Plato, Law, and the Musicality of Politics

Undergraduate / Graduate

The ancient Greeks understood music and law to share in the same intrinsic properties of order, establishment, and restoration; the ambiguity of the word nomos, which could mean both law and song, signals a worldview according to which ethics and aesthetics were governed by the same principles. This worldview was intimately connected to Athens' understanding of herself as a democracy, where music and so-called music theorists were integrated in all aspects of civic life, and where poets, philosophers, and statesman alike theorized on the moral, political, and juridical value of music. This course will be primarily devoted to a close reading of Plato's Laws (Nomoi), We will consider fundamental questions of civic engagement, political judgment, and the rule of law, and complicate those questions in light of the aesthetic and extra-rational considerations brought to bear on them through the dialogues' preoccupations with all things musical. Some familiarity with the Platonic dialogues is preferred but not required.