Ryan K. Balot is Professor of Political Science and Classics at the University of Toronto and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. He is the author of Greed and Injustice in Classical Athens and Courage in the Democratic Polis: Ideology and Critique in Classical Athens. He edited A Companion to Greek and Roman Political Thought and is co-editor of The Oxford Handbook of Thucydides.
Previous scholars and writers have either celebrated the idealism in Plato's Laws or denounced its totalitarianism. Ryan K. Balot, by contrast, refuses to interpret the dialogue as a political blueprint, whether admirable or misguided. Instead, he shows that it constitutes Plato's greatest philosophical investigation of political life. In this transformative re-appraisal, Balot reveals that Plato's goal was to cultivate a tragic attitude toward our political passions, commitments, and aspirations.