Plato’s Reverent City

“The Reverent City is among the best studies of Plato’s Laws. Ballingall argues convincingly that reverence or awe plays a far greater role in classical political thought than is ordinarily understood.”

—Mark Lutz, Director, Society for Greek Political Thought and Associate Professor of Political Science, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, USA

“A subtle and penetrating interpreter of Plato, Ballingall shows that Plato’s Laws has important lessons to teach our irreverent age. This is a book for serious students of Plato, but also for those concerned about the drift of our politics away from all things respectful and reverent.”


–Devin Stauffer, Professor and Associate Chair, Department of Government, University of Texas at Austin, USA


“Ballingall’s astute study of Plato’s Laws addresses the puzzles and covers all the aspects of reverence while offering a thoughtful tribute to this unlikely friend of reason.”

–Harvey C. Mansfield, Kenan Professor of Government, Harvard University, USA

This book offers an original interpretation of Plato’s Laws and a new account of its enduring importance. Ballingall argues that the republican regime conceived in the Laws 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 Laws 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 Laws remains an indispensable resource on this question, especially when we attend to the theme of reverence at its core.

Robert Ballingall is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Maine, USA. Previously, he was a postdoctoral fellow in the Program on Constitutional Government at Harvard University and Allan Bloom Memorial Postdoctoral Fellow for Research in Classical Political Thought at the University of Toronto, where he also earned his PhD.