Virtue and Law in Plato and Beyond

Julia Annas's Virtue and Law in Plato and Beyond is an important and timely book on Plato's monumental final opus, the Laws. The time is ripe for an assessment of the major philosophical ideas of the Laws, and Annas has written a concise, philosophical guide that provides just that. She does not dwell on scholarly controversies, apart from indicating in footnotes where the problems lie; she does not go into detailed questions of exegesis. Her main thesis is that the Laws is not a retrenchment from the main moral and political ideas of the Republic, but a development of those ideas, about how laws and legislation are to bring about virtue in citizens. For anyone interested in virtue ethics and moral education in the ancient Greek and Roman world, this book is a must read.Annas thinks Plato assumes in the Republic as well as the Laws that the ideal city will be governed by laws and that its citizens will abide by those laws. Where the Laws differs is in its methodology and goals. The Republic addresses theoretical questions about the nature of justice, virtue, and happiness. These philosophical questions take precedence over the practical question of whether the Kallipolis is actually feasible, though Socrates does indicate that it could come into existence if there were a few people untouched by the existing corrupt regimes. But in Annas's view, it is implausible to count on the existence of someone who is both supremely virtuous and wise and uncorrupted (because he or she has been “[sheltered] from the dust storm of actual political activity” [28]) and is capable of executing an incredible feat of political wizardry, namely, bringing into existence a Kallipolis from scratch. In other words, the Republic contains an urgent problem concerning the starting point for political change.In Annas's brilliant reading of the Laws, it proposes a more plausible starting point for establishing a city of virtuous and happy citizens: begin with existing political cultures that already aim at inculcating virtue in their citizens, albeit defectively, and then modify those cultures in ways that make sense to those who are already committed to their values and goals. Plato starts with two staunchly conservative and unphilosophical representatives from Sparta and Crete who are firmly committed to the principle that the purpose of the polis should be to inculcate virtue in its citizens. He then has a more educated and philosophical interlocutor, the Athenian, persuade them that one could found a city that is faithful to their values but improves on them; he enlarges their conception of virtue to include all of virtue, not just a part of it, namely, courage and military virtue. So many features of the Laws—its almost total lack of philosophical argumentation, its focus on the task of persuading the two nonphilosophers, its lack of systematic treatment of various core definitional questions in moral and political philosophy—can be explained by this way of thinking about its objectives.In chapter 4, “Virtue in a Framework of Law,” Annas turns to the details of the Laws' approach to legislation for virtue. Annas identifies four areas in which the Laws advances beyond the Republic. First, the Athenian distinguishes conventional law, which might be “the mere result of political compromises” (79) from true or divine law, such as the law of Magnesia—the latter possesses a moral, normative authority that ordinary conventional law lacks. While modern skeptics might dismiss this as wishful thinking, Plato thinks that there is such a thing as “getting it right” with respect to the laws. (Chapter 5 returns to this theme and emphasizes the importance of religion as the foundation of law in Magnesia.)Second, the Laws expects the citizens to have an attitude of unquestioned obedience toward the laws: they are to think of themselves as slaves to the law. As Annas points out, it is highly provocative to say that free citizens would regard themselves as slaves, and slaves to something as abstract as the laws. Perhaps modern moral philosophers are used to the idea of unequivocal obedience to a moral law, but Annas is right to point out how strange and astonishing this would have sounded to a Greek reader of the fourth century BC. Of course, this absolute and unquestioned obedience is not to just any law, but to the ideal laws of Magnesia: “nothing suggests that Plato thinks that anyone in Magnesia, still less the actual world, should have an attitude of unquestioning obedience to any actual laws” (83).Third, Plato distinguishes in the Laws between blind obedience to the laws and obedience accompanied with an understanding of what the laws are aiming at. Magnesia is supposed to elicit the latter by means of two devices. There is a publicly organized system of education in Magnesia for all men, women, and children, in which the law serves as educator for citizens. According to the Laws' simplified moral psychology, a person's actions are determined by the “rigid cords” of pleasure and pain as well as the “soft, golden cord” of reason, all pulling the person like a puppet this way or that (Laws 644c4–645c6). The golden cord of reason stands for public reason in the form of law (87), and thus represents, as Annas memorably puts it, “my agency as a citizen among others, one who recognizes the common nature of reason in the law, reason which is public and available to all” (87). This is a vivid way of representing the thought that we must become habituated to the law. For Plato, we must learn to listen to the common reason as embodied in the law. Reason, then, is not conceived of as an independent faculty of calculating self-interest, say, but rather as the representation of the common good, one which must be internalized through education. Also, despite requiring slavish obedience on the part of the citizens toward the laws, the law should not issue “despotic commands” to them, but rather, famously, should be accompanied by “preambles” that will explain and justify those commands (Laws 722e–723b). As for the controversy about whether the preambles represent something like reasoned philosophical argument, or mere persuasion falling short of full reason, Annas is cautious and suggests that there is no one-size-fits-all answer: one of the preambles contains a difficult metaphysical argument concerning God as first mover of the universe, but most of the other arguments are less technical, as for example the preamble that explains to the citizens why hunting with nets or traps encourages lazy habits and hence must be banned. Other preambles work in “overtly non-rational ways” (95); the one dealing with sex and violence urges citizens to believe that perpetrators will be reincarnated as victims who will suffer what they did to their own victims.The Athenian's primary concern is to describe institutions that encourage ethical activities and behaviors, with the aim of inculcating the virtues. Annas points out how fairly mundane activities like hunting and marketplace exchange are regulated in Magnesia, with the aim of making citizens good. The purpose of hunting is not to kill the maximum amount of game; the purpose of the market is not to enable individual material success, but to promote virtue. Magnesia is filled with social institutions like these, which will be supported by informal regulation by means of praise and reward for those who follow not only the letter but also the spirit of the law, and social sanctions for those who do not. If one wants to understand how law is a tool to teach virtue, one cannot do better than to look at these passages of the Laws to see what Plato has in mind.Fourth, Plato is, according to Annas, the first philosopher to put forward the thesis that “a happy life requires the priority in it of living virtuously” (108). As for whether Plato thinks virtue is necessary or sufficient for happiness, Annas does not think that he had quite arrived at establishing a clear position on the question. She is thus skeptical about attempts to settle “whether for Plato virtue is prior in the sense that it is the only good thing, and so sufficient for happiness, or whether it is the condition for anything else's being good, and so contributing to happiness” (108), though she thinks that the general impression is more in favor of the stronger sufficiency thesis. In any case, virtue is the aim of the law code, and all other worldly benefits are given a subordinated priority in the citizens' lives, where it is clear that the city must plan to provide those benefits for the citizens, but that material prosperity by itself cannot make their lives good.Virtue and Law ends with a refreshing discussion of two neglected thinkers Annas argues were influenced by Plato's Laws. Cicero self-consciously models his De Legibus or On the Laws on Plato's Laws, with its two unintellectual interlocutors being guided by one more educated and philosophical. There are numerous references to ideas from Plato's Laws throughout, such as a short preamble introducing the laws on religion. Cicero follows Plato in grounding natural law in the reason “inherent in nature, which enjoins what ought to be done and forbids the opposite. When this same reason is secured and completed in the human mind, it is law” (On the Laws 1:17–19). This leads to a fascinating discussion of the problem that, while Cicero embraces universal laws of nature, he seems also to identify the specific and particular laws of Rome with the ideal, even though they lack universality. Annas's suggestion is that Cicero did not think of the universal laws of nature as being a set of rules requiring and forbidding particular types of action, but rather as laws that prescribe virtue: “Different societies will then establish laws requiring and forbidding actions which they think will get citizens to behave in ways that will encourage them to live piously. Different societies will do this in different ways, but, if there is, as it is assumed that there is, an objective fact about what piety is, some will do this better than others” (181–82). She does not believe that Cicero's natural law has a lawlike form; rather, “natural law has been presented as right reason in the mind of the wise person” (182, citing On the Laws 1:19). These are insightful suggestions for how Cicero might have developed the Platonic idea that laws are a kind of divine reason.Annas argues that the Hellenistic Jewish philosopher Philo of Alexandria was likewise influenced by the Laws. Philo thinks of Plato not as a past genius to emulate but as a pagan legislator who was surpassed by Moses the lawgiver, through the medium of revelation from God of the Ten Commandments and of the special laws. Like Plato, Philo makes use of preambles and follows Plato's framework of eudaemonism, virtue, and law as the instruments of moral education.Annas, however, downplays the influence of the Laws on Aristotle, citing for example his lack of interest in the device of the preambles to the laws. But surely Plato's Laws had an influence not only on Cicero and Philo but also on Aristotle. Annas says, quite rightly, that there are indeed striking parallels between the two authors, where it is difficult to ascertain who influenced whom—Plato on Aristotle, or vice versa. She is open to the possibility that parallels between the Laws and Aristotle's description of a best state in Politics VII–VIII reflect discussions at the Academy, and that it would be impossible to say who influenced whom as a result of those discussions. Annas notes this quickly and then moves on to Cicero and Philo, but I think the case can be made that the Laws, as she has interpreted it, helps to explain and give some background to Aristotle, especially when he quietly accepts, with modifications, many of Plato's most important ideas in it. For example, in some places Aristotle holds an extremely positive view of law, according to which law is reason, or that it is divine (e.g., Pol. III:16.1287a29–32, III:15.1286a7–35); this almost certainly reflects the positive view of law as reason and as divine, as found in the Laws (e.g., at I.624a and X.897b). Similarly, Plato's idea that the law will serve as educator for citizens is everywhere in Aristotle, most memorably at the end of the Nicomachean Ethics X.9. Here, and elsewhere, Annas's book reveals themes in Plato that are helpful for the reader of Aristotle, often offering a fuller explanation of certain theses that Aristotle accepts without argument. I would thereby like to offer a friendly amendment to Annas's thesis: Aristotle is the first and most important student of the Laws, and the Laws had a lasting influence on Aristotle's moral and political thinking.Annas's superb book should attract new readers to Plato's Laws, open up new avenues of research on the dialogue, and prompt new thinking about how thinkers after Plato were influenced by the Laws. Readers who are otherwise persuaded by the way she reads the Laws might wonder why she essentially skips over Aristotle, given the numerous striking parallels that exist between the ideas in the Laws and in Aristotle's ethical and political works. But this is nevertheless one of many areas where the rich and bold insights she offers concerning Plato will help readers to think more deeply about his place in ancient Greek ethical and political thought

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