Elders, nightcrawlers and anonyms in Plato’s Laws or Songs

Abstract

This article challenges the view that the second-best city presented by Plato in the Laws is a secondary project subordinate to the most beautiful city in the Republic. It argues, on the contrary, that the regime of the laws and the regime of the philosopher-kings are neither opposed, nor alternative, nor successive, but coincident. This approach departs from interpretations established between Zeller’s late nineteenth-century works and Morrow’s 1960 study, which viewed Plato’s voluminous and little-read final text as a declining project – more repetitive, less perfect, more pragmatic, and more pessimistic – when compared with his most celebrated work. It also goes beyond sociologically inflected valorizations of the second project developed since the late twentieth century, which nonetheless continue to preserve a hierarchical distinction. The argument unfolds through three cases: the absence of Socrates, the institution of the Nocturnal Council, and the institution of the chorus of elders. The article concludes with several general definitions concerning the fundamental status of anonymity in Plato’s philosophy.