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Justice in the Laws, a Restatement: Why Plato Endorses Public Reason

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 October 2018

SAMUEL DIRECTOR
SAMUEL DIRECTOR*
Affiliation:
UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO BOULDERsamuel.director@colorado.edu
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Abstract

In the Laws, Plato argues that the legislator should attempt to persuade people to obey the laws voluntarily. This persuasion is accomplished through use of legislative preludes. In this essay, I argue that Plato's use of persuasive preludes shows that he endorses the core features of a public reason theory of political justification.

Keywords

PlatoRawlsPublic ReasonPlato's LawsPlato's preambles
Type
Articles
Information
Journal of the American Philosophical Association , Volume 4 , Issue 2 , Summer 2018 , pp. 184 - 203
Copyright
Copyright © American Philosophical Association 2018 

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Footnotes

I thank Brian Kogelmann, Chris Freiman, the audience members at the 2017 Institute for Humane Studies Summer Research Colloquium, and two anonymous referees from the Journal of the American Philosophical Association for all of their helpful comments on this paper. I also thank the Institute for Humane Studies for its financial support in writing this article. Additionally, I thank Mitzi Lee for her tireless support and for reading every draft of this paper. Finally, I thank Emily Erickson for her continuing support.

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