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discussed in biography
- In Plato: Late dialogues of Plato
  (The Laws, left unfinished at Plato’s death, seems to represent a practical approach to the planning of a city.) If one combines the hints (in the Republic) associating the Good with the One, or Unity; the treatment (in the Parmenides) of the One as the first…
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- In Plato: Late dialogues of Plato
  The very lengthy Laws is thought to be Plato’s last composition, since there is generally accepted evidence that it was unrevised at his death. It develops laws to govern a projected state and is apparently meant to be practical in a way that the Republic was not; thus…
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dualism
- In dualism: Greece and the Hellenistic world
  …is further attributed, in Plato’s Laws, to the “titanic nature” within its makeup—an element of violence and impiety inherited from the primordial rebellious Titans, sons of the Earth.
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God
- In theism: The influence of Plato and Aristotle
  …much more explicitly in the Laws, he presented a more rigorous argument, based on the fact that things change and are in motion. Not all change comes from outside; some of it is spontaneous and must be due to “soul” and ultimately to a supreme or perfect soul. Whether God…
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pantheism and panentheism
- In pantheism: Greco-Roman doctrines
  …the tenth book of the Laws, by invoking the analogy of a circular motion, which combines change with the retention of a fixed centre, he explained how deity could exemplify both absoluteness and change. Plato thus may be viewed as a quasi-panentheist.
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politics
- In Western philosophy: Life
  …works, the Statesman and the Laws, Plato tried to show that only a god could be entrusted with the absolute powers of the philosopher-rulers of his republic. Human rulers must be controlled by rigid laws, he held—though all laws are inevitably imperfect because life is too varied to be governed…
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- In political philosophy: Plato
  In the Laws, purporting to be a discussion of how best to found a polis in Crete, he presents a detailed program in which a state with some 5,000 citizens is ruled by 37 curators of laws and a council of 360. But the keystone of the…
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tragedy
- In tragedy: Classical theories
  …(in the dialogue on the Laws) the state was the noblest work of art, a representation (mimēsis) of the fairest and best life. He feared the tragedians’ command of the expressive resources of language, which might be used to the detriment of worthwhile institutions. He feared, too, the emotive effect…
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