Untitled

Abstract

Abstract The fourth chapter, “Untitled,” traces the vitalist outlines of Magnesia, the utopian model delineated in the Laws, and the “second-best city” because it is not inhabited by gods or a number of the children of gods, but still ideal because the city’s laws impose the greatest possible unity in the state (Pl. Leg. 739d–e). In this paradigm, a distinctly Magnesian subjectivity is found, and it is predicated on feminine difference, in a mixed constitution between monarchy and democracy, one that participates in material political folds. That is, with their porous bodies, citizens create Deleuzian folds in which distinctions between subject and object, self and other meet, combine, and dissolve. Furthermore, the chapter locates a similar trajectory in Laws Book III to what we see in Republic Book VIII; the Athenian Stranger embarks on a historical survey, by providing a history of various cities and political systems that have risen and fallen, in other words, a survey of historical metabolē. In what amounts to both an overarching and selective review, he starts from the primitive era, after the event of a deluge, which washes away and destroys human civilizations, and moves to the more recent past, in his treatment of the Persian monarchy and Athenian democracy. In this way, Plato has the Athenian provide lessons from history and takes an inductive approach to constructing Magnesia, starting from particular observations in order to arrive at a universal. The chapter argues that, in contrast to Republic Book VIII, the Athenian’s account is not a decline narrative but, rather, portrays the generation of politics and a materialistic vision of history, compelled by the abstract feminine principle of becoming.