Abstract

The ideal which Plato consistently endorses and develops in the Laws is one of a city which, like the ideal soul, is perfectly at peace with its inner conflicts. The law is presented as a remedy for the destabilizing influence of the sensations and emotions which make every human being an individual, before he is a citizen. The authoritarian aspect of this remedy may worry contemporary readers, but Plato supports it with his presupposition regarding the extreme weakness of human nature. In particular, the law imposes that rational regulation which each man potentially possesses within himself in so far as he is a divine creature, but which only a ‘small stock of men’ (918 c) is able to exercise. In short, the price that Plato asks us to pay for political order is the suppression of our ‘worse’, yet more human, selves.