Platonic Legislations: An Essay on Legal Critique in Ancient Greece

This book discusses how Plato, one the fiercest legal critics in ancient Greece, became – in the longue durée – its most influential legislator. Making use of a vast scholarly literature, and offering original readings of a number of dialogues, it argues that the need for legal critique and the desire for legal permanence set the long arc of Plato’s corpus—from the Apology to the Laws.

Modern philosophers and legal historians have tended to overlook the fact that Plato was the most prolific...