Plato's "Laws"

"The Laws was Plato's last work, his longest, and one of his most difficult. An abstract ideal not intended for any actual community, the Laws seems to provide practical guidelines for the establishment and maintenance of political order in the real world. With this book, Seth Benardete offers an insightful analysis of and commentary on this rich and complex dialogue. Each chapter corresponds to one of the twelve books of the Laws, illuminating the major themes and arguments, among them the difference between the atemporal structure of the good and the temporal structure of the law; how experience deviates from the law; the relation between justice and moderation in light of theology and the soul; the relation of administrative structure to the city; and criminal law and the assumptions it must make about the structure of the soul. As he explicates the major themes and arguments of the dialogue, Benardete also shows how these strands of argument are interwoven throughout the Laws and then sets them against the quite different arguments on the same themes found in The Republic and The Statesman."--BOOK JACKET.

Beyond its central premise, the book can be read through the connected lenses of Philosophy, Nonfiction. Those themes offer useful points of attention as the characters, ideas, or world develop, especially where the book complicates the expectations of its primary category.