2002) and (2010), Lorenz
(2006), Price (2009), and Barney, Brennan, Brittain ed. (2012).
10. For more on the puppet metaphor and issues it raises, see Bobonich
(2002, pp. 260–288), Frede (2010), and Müller (2013).
11. See Bobonich (2002, pp. 350–373) for a discussion of pleasure in the
Laws which advances this interpretation. For references to other
interpretations, see section 7 of this article (Poetry and Education).
12. See Irwin (1995, pp. 343–345) and Bobonich (2002, p. 522, fn. 141)
for this claim.
13. For a discussion on Plato’s use of history, and its relation to his
political project in the Laws, see Schofield (2010); for a discussion of the
notion of slavery to the laws and its connection to virtue, see Annas
(2010).
14. This claim could fruitfully be compared with Plato’s suspicion of law
in other places: see Stsmn. 294A–296A, and also Laws 875C–D.
15. E.g. Saunders (1976, pp. 27–8).

Plato on utopia
16. Dodds (1973, pp. 209–13), Vlastos (1981, pp. 210–17).
17. Gregory Vlastos (1981, p. 216), for example, suggests that Plato came
to think in the Laws that no one, not even a fully virtuous philosopher,
could hold autocratic power without being corrupted because of Plato’s
own final encounter with Dionysus the Younger in Sicily. But this
explanation is unsatisfying. Even if Plato had thought that Dionysus was
well-brought up, fully virtuous, and possessed full philosophical
understanding, it would be rash to generalize from this one case to all
possible cases. But Plato thought that Dionysus was badly brought up
(Epist. VII 332CD) and had a low opinion of his philosophical knowledge
(Epist. VII 338D–339B, 340B–341B, 344D–345C). (This assumes, for the
sake of the argument, that the Seventh Letter is genuine and that it gives us
direct insight into Plato’s state of mind. On the latter point, see Annas
(1999, pp. 72–7.)) It would thus be irrational for Plato to generalize from
his experience with Dionysus to the capacities of all human beings. Dion
would come closer to Plato’s ideal (although his early upbringing must
have been somewhat defective, Epist. VII 327B1–4) and Vlastos (1981, p.
216, n. 29) plausibly suggests that Plato did not think that Dion was an
autocrat corrupted by power, but was a good man who came to grief
because of his associates’ villainy (Epist. VII 351DE).
18. Bobonich (2002). For others who think that there are significant
differences between the Republic and the late dialogues on some important
points, especially the education of the citizens, see Cooper (1999, pp. 165–
91), Irwin (1995, pp. 349–53) and the nuanced accounts of Laks (1990),
(2000). For a recent defense of a unitarian position on the relation between
the Republic and the Laws, see Rowe (2010); for a defense of the idea that
the non-philosophic citizens of the Republic (including those in the
producer class) are happier than the non-philosophic citizens of the Laws,
see Kraut (2010).

19. Plato’s ranking here is: in first place, full communism throughout the
entire citizen body; in second place, the constitution of Magnesia that they
are now describing (Laws 739E, 807B and 875D); in third place,
constitutions approximating the second best one in less favorable
circumstances. See Barker (1960, pp. 370–1 n. 2). The point that this is not
the ideal of the Republic was rightly noted long ago by Natorp and
recently reemphasized by André Laks (2001). Barker’s (1960, p. 251 n. 1,
pp. 370–1 n. 1) only reason for rejecting what he agrees is the clear
meaning of the text is that he cannot accept that Plato could have a higher
ideal than the Republic.
20. Laws 737Eff. and see Brunt (1993, p. 247). Golding and Golding
(1975, p. 353) estimate Magnesia’s population at about 50,000 plus
resident aliens.
21. On land ownership in Magnesia, see Morrow (1960, pp. 105–7). For
limitations on the lotholder’s testamentary powers, see Laws 877CE and
923Aff.
22. Laws 955E3–4 and 847E2–848B6; also see Morrow (1960, pp. 395–6).
23. Some have interpreted Plato to mean that the highest class has only
between two and three times the value of the lot, i.e. their total property
taking the notional value of the lot into account would be worth up to four
times the value of the lot. The interpretation that they may have movable
assets up to four times the value of the lot is held by Aristotle (Politics
1265b22 and 1266b7) and is convincingly argued for by Morrow (1960, p.
131 n. 112). This is important, since the other interpretation reduces the
lowest class to the level of subsistence farmers and thus significantly
reduces their chances for political participation or leisurely activity. For an
important discussion of leisure in the Laws, see Samaras (2012).

Plato on utopia
24. For an excellent discussion of the family, the household, and the role
of women in the Laws, see Samaras (2010).
25. See Morrow (1960, p. 112–3).
26. The legal and social status of women in Magnesia is not entirely clear,
for good treatments, see Cohen (1987), Okin (1979), and Saunders (1995).
For more discussion with further references see Bobonich (2002, pp. 384–
91) and Samaras (2010).
27. On the Assembly, see Morrow (1960, pp. 156–65, 174–6 and 229) and
Piérart (1973, pp. 89–121).
28. Morrow (1960, pp. 195–215) and Piérart (1973, pp. 152–208).
29. For discussion with references, see Bobonich (2002, pp. 395–408) and
Saunders (1995).
30. For (i), see Stalley (1994, p. 171 n. 65); for (ii) Laks (1991). For recent
discussions of the preludes and related issues, see Annas (2010), Bobonich
(2002, pp. 97–119), Cooper (1999, pp. 184–90), Irwin (1995, pp. 349–53),
Laks (1990), (1991), Nightingale (1993), (1999), and Stalley (1994).
31. For a defense of (II), see Bobonich (2002, pp. 41–88) with discussion
of and references to opposing points of view. Among such opposing
views, see especially Kamtekar (1998) and Kraut (1973) and (2010).
32. See, e.g., Cooper (1999, pp. 165–91).
33. “Nocturnal Council” is by now traditional, but “Dawn Council” would

be a more accurate translation and would avoid the sinister connotations of
the former
34. Barker (1960, pp. 406–10) and Klosko (1988) and (2008).

35. Klosko (1988, p. 85).
36. Laws 875A1–C3, on the Laws’ provisions against unchecked power,

see Morrow (1960, pp. 521–43).
37. Morrow (1960, pp. 500–18).
38. For a fine discussion of what he calls the “documentary fallacy,” see
Saunders (1995).
39. This claim is stated only roughly here, the issues that it raises are
complex. For further discussion, see Bobonich (2002, pp. 418–73) and for
a related point concerning Aristotle’s political theory, see Irwin (1990).
40. The most striking statement of such connection is given at 672E5,

where the Athenian Visitor claims that “[i]n our view, choristry as a whole
is identical with education as a whole”, but the idea that music and poetry
in particular have great educational importance recurs throughout the work
(see e.g. the Book 3 claim that the decline of Athens started with the
erosion of standards in music (Laws 700A–791B)).
41. Plato regularly expresses skepticism about cultural variation; see also,
e.g., Laws 656D–657C for his praise of the Egyptians’ bans on innovation
in painting, sculpture, and music.
42. In contrasting the text of the Laws with the poets, Plato claims that the
constitution (politeia) is an imitation (mimesis) of the finest and best life
and that it is “the truest tragedy” (Laws 817B3–5). André Laks’ “Plato’s
‘truest tragedy’: Laws Book 7, 817a–d” undertakes to explain this
fascinating claim, arguing, among other things, that we should think that
the inevitable conflict between reason and pleasure and the resulting need
for punishment in the state are part of why the constitution is a tragedy.
For another interpretation of this claim, see Sauvé Meyer (2011).

Plato on utopia
43. The claim that the non-philosophers in the Republic don’t achieve
anything approaching genuine virtue is, however, controversial. For a
recent defense of the claims that non-philosophers in the Republic have a
meaningful sort of ordinary virtue that nonetheless falls short of full
virtue, and that Plato’s views of ordinary virtue in the Republic and the
Laws are importantly continuous, see Kraut (2010). See also section 5
(Preludes in the Laws) for further discussion.
44. See Bobonich (2002, pp. 350–373) for a discussion of pleasure in the
Laws which advances this interpretation. Kamtekar (2010) accepts that
Bobonich’s account gives us part of the reason for the centrality of music
and gymnastics in the educational program, but thinks that it can’t give us
the whole story; she also emphasizes the effect that they have on the non-
rational parts of the soul, e.g. their ability to engage with psychological
affections which have become separated from their associated beliefs.
Morrow (1960, p. 305) also takes the natural human pleasure in orderly
movement to be crucial to the explanation of the educational program but
fits this into an interpretation which focuses rather on the status of music
and dance as imitations of good and bad character.
45. That there is some important connection between value and order in
the Laws is suggested by, for example, Plato’s willingness to infer from
the order in the heavens that the cause of that order must be “good with
every virtue” (Laws 899B6). Plato develops a more explicit account of the
connection between order and value in the Philebus (26B5–C2) and seems
to try to work it out in the ethical context in the Statesman. See Bobonich
(2002, pp. 206–9) for more discussion, including further references.
46. For some internal confirmation that the order perceived in music and
dance is continuous with that which is exhibited by the heavenly bodies,
see Laws 967E; see also Timaeus 47B6–E2 for the claim that the order
exhibited in harmony is akin to that exhibited by the circular motion in our

souls. For more on the heavenly bodies and their divine status see section
8 (Theology).
47. Kamtekar (2010: 147) raises as a worry for the completeness of this
view that it does not explain Plato’s emphasis on participation in physical
activity; if coming to grasp the order in music and dance were the only
thing of ethical significance, she thinks, then seeing others perform would
be just as good. She thus suggests that this account needs to be
supplemented by an account of the way in which music and dance affect
the non-rational parts of the soul.
48. Mueller (1980, p. 115). See also Knorr (1975, pp. 317–319).
49. See e.g. Republic 523A–525B, 529B–C for a discussion of the way in
which the study of mathematics forces the student to go beyond the
sensibles in the Republic.
50. Kamtekar (2010, p. 147) emphasizes this fact about the virtue of the
citizens, and uses it to support her proposal that the choral education of the
citizens has an important effect on the non-rational parts of the citizens’
souls in addition to the rational parts of their souls.
51. For a recent discussion of the educational function and correctness of

poetry and the knowledge of the poets, see Hatzistavrou (2011).
52. As many have noted, god is in fact the first word of the dialogue.
53. For other texts which draw a connection between virtue and being like
god, see Tht 176A–B and Rep 613A–B. See Annas (1999) and Sedley
(2000) for discussion.
54. A few lines later, soul is said to be “among the first things to have
come into being” (892C4). This raises questions that go unanswered in the
subsequent discussion: what other things are among the first things? Is

Plato on utopia
anything prior to soul? See Mayhew (2010, pp. 212–213) for discussion,
including the suggestion (to which he does not commit himself) that
reason alone (that is, unensouled reason or the Form of reason) may be
prior to soul.
55. Laws 897A1–3 lists the characteristic motions of souls as: “wishing,
investigating, supervising, deliberating, believing correctly and falsely,
rejoicing and feeling pain, being bold and feeling fear, hating and loving”
(Mayhew trans).
56. The notion of god as a craftsman in particular has connections to the

Timaeus, but the idea of god’s reason as governing and as a cause of order
in the world recurs throughout the late dialogues: see for instance Tim.
30A, 37D, 53A–B, 69B–C; Phil. 28D–E, 30C; Stsmn. 272E–273D.
57. See Mayhew (2010, pp. 209–210) for discussion, including a list of
places in Book 10 in which the Athenian speaks of ‘the gods’ and ‘the
god’.
58. For discussion, including the suggestion (to which he does not commit
himself) that pure reason may be prior to soul, see Mayhew (2010).
59. E.g., in the Timaeus, by reference to Necessity and the Straying Cause
(48A).
60. For discussion of these issues, including references both to Plato’s

treatment of these issues elsewhere and to the secondary literature, see
Mayhew (2010, pp. 210–211).
61. For discussion of these and other issues, see Mayhew (2010). He
himself thinks that some important questions are simply left unsettled by
the Laws, perhaps because Plato himself does not yet know the answers
and thinks that it might undermine the virtue of the citizens if they were

exposed to abstruse theological disputes, and that Plato is leaving these

questions to his successors to investigate.
62. There is a vast literature on the relation between the Laws’ and the
Timaeus’ cosmology in particular. See, to start, Mohr (1985, chs. 2, 7, 8,
9), Robinson (1995, pp. xviii–xix, xxiv–xxxii, 59–110, 145–57), and
Vlastos (1994, vol. 2, chs. 15, 16). Important questions include whether
god is the source of all motions or simply of order, and how to explain
disorder and evil.
63. See Bobonich (2002, pp. 93–97) for discussion of this point.
64. See Irwin (1995, pp. 343–345) and Bobonich (2002, p. 522 fn 141) for
discussion which advances this interpretation of the passage. For
arguments that Plato is not a eudaimonist, see Waterlow [Broadie] (1972)
and White (1999, 2002).
65. See fn. 1.
66. See Bobonich (2002, pp. 179–209) for discussion.
67. Note that in the Timaeus, the cosmos is itself a living thing; this should
make the thought that it is capable of eudaimonia less strange.
68. This latter problem only becomes more difficult when we recall Plato’s
emphasis on the motivational efficacy of pleasure in the Laws and his
claim that the eudaimôn life is identical to the life of greatest pleasure
(Laws 662C–E), because then we will have to show how the life in which
I aim at the well-being of the whole is also the most pleasant for me.
69. See Bobonich (2002, pp. 470–471) for this worry.
70. For a spirited rejection of this claim, see Annas (1999).

Plato on utopia
71. For one attempt to do so, see Bobonich (2002).
72. There has been increased interest in the psychology of the Timaeus
and, in particular, a debate over the status of the parts of the soul in the
Timaeus and over whether desires and emotions in the Timaeus and other
late dialogues have linguistic content: Bobonich (2002), (2010), Lorenz
(2006) and (2012), Kamtekar (2010), Karfík (2005) and Lautner (2005).
73. A group of four—Parmenides, Phaedrus, Republic, and Theaetetus—

are stylistically similar to each other and are closer to the late group of six
than they are to the remaining dialogues. Most scholars taking other
considerations into account go further than this with regards to dating.
Even Kahn (1996, pp. 47–8) finds it reasonable to date the Phaedrus and
the Theaetetus in that order between the Republic and the late group of six.
The following scholars (in addition to Kahn) accept that the Phaedrus and
the Theaetetus occur in that order between the Republic and the late group
of six: Guthrie (1987, vol. 4, pp. 50–1), Kraut in Kraut (1992, pp. 46 n. 57,
47 n. 61), Ross (1953, p. 10) and Vlastos (1991, pp. 46–7). Brandwood
(1976, p. xvii) and Ledger (1989, pp. 224–5) accept this order, except for
placing the Theaetetus just before the Phaedrus. For further discussion of
the Phaedrus’ date, see de Vries (1969, pp. 7–11), Nussbaum (1986, pp.
465 n. 7, 470–1 n. 5), and Rowe (1986b, pp. 13–4). I would like to thank
Corinne Gartner for her help in turning my text into a webpage.
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Edward N. Zalta Uri Nodelman Colin Allen R. Lanier Anderson

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Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

1. Authenticity and Chronology

1. Authenticity and Chronology

On the question of chronology, two external references are helpful:

Platonic scholars also frequently appeal to stylometry (that is, the

Group 3: Critias, Laws, Philebus, Sophist, Statesman, and Timaeus

Group 2: Parmenides, Phaedrus, Republic, and Theaetetus

Group 1: the rest

Drawing upon other evidence, it is reasonable to see the dialogues in

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precise relation between virtue and happiness, however: for example, is

The remainder of Book 1 is concerned with ethical psychology and

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us to understand what effects various sorts of educational practices, such

Book 2 begins by returning to the definition of education; the Athenian

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These topics will be discussed further in section 7 of this article (Poetry

Book 3 abruptly moves to a discussion of the origin of government,

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Book 4 opens with a discussion of the way in which the geographical

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3. The Laws’ Relation to the Republic

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pressing, since the most common attempt to do so by appealing to Plato’s

Anyone who uses reason and experience will recognize that a

But such an interpretation misreads the passage. Even if Plato were to

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4. The Social and Political Institutions of Magnesia

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The city will be relatively populous: its number of households is to remain

Many of Magnesia’s inhabitants are not citizens. There is a considerable

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citizens. The lot holders or heads of households are citizens, but

Let us turn to the political system or constitution (politeia) of Magnesia.

The Assembly is the main electoral authority in the city; it is composed of

i. a role in judging offenses against the public,

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iv. passing on proposed changes in the laws, at least those regarding

It may also have other responsibilities in connection with foreign affairs.

The Council is composed of 90 members chosen by election from each

The guardians of the laws (nomophulakes) are composed of 37 citizens, at

1. Although they do not seem to have the authority to discipline other

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Finally, there is an extensive system of courts in Magnesia, both public

5. Preludes in the Laws

1. What the person who is to be persuaded is asking for is to be

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2. What the lawgiver and the preludes actually do is characterized as

With respect to (II), advocates of the change interpretation point to

Therefore, to insure that someone like that [one whose reason is

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educated the guardians through habits. Its harmonies gave them a

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Further progress in resolving these disputes might be made by continued

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