Virtue and law in Plato and beyond PDF
Preview Virtue and law in Plato and beyond
Virtue and Law in Plato and Beyond Virtue and Law in Plato and Beyond Julia Annas 1 3 GreatClarendonStreet,Oxford,OX26DP, UnitedKingdom OxfordUniversityPressisadepartmentoftheUniversityofOxford. ItfurtherstheUniversity’sobjectiveofexcellenceinresearch,scholarship, andeducationbypublishingworldwide.Oxfordisaregisteredtrademarkof OxfordUniversityPressintheUKandincertainothercountries ©JuliaAnnas2017 Themoralrightsoftheauthorhavebeenasserted FirstEditionpublishedin2017 Impression:1 Allrightsreserved.Nopartofthispublicationmaybereproduced,storedin aretrievalsystem,ortransmitted,inanyformorbyanymeans,withoutthe priorpermissioninwritingofOxfordUniversityPress,orasexpresslypermitted bylaw,bylicenceorundertermsagreedwiththeappropriatereprographics rightsorganization.Enquiriesconcerningreproductionoutsidethescopeofthe aboveshouldbesenttotheRightsDepartment,OxfordUniversityPress,atthe addressabove Youmustnotcirculatethisworkinanyotherform andyoumustimposethissameconditiononanyacquirer PublishedintheUnitedStatesofAmericabyOxfordUniversityPress 198MadisonAvenue,NewYork,NY10016,UnitedStatesofAmerica BritishLibraryCataloguinginPublicationData Dataavailable LibraryofCongressControlNumber:2017940331 ISBN 978–0–19–875574–6 Printedandboundby CPIGroup(UK)Ltd,Croydon,CR04YY Preface The ideas in this book have been with me for some time. I started thinking about virtue in the Laws and law in the Republic in the mid- 2000s,andnoticedearlyonthatthereisanilluminatinganalogyinPhilo to Plato’s procedure in the Laws. My attempt to bring together ideas aboutPlato,Cicero,andPhilowasinterruptedby(successful)treatment forbreastcancer,andtheyear’senforced‘vacation’mademethinkmore deeplyabouttheissues.IcontinuedtoworkmoreonthemasIrealized thatIneededtobackupmyviewsaboutvirtueintheLawswithamore general view of the dialogue and its methodology. I have greatly bene- fittedfromthetranslationandcommentaryofSchöpsdau,aswellasthe older text and commentary by England, and I am grateful to Malcolm Schofield for letting me see his introduction to the new Cambridge translationoftheLawsbeforepublication.Ialsodelveddeeperintothe works by Cicero and Philo, and the philosophical and social back- grounds against which they were written. I remain aware that I am a novice in Philo studies, and hopethat this has not been too much of a disadvantage. I have been excited by the recent vigorous growth of interest in the Laws, and am very grateful for the work of Malcolm Schofield,ChristopherGill,SusanSauvéMeyer,ZenaHitz,AndreLaks, and Christopher Bobonich. As a result of the book’s long gestation period,Ihavethepleasure ofthankingalargenumberofpeople.Over ten years I am sure that I have forgotten the source of many helpful conversations,comments,andemails.Iapologizeforthis,andwouldbe grateful to be reminded by people not mentioned here. I owe special thanks to Malcolm Schofield, to my colleague Rachana Kamtekar, ChristopherGill,CharlesKahn,BradInwood,DavidO’Connor,Franco Trivigno, Jeremy Reid, Gretchen Reydams-Schils, and two readers for Oxford University Press. The book covers ground discussed in three published articles: ‘Law and Virtue in Plato’, in C. Bobonich (ed.), Essays on Plato’s Laws, Cambridge University Press, 2011, 71–91; ‘Plato’s Laws and Cicero’s De Legibus’, in Plato, Aristotle and Pythagoras in the 1st Century BC, editedbyMalcolmSchofield,CambridgeUniversityPress,2012,206–24; vi PREFACE and‘VirtueandLawintheRepublic’,inPresocraticsandPlato:Festschrift at Delphi for Charles Kahn, edited by Richard Patterson, Vasilis Karas- manis, and Arnold Herrman, Parmenides Press, 2013, 165–82. Papers dealing with issues in parts of the book have been delivered to the followingaudiences,andIamgratefulfortheirresponsesandcriticisms: the Princeton Ancient Philosophy Colloquium; the Society for Biblical Literature;ConferenceonPhilosophyinthe1stCenturyBCatCambridge; Philosophy Department, University of Oslo; Philosophy Department, University of Uppsala; Centre for Advanced Study, Oslo; the Stanford AncientandModernPoliticalThoughtGroup;PhilosophyDepartment, University of Bergen; Seoul National University; the Korean Society for Greco-Roman Philosophy; the Corbett Lecture for 2011, University of Cambridge; the Benedict Lectures on Political Thought 2012, Boston University; the Danziger Lecture 2013, University of Chicago; the Hall Lecture2013,UniversityofIowa;theO’NeillLectures2013,Universityof New Mexico, Albuquerque; University of Edinburgh Law School; and theWestCoastPlatoworkshoponPlato’sLaws. Again, I thank everyone who has helped me along the way, and apologize to those I have unintentionally omitted. Translations are mineunlessotherwiseindicated. Contents 1. Introduction 1 2. LawintheRepublic 9 3. ChangingfromWithin:Plato’sNewApproachintheLaws 32 4. VirtueinaFrameworkofLaw 72 5. LawandtheDivine 120 6. CitizenVirtue 149 7. CiceroonNaturalLawandIdealLaws 162 8. PhiloonVirtueandtheLawsofMoses 188 9. BringingThingsTogether 214 Bibliography 219 Index 231 1 Introduction InthisbookIaimtodotwothings.IexploreastrandinPlato’sLaws,a workwhichaftermuchneglectisnowtheobjectofagrowingandvery interesting body of work. And I also aim to follow up two authors influenced by this Platonic strand, an under-studied way of thinking aboutvirtue,law,andtheirrelationship.Thebookisnotageneralstudy oftheLaws,whichwouldbeafarlargerundertaking. IthasalwaysbeennoticedthatPlatoinmanydialogues,andparticu- larlytheRepublic,hasagreatdealtosayaboutvirtue.Hehassomething to say about law, too, in the Crito and Statesman. In the Laws he explicitly turns to the topic of law and spends a great part of the work settingupamodellawcodeforaprojectedcity.ItisintheLawsthatwe findtheissueoftherelationofvirtuetolawraisedandgivenanextensive answer;thisissomethingthattheCritoandStatesmandonotdevelop.1 There is clearly a noticeable contrast between the Republic and the Laws, one often put broadly as follows. In the Republic the aim of the ideal state is to make all the citizens happy, which they are to do by developing the virtues appropriate to their ways of life. The rulers or ‘guardians’ are qualified to rule the others by virtue of their long and demanding training; this will produce virtuous and expert rulers, who manage the society in the way that expert doctors manage medical treatment or expert steersmen manage boats. Their training in virtue bringsunderstandingofwhatisbestforallthecitizensandthesocietyas awhole,whichtheyimposeontheotherstoproducevirtueandhappi- nessforall.InMagnesia,theidealprojectedcityoftheLaws,ontheother 1 TheCritoisconcernedwiththequestionwhetherSocratesshouldobeytheactuallaws ofAthenswhenunjustlycondemned.TheStatesman’sfocusisontheidealstatesmanand kinds of constitution. Neither is concerned with the issue of virtue and law which is extensivelydevelopedintheLaws.
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