Philosophy
Authors: Bryan Jenny 
Published: September 2018

Three recent volumes indicate a growing appreciation of the significance and complexity of Plato's account ofmousikēin theLaws. 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 theLaws. As Peponi notes in her brief introduction, the complexity of the cultural background that Plato manipulates and appropriates in theLaws, 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 theLaws’ 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’), theLaws’ treatment of genre (‘Redefining Genre’), and the later reception of theLaws’ poetics (‘Poetry and Music in the Afterlife of theLaws’). In the second of the volume's two chapters on cultural identity, Ian Rutherford considers theLaws’ representation of Egypt as a culture that successfully resists political and moral decline via a commitment to stability inmousikē. Setting Plato's account against the external evidence, Rutherford suggests that theLawsoffers a partial fiction of stable Egyptianmousikē, useful not least for the implications of its possible critical connection to Dorian culture. In the last of five chapters on theLaws’ interest in the civic apparatus of choral performance, Peponi demonstrates the singularity of choral performance in the work. Whereas theLawstreats 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 rehabilitatemousikēby divesting it of the psychological and aesthetic flaws identified in theRepublic’s extended critique. However, as Peponi notes in conclusion, theLawsis not altogether comfortable with this sort of performative pleasure. In the first of five chapters on genre, Andrea Nightingale discusses theLaws’ 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 thePhaedrusas apharmakonthat 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 onmimesisand 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 theLawsbut also makes plain that theLawsis at least as important as theRepublicfor a thorough understanding of Plato's views on art and culture, and their relation to politics.