Plato's Reverent City: the Laws and Politics of Authority

This book offers an original interpretation of Plato’s and a new account of its enduring importance. Ballingall argues that the republican regime conceived in the is built on "reverence," an archaic virtue governing emotions of self-assessment—particularly awe and shame. Ballingall demonstrates how learning to feel these emotions in the right way, at the right time, and for the right things is the necessary basis for the rule of law conceived in the dialogue. The remains surprisingly neglected in the scholarly literature, although this is changing. The cynical populisms haunting liberal democracies are focusing new attention on the “characterological” basis of constitutional government and Plato’s remains an indispensable resource on this question, especially when we attend to the theme of reverence at its core.