[Authors and titles are listed at the end of the review.]
The present volume provides a thematic analysis of the treatment of emotional conditions (such as pleasure, pain, shame, fear, anger, impiety, and ignorance) in the Laws, offering the proceedings of a conference that took place in Bruxelles on 21-22 October 2021.
The introduction, written by the editors of the volume, poses the challenging questions how affections and emotions are to be integrated with philosophy and what is their importance. The book can be roughly divided into two: the first four contributions approach the topic of the preambles from different points of view, while the other five papers tackle different kinds of affections, from anger to impiety. There are, in total, nine papers (three in English, six in French). The volume also contains a brief presentation of the authors at the beginning (which shows a balance of young and experienced scholars) and indexes des auteurs modernes and des sources.
The first part is centred on the preludes: Susan Sauvé Meyer aims to demonstrate that the final movement of the grand prelude (“human prelude”) should be considered as a dialogue between the legislators and the citizens and thus dialectically adequate (i.e. the philosophical argument appeals to premises and relies on inferences that the interlocutor accepts). The argumentation first provides a clarification of the specific hedonism expected from humans and then an assessment on how persuasion works. She successfully navigates the difficult waters, attempting to strictly define the types of hedonism and presenting two labels (whole-life and bottom-line hedonism). After an extensive and complex demonstration, the author takes one final step and succeeds in proving that the grand prelude responds well to dialectical analysis, even reconstructing a dialogue between the hedonist and the legislator in order to single out the mechanisms of rational persuasion.
While Meyer provided an almost mathematically strict proof that a prelude can offer philosophically respectable arguments, Julia Pfefferkorn proposes a completely different approach to the same text, centred on the structure and aim of the great preamble. She proposes a triadic structure for the great preamble based on context and recipients. This structure unveils a clear division between a human and a divine point of view and thus between two kinds of persuasion needed to target the affections presented. With arguments and evidence, she confronts other scholars and delineates a coherent and convincing interpretation: pleasure and shame are essential for human motivation and need to be targeted in legislation. The two parts of the preamble are thus meant to be interpreted jointly (even considering the puppet simile). The results of this analysis are diametrically opposed to those of Meyer: there is no strictly rational persuasion in the prelude but only arguments aimed at non-rational “strings” of human motivation.
The two different sides of the dispute are then addressed by Létitia Mouze: is the type of persuasion rational and philosophical or irrational and emotional? This lengthy and intense contribution widens the scope to all the preludes, whose aim, it is argued, is to provoke internal reflection and opinions. The opinions instilled by the preludes are defined as religious: in the address to the new settlers, even human hedonism is explained through the attention for the body in the sense of object created by the divine. Only four preludes seem to contradict Mouze’s view. However, she classifies the apparent exceptions as religious explaining that the notion of measure on which three of them lie hints at the first prelude, that declared god as measure for everything. The only one left is the prelude for the hunting laws, but the exhortation at obtaining divine courage still brings even this one under the wide label of “religious”. Mouze highlights the pathetic effect sought in the preludes between fear and courage, shame and temperance. The preludes to the laws aim to persuade through the affections and are based on the belief that faith in the gods will instil fear. They also intend to inculcate an opinion, making their role both intellectual and affective.
The thread that links one paper to the other remains evident: concerning fear, Myrthe Bartels uses the passage of the puppet to highlight two types of fear, φόβος and αἰδώς. The new legislative method proposed by Plato plans to reduce the role of irrational fear and promote shame and recognition instead. This requires liberating αἰδώς from negative connotations and grounding it in the rational and the divine. In this paper, at the centre of the volume, there is all that precedes it: a reflection on the emotions, on the gods, on the question of rationality of the preludes, and on the innovation by Plato.
The second part of the volume is more strictly devoted to affections, and Marc-Antoine Gavray opens the new section with a paper full of questions. Why does Plato feel the need to legislate on criminal matters? Why is it still important today? Why, how, and to what end should one implement the punishment? The answers given by Gavray are all perfectly in line with the very aim and core of Plato’s work: in the bigger picture of preventive medicine, criminal legislation is seen as therapy for ignorance, making it an extension of education.
In addition to ignorance, there is also another affection to be wary of in the city envisaged by Plato: anger. Upon further inspection, Olivier Renaut argues that the psychological tripartition of the Republic has some persistence in the Laws, at least in the form of a tripartition of criminal motivations: legislation should therefore necessarily be a consequence of a psychological assessment and understanding of complex emotions. Reading penology through the concept of tripartition of the soul makes the roots and grounds of crime, according to Renaut, more comprehensible and thus treatable. Consequently, the expulsion of comedy from the city has an obvious reason in connection with anger: it is necessary to end the vicious circle of defamation, blasphemy, and insult that starts on the stage.
The tenth book of the Laws is at the centre of Nicolas Zaks’s contribution: impiety, explicitly presented as a pathos, is directly connected with ignorance and incoherence. The three types of impiety (not believing in the gods tout court, not believing that the gods concern themselves with humans, believing that the gods are corruptible) are then doubled into six when they are divided between impiety with and without irony. The different punishments imposed on the two groups show Plato’s optimism in the role of education as cure for impiety.
Once again, the results of one contribution seem to pave the way for the following one: the importance of education is pivotal for Louise Walmsley’s paper. Σωφροσύνη is seen as a foundational virtue in the Laws, necessary to master emotions, control passions, and dominate pleasures. Even if sometimes built on rather forcible translations,[1] Walmsley’s argumentation as a whole still holds true: Plato’s pedagogical project is aimed at sharpening and developing a purer kind of virtue, making temperance a key aspect of the entire dialogue.
Charlotte Murgier’s contribution crowns the volume with a last glance at pleasure in the Laws. Is a virtuous life pleasurable just because it brings disciplined pleasures? Or does pleasure arise from virtue itself? Since there is no clear conceptual elaboration of pleasure in the Laws, Murgier traces the thread back to Philebus, Republic, and Symposium to understand the difference between stronger pleasures arising after pains and softer ones coming from conservation and increase of previous pleasures. There may be a conjectural overlap with the conception of mixed and pure pleasures, but the simpler answer is that there is an intrinsic pleasure in virtuous life, not only in harmonic discipline, but in a certain awareness of eupraxia.
At the beginning of the book, readers may find themselves confused by the lack of a strict definition of affections: how can the treatment of anger be found beside the legislation on impiety? However, the careful ordering of the contributions eases the reading, and the book seems like a guide through the complex matters discussed.
Except for a few rare flaws, the method applied by every author is strictly based on literary evidence and first-hand translation, denoting a systematic and intense dialogue with Plato’s language and reasoning.
The volume also offers a good example of synergy and cooperation in the academic environment: several footnotes refer to other works in the collection, and many authors cite one another. This book captures the essence of academic collaboration, and the reader can imagine quite well the heavy discussion that might have been sparked by every paper. These are not only proceedings but a well organised memento of a conference.
Authors and Titles
- Introduction, Louise Walmsley and Sylvain Delcomminette
- A Prelude for Humans in Plato’s Laws, Susan Sauvé Meyer
- Things Human and Things Divine: Pleasure and Shame in the Great Preamble, Julia Pfefferkorn
- Préludes, religion et affects dans les Lois de Platon, Létitia Mouze
- Fear, Law and Rationality: Plato’s Legislative Innovation of the Preamble, Myrthe L. Bartels
- Comment soigner les affections criminelles : Les principes de la législation pénale en Lois IX, Marc-Antoine Gavray
- « La colère est chose ingrate » : cantonner la colère dans les Lois (Lois IX 866d-869e et XI 934d-936b), Olivier Renaut
- Le pathos de l’impiété dans le livre X des Lois, Nicolas Zaks
- L’éducation et la maîtrise des affections dans les Lois de Platon, Louise Walmsley
- Les plaisirs de la vertu dans les Lois, Charlotte Murgier
Notes
[1] The example of 710a5-8 that in Walmsley’s interpretation should distinguish between two degrees of temperance (pp. 180-182, 188) does not in fact present a “vulgaire” and a “grandiose” σωφροσύνη: σεμνύνων refers to τις (!), and moreover the verb in Plato seems to convey at least some irony (similar to “boast, show off” cfr. Tht. 175a, Phdr. 243a, 272d, Grg. 511d, 512b); δημώδη in my opinion does not diminish the value of σωφροσύνη, as it only means “commonly called” (cfr. the only other occurrence in Plato Phd. 61a).