Plato’s Reverent City

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 final chapter offers a summary of the book’s inquiries as well as an account of their implications, both for how we approach Plato’s political philosophy and for how we think about our own irreverent politics.