Plato's Laws - Book X, Part 2: Reason as the Cause in the Middle of It All

Plato's Pod continues its series on Plato's longest work, The Laws, picking up where we left off two weeks ago with the second part of Book X, near the end of the dialogue. In Book X, the three characters - an unnamed Athenian speaking with Clinias (from Crete) and Megillus (from Sparta) - set out the logic for reason as the primary cause of the universe, and reason's central function in the soul's moderation of need and desire. But have the three gone too far in prescribing the death penalty for any citizen of Crete's new colony, Magnesia, who refuses after every attempt at explanation and reconciliation to acknowledge reason as a god? On February 4, 2024, members of the Toronto, Calgary, and Chicago Philosophy Meetup groups met to consider the arguments. Is it just to impose reason in the form of a "state religion," one participant asked, or ha ...