BMCR 2009.02.04, Robert Mayhew, Plato: Laws 10

Robert Mayhew (trans.), Plato: Laws 10. Clarendon Plato Series.
Oxford:  Clarendon Press, 2008.  Pp. vi, 238.  ISBN 9780199225965.
$70.00.

Reviewed by Lewis Trelawny-Cassity, Binghamton University
([email protected])
Word count:  2365 words
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Despite the Laws' purported "frigidity,"[[1]] length, and lack of
polish, new translations and works of scholarship on it continue to
appear.[[2]] To this revival of scholarship, Robert Mayhew adds a
helpful work, Plato: Laws 10, which consists of a short introduction, a
new translation, and a commentary on Book 10 of the Laws.

The introduction does a fine job of situating Book 10 within the Laws
as a whole, covering a lot of important material that a reader
neglecting the earlier books of the Laws should be acquainted with
before approaching the theology of Book 10.[[3]] The translation
accompanying the commentary is clear, accurate, and readable, and it is
handy to have the text and commentary in one volume. Mayhew's
commentary is "philosophical" in intention: that is, it points out
philological or historical details only when necessary and is focused
primarily on clarifying and analyzing the arguments of Laws 10. The
chief strength of this work is the accuracy and lucidity with which
Mayhew explicates and summarizes Plato's arguments, for Mayhew has the
ability to articulate the sometimes obtuse arguments of Laws 10 without
oversimplifying them or leaving out important steps. The chief flaw of
this work is the fairly narrow range of scholarship that Mayhew chooses
to cite.[[4]] While an analytical commentary is not the best place to
rehash academic debates extensively, a more direct engagement with
differing perspectives would be helpful for substantiating Mayhew's own
views on Plato. As Vittorio Hoesle notes, most disagreements about
Plato are based not on a dispute of this or that particular passage,
but rather "on contrasts regarding more general hermeneutic
principles."[[5]] Since there are a variety of hermeneutic principles
that one may use to sort out some of the troubling sections of the
Laws, commentators would do well to sketch, however briefly, their
opponents' views before presenting their own.[[6]] Despite this
drawback, beginning and seasoned Platonists alike will benefit from
Mayhew's commentary.

In the introduction, Mayhew forthrightly declares his guiding
interpretive principle: "I take the Athenian to be pretty much a
'mouthpiece' for Plato" (p. 1). While some might balk at such an
interpretive claim, I have no bone to pick with Mayhew about it,
especially concerning the Laws.[[7]] The introduction also brings up
Mayhew's understanding of Plato's view of religion, which is the main
topic of Book 10. On the one hand, Mayhew sees the theology of Book 10
as "the filter through which must pass traditional Greek religion" and
that it puts "demands or limitations on Magnesian civic religion" (pp.
5-6). Here, Mayhew rightly highlights the fact that the Laws, like the
Republic, is a part of Plato's purge of traditional Greek religion. On
the other hand, Mayhew notes in the commentary that in the Laws, "Plato
is being simultaneously radical and reactionary" (p. 58). While it is
true that Plato is radical in his critique of traditional religion,
Mayhew needs to go to greater lengths than he does to show that Plato
is a "reactionary" rather than a moderate reformist. The answer to this
question hinges on whether the regime of the Laws is an actual set of
laws to be imposed or a dialectical engagement with the historical
circumstances of Plato's time (see 9.857e3-6). If the Laws is an actual
set of laws to be imposed, then scholars like Mayhew and Karl Popper
might be right in warning us against Plato's attack on the open
society. But if other recent interpreters of Plato, sometimes dubbed
"chastened utopians,"[[8]] are right, then the Laws could be best
viewed as a work intended to reform and guide Greek politics rather
than radically reconstitute it on transhistorically valid principles.
On this view, one might interpret the deep interconnection between
politics and religion in Magnesia as more of a concession to the views
of everyday fourth-century Greeks, whom Plato is seeking to engage and
enlighten, rather than an example of Plato's willingness to adopt the
practices of the Inquisition, so long as it is run by the right people.
[[9]]

In situating his own view in the introduction, Mayhew starts from the
1870 commentary on Laws 10 by the American preacher Tayler Lewis, a
somewhat odd point of departure. Lewis, who "reads Plato by the light
of Christian Revelation," thought that Plato's theology would prove an
antidote to the materialism of his day and perhaps even aid in
instilling "a conviction of sin" and "belief in a personal
Redeemer."[[10]] Juxtaposing his own reasons for presenting the
theology of Plato with Lewis', Mayhew raises worries about the rise of
Christian fundamentalism in America and radical Islam in Europe, and
writes that "a careful reading of Laws 10 might serve to make clearer
and underscore the drastic consequences of taking seriously the idea
that politics and religion should be intimately connected" (p. 10).
Here Mayhew, in implicit agreement with Lewis, seems to think that if
Plato were alive today, he would probably be a partisan of the
religious right. This seems to be misleading in some respects, for
Plato's analysis of the human propensity to religiosity along with the
disastrous effects of such religiosity if it is not moderated by
reason, political control, and naturalistic theology has as much or
more in common with a liberal reformer like Spinoza as it does with the
views of Taylor Lewis or contemporary fundamentalists. Furthermore, as
John Cleary notes, it is not entirely clear "that the Greeks had a
notion of the individual as being free from interference from the
state, whose function it was to protect that freedom,"[[11]] so one
needs to be careful when attempting to perform the important task of
bringing Platonic political philosophy to bear on current issues.

Mayhew's translation does a good job of achieving his goal of producing
"a translation as close to the Greek as possible without straying (too
far) from acceptable English" (p. v). As Mayhew himself notes, his
translation is "closest in spirit to Thomas Pangle's" (p. v). Because
Mayhew's principles of translation are so similar to those of Pangle,
there isn't much room for Mayhew to make clear-cut improvements. Here
is a comparison of a passage selected at random (886a2ff).

Mayhew: "First, there's the earth and the sun and the stars and the
whole universe, and the beautiful, orderly procession of the seasons,
divided into years and months; and then there's the fact that all
Greeks and barbarians believe the gods exist."

Pangle: "First, there's the earth, the sun, the stars, and all things,
and this beautiful orderliness of the seasons, divided into years and
months. Then there's the fact that all Greeks and barbarians believe
the gods exist."

Aside from one or two minor differences, the translations are hard to
distinguish. Both works are readable in their own right and serve as
good trots for those of us who need such help. Mayhew, however,
occasionally deviates from literalness in translation, which sometimes
has confusing results. For example at 886b7-9, Mayhew translates
megiste^ phrone^sis as "greatest wisdom." Usually Mayhew translates
phrone^sis with the fairly standard "prudence." The translation of
"greatest wisdom" covers up the difference between prudence and wisdom,
but context as well as principle seems to call for maintaining the
distinction here. At 893c2, Mayhew would probably do better to
translate chora as "space" rather than "place," thus maintaining the
distinction between the Platonic chora and the Aristotelian topos, the
term which commonly lays claim to the translation "place" and is less
abstract and more local than "space."[[12]] At 897b1, Plato uses the
word proslambanein to refer to the soul joining with nous and at 897d5
he uses it to describe Kleinias and Megillos joining with the Athenian.
Mayhew's translations of "joins with" and "taking on" are fine in terms
of readability, but using different words for the same Greek term
obscures the parallelism that Plato introduces here between the actions
of soul and the actions of the interlocutors. There are a few other
picky points one might make, but overall Mayhew does a fine job of
translating the Greek.

The main value of this work is the commentary. Mayhew breaks down the
text into manageable sections and then dissects these smaller sections
into their constituent subsections. The commentary does a good job of
referring to the Greek when necessary and referring the reader to
relevant sections of the Laws, other Platonic dialogues, and some of
the secondary literature. I will focus on one section of the commentary
that could be improved by paying more attention to the drama of the
dialogue (887c6-888a8) and one section of the commentary that displays
Mayhew's considerable analytical abilities, the section of the dialogue
which contains the proof of the priority of soul to body.

One subject that is taken up in the Laws is whether the lawgiver should
engage heretics in rational discussion or simply lay down laws for
their punishment. There are at least two interconnected puzzles in
Plato's analysis of this question. First, why does the Athenian
repeatedly mention thumos (anger) in this discussion? Second, why does
Plato equivocate on whether the heretics have good arguments for their
position? In analyzing these problems, Mayhew quickly dismisses "those
interested in esoteric readings of Plato" and argues for the view that
Plato believes the interlocutors "have every right to be angry" at the
heretics and that the arguments offered by the heretics are not
"sufficient arguments" (pp. 71-73). The esoteric view which Mayhew
takes up only to dismiss without citation or inclusion on his
bibliography appears to be that of Thomas Pangle's essay "The Political
Psychology of Religion in Plato's Laws." It seems to me to be generally
objectionable to refer to a work without citing it, but especially so
here, as Pangle seems to make better sense of the prevalence of thumos
in this passage. Whereas Mayhew explains the presence of thumos in this
passage by mentioning that there might have been students in the
Academy "inclined to approach such impious youths in anger" (p. 71),
Pangle's discussion notes how anger is necessary for punishment (see
5.731b-d) but needs to be restrained in order to engage in true
dialogue (dialegomenoi, 10.888a6). Heretics need either rational
conversation or vindictive punishment, depending on the nature of their
affliction, but one needs to know how to deal with one's anger in order
to both assess the heretics' illness and deal with it. Whereas Pangle's
dramatic reading of the texts shows how Plato explores the tension
between open Socratic dialogue and the political necessity of punishing
those who threaten the state's existence, Mayhew's reading covers over
this problematic tension, which is surely central to the Laws. It is
unfortunate that Mayhew doesn't attack Pangle's "esoteric" position in
detail; while Pangle's dramatic reading of the text does much to
supplement Mayhew's more analytic approach, I think that Mayhew is more
than capable of pointing out some places where Pangle's interpretation
gets off track. Criticizing Pangle's interpretation of the Laws would
certainly make a much better point of departure for elaborating
Mayhew's own general interpretive position than the nineteenth century
commentary of Tayler Lewis.

One especially strong point of Mayhew's commentary is the discussion of
Plato's arguments for the priority of soul to body. Over the course of
this argument the Athenian Stranger makes the questionable claim that
if soul is prior to body "then wouldn't what is related to soul
necessarily come into being before what belongs to body, since soul
itself is older than body" (892a7-b1). Mayhew points out that this "may
be an invalid, and anthropomorphic, inference" known as the fallacy of
division (pp. 130-131); that is, even if one granted that a self-moving
motion, which we can call "soul," were needed to get everything going,
there is no clear reason why all of the parts of soul, such as memory
or opinion, must necessarily exist prior to all bodies. Mayhew
charitably gives Plato a chance to respond by saying that perhaps only
some aspects of the soul are prior to body (p. 131), but he is right to
note the profound ambiguity that surrounds the discussion of the
priority of soul in Book 10. "Is it the Form of Soul or the essence of
soul or an abstraction from all the individual souls, or what?," Mayhew
rightly asks, noting, "Plato is unclear about all this in the Laws" (p.
126). I would go even further than Mayhew does in this criticism, for
Plato seems to deliberately exploit the ambiguity of the meaning of
soul (either the first self-moving motion, or something like a human
soul, which perceives, wishes, and deliberates), and he never clearly
indicates how these two senses of soul are linked. When Plato wants to
show that the soul is older or prior to any physical body, he drops the
human characteristics of soul, and when he wants to show that the gods
care for us, he treats the first self-moving motion as though it were a
human soul possessing human characteristics. In addition to providing
an illuminating discussion of Plato's problem with the fallacy of
division, Mayhew's discussion of 893b5-894e3, a passage troubling to
anyone who even glances in its direction, is something that any scholar
of the Laws will want at her elbows when working through this text.
Mayhew's application of the Timaeus to explicate parts of this dark
section of the text is sober and compelling.[[13]]

Mayhew's commentary is a work that will prove helpful to scholars
seeking a clearer understanding of the arguments of Book 10 of Plato's
Laws, even if they disagree with him about why it is necessary to study
Plato's final work. With a view towards the rise of religious
fundamentalism in the 21st century, Malcolm Schofield, in contrast to
Mayhew, has recently suggested that "Plato's concern that the religion
shaping the life of a society should be rational religion may be
something that social and political theorists need to take seriously
again."[[14]] Yet whether one is for rational religion or against it,
Laws 10 remains essential reading, for it is there that Plato shows
that true clarity about religion can only be achieved when both
atheists and the pious can speak freely and listen openly to one
another, something which neither party often wants to do.


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Notes:


1.   Mayhew notes that Lucian makes a joke about the Laws' "frigidity"
in the Icaromenippus (p. v).

2.   The entirety of the Laws has been translated into English by
Saunders (Penguin, 1970) and Pangle (Chicago, 1980). There are more
recent translations into French by Brisson and Pradeau (2006) (BMCR
2007.06.09) (http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/bmcr/2007/2007-06-09.html)  and
into German (books I-VII) by Schoepsdau (1994, 2003) (BMCR 2005.07.49)
(http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/bmcr/2005/2005-07-49.html) .

3.   It might seem hermeneutically suspect to study the theology of
Magnesia in separation from the specific political institutions which
that theology is intended to support or legitimate, to say nothing of
the dangers of separating the dialogical process which leads up to such
a theology from the theology itself.  The Laws, however, allows for
such an approach, as the proof of the existence of the gods according
to law is declared by Kleinias to be "just about our finest and best
prelude on behalf of all the laws" (887b8-c2).

4.   The biggest bibliographic omission is Platon: Nomoi X by Peter
Steiner (Akademie Verlag, 1992). This work, which contains a German
translation and facing Greek text along with an 86 page commentary, is
an important supplement to Mayhew's work, especially in regards to how
some European scholars (such as K. Gaiser) take up the Laws. Thomas
Pangle's essay "The Political Psychology of Religion in Plato's Laws"
(The American Political Science Review. Vol. 70, 1976: 1059-1077),
which is devoted to the interpretation of Laws 10, would also be a
helpful bibliographic addition, as would Gerard Naddaf's "Plato: The
Creator of Natural Theology" (International Studies in Philosophy 36
(2004), 103-127), which does a nice job of placing Laws 10 in its
proper historical context. Seth Benardete's Plato's "Laws" (Chicago,
2000) perhaps deserves inclusion as well.

5.   See "Platonism and its Interpretations--The Three Paradigms and
their Place in the History of Hermeneutics"(2003),
http://www.hottopos.com/videtur14/vittorio.htm
(http://www.hottopos.com/videtur14/vittorio.htm) .

6.   For instance in Reading Plato (Routledge 1999), Thomas Szlezak
argues, following Gaiser, that one must be acquainted with the
"unwritten theory of principles" in order to understand Laws 10
894a1-8, p. 62.

7.   Christopher Gill's view is probably more accurate: "The Athenian
Stranger is to be understood not so much as Plato's voice as the voice
of this distinctive project," that is, "the challenge of trying to
carry out a philosophical project in terms that non-philosophers from
non-philosophical cultures could understand and agree with," "The
Laws--Is it a real dialogue?" in Plato's Laws : From Theory to Practice
(Academia Verlag, 2003), p. 44.

8.   In "Platonic Quandaries: Recent Scholarship on Plato" (Annual
Review of Political Science, 2006: 127-141) Danielle Allen identifies a
group of scholars, "Chastened Utopians," who like Karl Popper, see
Plato as having attempted to "intervene in the politics of his day. In
contrast to Popper, however, Ober (1998), Monoson (2000), and Euben
(2003) do not see Plato as an antidemocratic imposer of tyranny . . .
[instead] their arguments cluster around a case for qualified
idealism," p. 129.

9.   As Leo Strauss has noted, the legal system of Magnesia would
probably be more tolerant to persons of questionable religiosity, such
as Socrates, than classical Athens was, The Argument and Action of
Plato's Laws (Chicago, 1975), p. 2. For a description of how classical
philosophers worked to clarify the beliefs of their societies see
Nicomachean Ethics 1145b2-7.

10.   Plato Against the Atheists (Harper and Brothers, 1870) pp. ix,
xiv.

11.   John Cleary, "Popper on Freedom and Equality in Plato" Polis,
Vol. 22. No.1, 2005, p.110.

12.   Steiner gets this right in his translation, whereas Pangle also
translates chora as "place," Platon Nomoi X, pp. 41, 144.

13.   Seth Benardete has an interesting discussion of this passage that
focuses more on how the various motions can be interpreted in terms of
soul and mind rather than kinesthetics, Plato's "Laws," p. 300.

14.   Plato: Political Philosophy (Oxford, 2006), p. 326.