BMCR 2004.10.18, Clark, The Law Most Beautiful and Best

Randall Baldwin Clark, The Law Most Beautiful and Best: Medical
Argument and Magical Rhetoric in Plato's Laws.  Lanham, MD:  Lexington
Books, 2003.  Pp. xiv, 178.  ISBN 0-7391-0686-4.  $55.00.

Reviewed by John Dillon, Trinity College (Dublin dillonj@xxxxxx)
Word count:  1535 words
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This book is a study of the Laws of Plato, with special reference to
the role of 'persuasion' -- comprising both reason-based rhetoric and
sub-rational 'brain-washing' -- manifested within it, employed as means
of political persuasion. It is a mildly eccentric work, but none the
worse for that really, emanating from the pen, not of a professional
classicist or ancient philosopher, but rather from that of a prosperous
and thoughtful corporate lawyer, with an undergraduate degree in
Political Science from Chicago.

The particular issue that C. sets himself to address is indeed one of
great interest and importance. Going back to Karl Popper's impassioned
post-war attack on Plato as a proto-fascist (in The Open Society and
its Enemies), and considering various responses to that over the years,
such as that of Glenn Morrow, in Plato's Cretan City and most recently
Christopher Bobonich in Plato's Utopia Recast, which instead wish to
argue for Plato's profound respect for rationality, C. feels that he
has found a key to resolving this apparent contradiction. What he
suggests, as indicated in the sub-title to the book, is that a solution
is to be found in looking to the traditions of Greek medicine, both
traditional folk-medicine and magic, and the 'modern', rational
Hippocratic tradition, and Plato's appropriation of both these models.

It seems to me that he has put his finger on something here. Plato does
indeed repeatedly, both in the Laws and in earlier works, compare
political science with medical therapy, and this comparison is of great
importance for him. He is also, as C. observes, very fond of imagery
drawn from magic and sorcery. What C. wishes to maintain is that this
proclivity of Plato's goes deeper than a mere fondness for magical
imagery. Socrates, to be sure, is indulging in his usual irony when he
talks of finding a 'charm' or an 'incantation' with which to persuade
some recalcitrant interlocutor, usually youthful, but, in the context
of the Laws in particular, the Visitor from Athens does seriously
contemplate employing non-rational persuasive techniques, particularly
on the young -- and indeed the very young -- in order to produce in
them a proper set of attitudes towards what is to be loved and what
hated, what to be feared and what not to be. This, in modern terms,
involves a considerable degree of 'brain-washing', and Plato would make
no apology for that. All he wants to secure is that this should be in
the hands of the 'right' people.

On the other hand, for adult citizens of Magnesia, it is the techniques
of the best sort of Hippocratic doctor that are to be practised. That
is the point of the contrast between the free doctor and the slave
doctor in Book IV (720B-E) and the prescription of preambles for the
laws of the state which follows upon that. The preambles appeal to the
reason of the well brought-up citizen, and render him amenable both to
the detailed legislation that is being imposed upon him and to the
social and political system as a whole. Magnesia becomes, therefore, if
all works well, a thoroughly rational participatory democracy, albeit
of a rather peculiar sort.

This, as I understand it, is C.'s resolution of the apparent
contradiction between Popper and, say, Bobonich, and I find it very
sound and persuasive. His work is divided into eight chapters. In the
first, 'Philosophy and the Rule of Law', he sets out his overall
position, such as I have outlined. The only slight oddity I would
discern here is the contrast he wants to make between the old and the
young in Plato's dramatic presentation. Here he is on p. 21:

"The Laws is a classic portrayal of the eternal contest between the old
and the young. In this dialogue, written by an old man for adolescent
boys, we see three old men engaged in the activity most characteristic
of old men, inflicting their crabbed and mundane will on the next
generation. That is, they are making law. As they go about their task,
they are haunted by the specter of the young, whose love of wisdom --
represented by their erotic longings and skeptical inquiries --
threatens to undermine the fathers' legislation, and that even before
the fathers die."

This is surely a bizarre approach to the dialogue. Certainly, Plato
recognises a perennial tension between young men in their prime and
their elders, but there is no way that he would wish to undermine the
right of the elders to call the shots. Admittedly, Cleinias and
Megillus are targets of some gentle derision, but they are not really
going to be the legislators of Magnesia (though it is a nice point who
exactly will be, apart from the Visitor himself). And who are these
adolescent readers of the dialogue? C. seems to assume that the
students in the Academy are generally still in their teens. Admittedly,
Aristotle joined up at the age of sixteen, but we don't know of anyone
else, I think, especially at the time that the Laws was being written,
who was not of reasonably mature years. This is a detail, perhaps, but
it is representative of a streak of eccentricity that runs through this
otherwise very stimulating work.

After his introductory chapter, C. devotes a chapter each to magic and
to Hippocratic medicine, basing himself, respectively, on such works as
Faraone and Obbink's Magika Hiera and Geoffrey Lloyd's Science,
Folklore and Ideology, and, for the latter chapter, Ludwig Edelstein's
Collected Essays, Ancient Medicine, along with Lloyd's Magic, Reason,
and Experience. This ensures that the accounts of both traditions are
thoroughly sound, but he goes into rather more detail than seems
justified by his theme. Especially in the case of magic, it is deeply
misleading, I think, to suggest that Plato would countenance literal
magical spells or practices to achieve his pedagogic ends. C. is much
closer to the truth in his final chapter (pp. 149-52), where he adduces
Gorgias and his theory of the 'magical' power of rhetoric, as
propounded in his Encomium of Helen and elsewhere. That is the sort of
'magic' in which Plato is interested.

These two chapters are followed by another pair, entitled 'Geriatrics'
and 'Pediatrics', the theme of which is that the old, hidebound as they
are by tradition, must be brought to an appreciation of philosophy,
while the putative young philosophers of the Academy must be convinced
in turn of the limitations of philosophy if not reinforced by the
proper sub-rational training that Plato prescribes. In this connection,
C. identifies the contrast between the procedure of the free doctor and
the slave doctor made by Plato at the end of Book IV (720A-E) as of
great significance for the structure and argument of the dialogue, and
he is surely right. All this is fine, then, except for this odd
postulation of a group of brash young philosophers as the audience for
this work. But then, one might well ask, who really is the intended
audience for the Laws?

In ch. 6, 'Plato's Grimoire', C. turns to a close examination of
Plato's attitudes both to magic and to folk-religion in the Laws.
Magical practices are, of course, condemned, but traditional religion
and religious rites are highly commended and ordained to be preserved,
even if quite irrational. Indeed, one might criticize Plato's whole
policy of fostering the traditional Olympic pantheon, along with local
gods and heroes, as deeply hypocritical when viewed against the
background of the 'higher truths' about the divine revealed in Book X.
All there really is is a rational word-soul, but the citizens of
Magnesia are to continue to worship all the traditional gods and
heroes. C. appositely quotes a revealing passage at 738B-C.

In his ch. 7, 'Eat Drink Man Woman', the longest in the book, C. looks
in detail at Plato's prescriptions for regulating all the most powerful
impulses and needs of the human being, eating, drinking and sex, and
shows how far Plato relies on sub-rational means, especially on the
very young, to ensure that they grow up with the right natures. Here,
once again, C. makes all the right points, but seems to take Plato's
talk of magical spells just a little too seriously. A passage such as
659D-E, which he quotes (p. 143), is a case in point. There the
'incantations' (epo^idai) are simply the moral instructions that are
dinned into the ears of children in Magnesia from their earliest years
not anything strictly magical. But C. is not completely off the beam,
after all: Plato does intend all this propaganda to have an effect
similar to incantations -- even as the founders of the Soviet Union
doubtless intended in their day!

C. rounds off his argument with a concluding chapter, with the same
title as the book as a whole -- a reference primarily to 817B-C, where
the Athenian compares his legislation favorably with that of the poets
of Greece, declaring it to be a representation of the way of life that
is most beautiful and best.

All in all, this book is a useful and stimulating contribution to the
question of what Plato is up to in the Laws, and indeed in his
political theorizing as a whole.