Robert A. Ballingall

Why was the polis so very good to think with? What if anything distinguishes the political thought that it inspired? The usual answer points to its utopianism. Greek political thought seems especially preoccupied with the lofty ends implied by ordinary politics, especially as these culminate in the virtues. Yet this characterization, although true perhaps in the abstract, misses more basic—and in some ways more illuminating—features of Greek political thinking. I focus in particular on the emergence of the nomos/phusis distinction and how the visibility in the polis of political conventions as conventions inspired uniquely critical forms of public discourse, ranging from sophistic debunking to Socratic inquiry. I suggest that the preoccupation with politeia or “political regime” is best understood in this light. In both theory and practice, the Greeks were exceptionally aware of the profound stakes bound up in the question of who rules and in accordance with what spirit. I conclude by likewise considering the remarkable plasticity with which Greek thinkers handled questions of piety and the nature of the gods.

Plato wrote dramas, not treatises, and he did not limit his works to rationalistic discourse. Many of them articulate a strange and enduring mythology whose ultimate purpose is famously enigmatic. This chapter examines the controversial readings of two twentieth-century thinkers who place these literary elements at the centre of their interpretations. Simone Weil and Leo Strauss are seldom discussed in the same context, but their approaches to Plato bear surprising resemblances. These figures shared a hope that the philosophic life according to Plato might be revived, and both see in the mythical and dialogic aspects of Plato’s works the key to his understanding of philosophy. Paradoxically, however, it is a testament to that understanding that it inspires radically divergent readings, even or precisely when its relationship to Plato’s dramaturgy is appreciated.

This chapter shows why the Laws’ exhortations to become like god should not be understood as repudiations of reverence. The Athenian Stranger urges political men to assimilate themselves to the divine as far as possible, but he also insists that they revere “the god” whom they would strive to resemble. In fact, he suggests that it is precisely in their reverence, in their “moderation,” that lawgivers and citizens might transcend their humanity as far as they are able. Godlikeness therefore presents a curious paradox in the Laws. One becomes like the god by remembering that one is no god at all. Law cannot safely originate with human beings; yet human beings must involve themselves nonetheless in laying law down. Trustworthy lawgivers must revere the gods while at the same time emulating them, must somehow make law themselves while regarding that very task as beyond their ken. The chapter goes on to show how this paradox recurs in various contexts as the dialogue unfolds and concludes by distinguishing between three questions that it raises.

Focusing on the fifth book of the Laws, this chapter inquires into how humanity might imitate something from which it must simultaneously withdraw, as the Athenian apparently urges. The chapter shows how the Athenian makes good the suggestion of Socrates in the Republic that it is “the nature of acting to attain to less truth than speaking,” but not merely in the sense of being always an approximation to what is said or thought. Sometimes what is done resembles what is said or thought only by being done differently. The argument here is that by representing the simply-best regime as an object of reverence, something divine that inspires awe, the Athenian keeps his mortal addressees from overreaching themselves, even as he relates to them a dangerously impossible object of admiration. Reverence for the divine permits political men to grasp what would otherwise be known to very few, and to put into practice what must otherwise remain in speech. Politics at its best depends on observing how practice must divert from speech, but without losing sight of what speech itself marks out as best. And it is the pathos of distance felt by the reverent man that allows him to adjust his practice accordingly.

This chapter asks why the Laws’ Athenian appears the invite the very thing that he teaches citizens to avoid. The city is threatened by rule that does not submit to divine law and by citizenship that insists on independent judgment, or so he claims. Yet he speaks of politics in ways that seem to flirt with these very perils. Why? I suggest that the answer lies in the Laws’ rehabilitation of tragedy. The Athenian famously describes Magnesia “the truest tragedy.” On his account, tragedy is the imitation of the best way of life, where that imitation exaggerates its own seriousness yet at the same time fills the soul with reverent awe. It is therefore of some interest that this definition should precisely correspond to the Athenian’s formula for the practically best regime. At its practical best, politics overstates the degree to which imitation of god can be accomplished by human beings, even as it paradoxically calls attention to how such imitation must fall short. The Athenian might emphasize the orderliness and providence of nature and speak of human vulnerability more obliquely than the traditional poets. But he does not foresee a politics that would dispense with the humble affects that tragedy summons up. Magnesia remains “tragic” in that its exaggerated seriousness militates against pride. The pretensions of its laws are intended to make citizens and office holders feel small and to look outside themselves for moral guidance. Magnesians would refrain from believing themselves capable of moral independence, lest they betray an impious insolence. It is such insolence that takes the place, in the Magnesian tragedy, of the oblivion of human vulnerability and divine mysteriousness traditionally dramatized by the tragic poets.

The Athenian Stranger of the Laws claims that the god to whom the city ought to look is the cause and measure of all things, yet he also maintains that the citizen who becomes like god is merely “moderate,” precisely because he refuses to measure all things by reference to himself. He looks, rather, to the divine law for the guidance that he knows he needs. It would seem that the political man whom the Athenian exhorts to godlikeness achieves his goal precisely by refusing to become a god. How can we make sense of this paradox? What does political moderation have to do with divine intelligence? This chapter argues that whatever unity exists between divine and human virtue is found in mitigating the tension between them. All virtue has in common the propensity to follow intelligence. But different virtues lead us to follow intelligence in different ways. Human virtue requires obedience to lawful authority; divine virtue qua philosophy calls into question all authority and law. If the criterion of divine law is that it strives towards the whole of virtue, then it would seem to require some device for simultaneously enhancing and undermining its own authority. It is to reverence that the Athenian looks for a solution in this regard, or so this chapter maintains. For reverence makes possible a deep respect for what is recognizably imperfect.

This chapter introduces the idea that “reverence” is a virtue, an aspect of human excellence without which human life cannot be well led. It offers a preliminary account of what reverence involves and of how the ancient Greeks understood its nature and importance. It argues that the relative invisibility of reverence to modern readers attests to profound transformations in the theory and practice of politics having to do with novel conceptions of authority. The chapter then lays the groundwork for a consideration of Plato’s Laws as an especially important account of reverence and its political significance, not only for the ancient Greeks, but for our own politics too.

Offers an original interpretation of Plato’s Laws and a new account of its enduring importance. Ballingall argues that the republican regime conceived in the Laws is built on "reverence," an archaic virtue governing emotions of self-assessment—particularly awe and shame. Ballingall demonstrates how learning to feel these emotions in the right way, at the right time, and for the right things is the necessary basis for the rule of law conceived in the dialogue. The Laws remains surprisingly neglected in the scholarly literature, although this is changing. The cynical populisms haunting liberal democracies are focusing new attention on the “characterological” basis of constitutional government and Plato’s Laws remains an indispensable resource on this question, especially when we attend to the theme of reverence at its core.

Political theorists remain divided on the question of Plato's utopianism. Some associate his dialogues with an uncompromising vision of the human good, one that Plato is thought to build into blueprints that he would have humanity implement as far as possible. Others read Plato as a brilliant critic of utopian thinking and insist that his blueprints are not to be understood as normative paradigms at all, but rather as self-destructive parodies. This article develops a third approach to Plato's utopianism by turning to the treatment of 'imitation' (mimesis) in the Laws. I argue that the Laws requires a distinction between three ways in which an imitation might resemble its 'model' (paradeigma). Attending to this distinction adds credence to the view that, for Plato, the good in speech must be 'revised' in order to find satisfactory expression in human deeds.

Scholars interested in the characterology presupposed by constitutional government have occasionally turned to Plato’s Laws, one of the earliest and most penetrating treatments of the subject. Even so, interpreters have neglected a vital tension that the Laws presents as coeval with lawfulness itself. Through a close reading of the dialogue’s opening passages, I argue that the rule of law for Plato is implicated in a certain paradox: it both prohibits and requires the imitation of god. Law cannot safely originate with human beings; yet human beings must involve themselves nonetheless in laying law down. Trustworthy lawgivers must revere the gods while at the same time emulating them, must somehow make law themselves while regarding that very task as beyond their ken. Although the political psychology of lawfulness would therefore seem incoherent, I conclude by surveying reasons for thinking this inference unwarranted.

Alexis de Tocqueville is often seen as a champion of personal liberty and human greatness in the face of the conformism and mediocrity of the democratic social state. In this light, his vision of “soft despotism” anticipates familiar reservations about state managerialism and political apathy. Yet this picture risks eclipsing one of Tocqueville’s most pregnant ambiguities. Though deeply concerned by threats to liberty posed by modern mass society, Tocqueville is alive to the special need such societies have of authority, particularly moral authority, and hence of restraints to liberty itself. The freedom to decide how best to lead one’s life must become self-destructive, he contends, without a corresponding inclination to look outside oneself for prudent leadership and counsel. This paper elucidates the reasoning behind this paradoxical position. I argue that beneath the need of authority Tocqueville detects an enduring human problem, though one that takes a unique and even insuperable form under modern egalitarianism. I suggest that dwelling on this problem promises to enrich debates about the cynical nativism now menacing liberal democracies. Its origins are to be found less in economic upheaval and communication technology run amok than in the decay of civil religion and civic virtue, a trend that runs very much with the grain of democratic society and whose progress may be irrevocable.