Plato’s Laws – Book VII: Teaching and Legislating for Harmony

Plato's Pod: Dialogues on the works of Plato

In our series on Plato’s longest and last dialogue, The Laws, on June 9, 2024 members of the Toronto, Calgary, and Chicago Philosophy Meetup groups turned to Book VII. There, the three characters – the Athenian, Clinias from Crete, and Megillus from Sparta – discuss the raising of children in Crete’s new colony, Magnesia. They begin by exploring the harmony of the colony’s laws with the customs and habits of its citizens, then they discuss the instruction of children. The Athenian ends by explaining that appreciating the relationships of numbers and shapes can deliver understanding of our individual limitations and collective potential in the universe. Some intriguing ideas emerge with respect to motion: that a harmony of the immaterial soul and material body in the motions of dance and song dispel the disharmony of fear, that the gods love us as a child loves playing with its toys, that idleness leads to corruption, and that there is fundamental incommensurability in the motions of the universe centred on Reason, whose role is to moderate the frequent conflicts between needs and pleasures.