Abstract

Plato’s Utopia Recast is an exceptionally rich and ambitious book. Its central text is the Laws, and it inherits from that dialogue a focus on ethical and political theory. It also, however, operates on the assumption that the Laws is interconnected, more or less systematically, with other later dialogues. The Republic contains its own metaphysical, epistemological, and psychological theories, which provide support and philosophical context to its theory of justice. The Laws, by contrast, is devoted almost exclusively to ethics and politics. It is Bobonich’s contention that other texts—especially the Phaedrus, the Philebus, the Statesman, the Theaetetus, and the Timaeus—supply philosophical underpinnings to the Laws’ ethical and political theory. Plato’s Utopia Recast thus includes not only careful and detailed discussions of various parts and aspects of the Laws, it also has a great deal to say about other later Platonic dialogues, and in particular about how they shed light on the commitments and peculiarities of the Laws. This synoptic program in itself would already make for a rather ambitious project.