Plato's philosophy of law
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- This dissertation examines Plato's philosophy of law in the two great political works of Plato's middle career: the Gorgias and the Republic. Two related questions guide the study. First, what did Plato think about the nature of law? Second, what roles should law play in a just society? I show that Plato confronted the question of the nature of law in the Gorgias and Republic, that he was interested in developing a natural law account, and that a different natural law theory can be fairly attributed to each dialogue. In the Gorgias, Plato maintains Socratic Natural Law, a theory requiring that law essentially aims at instilling the orders and arrangements in a human soul that give rise to virtue. In the Republic, Plato articulates Platonic Natural Law, according to which law essentially aims at instilling civic justice among different classes of citizens. I show that, in the Republic, law plays cultivating and cognitive roles in promoting an alternative to genuine virtue, which I call secondary virtue. These roles are complimented by the city's judiciary, which is bound by the Asclepiad Principle, such that the judicial art is tailored to promoting its subjects' civic functioning. The founding laws of Kallipolis also play a structural role in the Republic, by guiding the conduct of ideal philosophical rulers and establishing domains of discretion within which those rulers may legislate in imitation of the foundational laws
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Form | electronic resource; remote; computer; online resource |
| Extent | 1 online resource |
| Place | California |
| Place | [Stanford, California] |
| Publisher | [Stanford University] |
| Copyright date | 2020; ©2020 |
| Publication date | 2020; 2020 |
| Issuance | monographic |
| Language | English |
Creators/Contributors
| Author | Espeland, Amos James Boyle |
|---|---|
| Degree supervisor | Bobonich, Christopher |
| Thesis advisor | Bobonich, Christopher |
| Thesis advisor | Code, Alan Dodd, 1951- |
| Thesis advisor | Ober, Josiah |
| Degree committee member | Code, Alan Dodd, 1951- |
| Degree committee member | Ober, Josiah |
| Associated with | Stanford University, Department of Philosophy. |
Subjects
| Genre | Theses |
|---|---|
| Genre | Text |
Bibliographic information
| Statement of responsibility | Amos James Boyle Espeland |
|---|---|
| Note | Submitted to the Department of Philosophy |
| Thesis | Thesis Ph.D. Stanford University 2020 |
| Location | electronic resource |
Access conditions
- Copyright
- © 2020 by Amos James Boyle Espeland
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).
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