Spartan Drama of Plato’s Laws

Friedland presents the Laws, Plato's longest dialogue, as a drama that must be interpreted with close and sustained attention to each of its three characters. He argues that Megillos, seen by most commentators as the most obtuse character in the dialogue, is in fact a man of few words but of surprising capacity for reflection. This capacity, and the crisis to which it brings him, is key to understanding the Laws' exploration of human nature, permanently drawn both to. The political project outlined in the dialogue, with its almost programmatic focus on the mundane, is a genuinely philosophical opportunity to consider the relationship between competing demands for human beings - between divine and animal nature, and also including the always tense but necessary antagonisms and affinities between politics and human sexuality.

Eli Friedland's original and thought-provoking work, The Spartan Drama of Plato's Laws, helps express the extraordinary subtlety and cogency that run through Plato's longest dialogue.-- "The Review of Politics", "This brilliant and ground-breaking book is the first to show why understanding the differences between the characters of Kleinias and Megillus is crucial for understanding the most important teachings of Plato's Laws concerning wealth, war, righteous indignation, punishment, and responsibility. Bristling with insights on every page, it sets a new standard for what a dramatic reading of a Platonic dialogue can achieve. Every scholar of Plato's Laws should have this book in their collection."--Christina Tarnopolsky, Yale-NUS College, "We are always in need of reminders about what is at stake in reading Plato's dialogues. By means of a fresh and bracing interpretation of the Laws, Friedland calls us to account as readers, as friends to others and ourselves, and for the twinned responsibilities of citizenship and philosophy. The Spartan Drama of Plato's Laws is a truly philosophical engagement with this indispensable text."--Matthew Linck, St. John's College, Annapolis, "With acute care, incisive originality, and must-read endnotes, Eli Friedland shines brilliant light on the complex dialogic engagement across the characters of Plato's Laws. Bringing to appearance crucial differences between the Cretan Kleinias and the Spartan Megillos (the Laws' unsung hero, Friedland argues) on war, wealth, law, and, especially, erotic desire, The Spartan Drama of Plato's Laws elaborates the profound ethical, political, and philosophical stakes of these differences for living a responsible, which is to say, a human life."--Jill Frank, Cornell University, "The Spartan Drama of Plato's Laws is a much needed philosophical provocation. At once dramaturgical, philological, and historical, Friedland's careful and incisive reading of Plato's Laws uncovers a play of characters whose participation in, and refusal of, their own philosophical self-shaping is meant to reorient politics - theirs and ours - to the ethical and psychological requirements of genuine political virtue. Illuminating, critical, and deeply engaging, The Spartan Drama is an important contribution to Plato scholarship."--Nina Valiquette Moreau, University of Chicago

Eli Friedland is independent scholar.