Philosophy

• Published in: Greece and Rome Vol. 65; no. 2; pp. 269 - 277
• Main Author: Bryan, Jenny
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: 01.10.2018
• DOI: 10.1017/S0017383518000220
• ISSN: 0017-3835

Three recent volumes indicate a growing appreciation of the significance and complexity of Plato's account of mousikē in the Laws . Anastasia-Erasmia Peponi's edited work, Performance and Culture in Plato's Laws , collects fifteen diverse chapters by prominent scholars in Greek literature, philosophy, and culture to produce an immensely rewarding and original range of perspectives on Plato's treatment of performance and poetics in the Laws . As Peponi notes in her brief introduction, the complexity of the cultural background that Plato manipulates and appropriates in the Laws , as well as the intricacy of the Platonic appropriation itself, combine to present a very real challenge to any scholar seeking to understand them. In addition, it is hard to see that any robust treatment of the Laws ’ political theory can avoid getting to grips with the fundamental connections between politics and performance established within the dialogue. Any reader with an interest in either Plato's political philosophy or his poetics will be well rewarded by time spent with this volume. The chapters are divided into four sections, which focus in turn on issues of cultural identity (‘Geopolitics of Performance’), the role of the choruses in Magnesia (‘Conceptualising Chorality’), the Laws ’ treatment of genre (‘Redefining Genre’), and the later reception of the Laws ’ poetics (‘Poetry and Music in the Afterlife of the Laws ’). In the second of the volume's two chapters on cultural identity, Ian Rutherford considers the Laws ’ representation of Egypt as a culture that successfully resists political and moral decline via a commitment to stability in mousikē . Setting Plato's account against the external evidence, Rutherford suggests that the Laws offers a partial fiction of stable Egyptian mousikē , useful not least for the implications of its possible critical connection to Dorian culture. In the last of five chapters on the Laws ’ interest in the civic apparatus of choral performance, Peponi demonstrates the singularity of choral performance in the work. Whereas the Laws treats most types of performance as producing pleasure in the spectator, in the case of choruses, the emphasis is on the pleasure and experience of the performers. Peponi argues that this shift in focus represents a Platonic attempt to ‘de-aestheticize’ the chorus. In this way, Plato seeks to rehabilitate mousikē by divesting it of the psychological and aesthetic flaws identified in the Republic ’s extended critique. However, as Peponi notes in conclusion, the Laws is not altogether comfortable with this sort of performative pleasure. In the first of five chapters on genre, Andrea Nightingale discusses the Laws ’ manipulation of generic diversity in service of the unified truth represented by the law code at its heart. Nightingale presents a fascinating and original analysis of the law code as a written text rather different in character from that criticized in the Phaedrus as a pharmakon that destroys our memory of truth. Rather, it serves to encourage the internalization of truths by obliterating the citizens’ memories of previous unwanted cultural norms. In the volume's final chapter, Andrew Barker turns to Aristoxenus for help in making sense of Plato's suggestion that music can be assessed as ‘correct’ or ‘incorrect’, or as ‘good’ or ‘bad’. Contrasting the Platonic focus on mimesis and ethical correctness with Aristoxenus’ assessment of music ‘by the standard of its own intrinsic values’ (413), Barker suggests that, of the two treatments, Plato's is the furthest removed from general Greek opinion. These varied and illuminating chapters are representative of the scope and quality of the volume, which not only serves to open up new directions for research on the Laws but also makes plain that the Laws is at least as important as the Republic for a thorough understanding of Plato's views on art and culture, and their relation to politics.