Attila Simon (Eötvös Loránd University) - "The Politics of Rhythm in Plato’s Laws"

One of the most interesting developments in Plato studies in the last two decades has been the rereading of the previously neglected dialogue the Laws, and above all the discovery of the crucial role the choral dance (choreia) plays in its argument. According to Book II of the Laws, the choreia had a decisive pedagogical, moral, and thus political function in the life of the polis. This political performance helps to create moral and political unity among the citizens. In creating this unity, the linguistic-rational elements of choral dance are accompanied by its physical-emotional affects. In the choreia, as part of mousike, music, singing and dancing movements are on an equal footing with the verbal components in terms of their impact on the performers and the spectators. The choral dance, therefore, transforms the performers and the audience into a collective subject. Drawing on these points, my paper argues that we need to reconstruct a “politics of rhythm” in Plato’s Laws that can have far-reaching consequences for our understanding of politics in broader terms. The paper shows that rhythm as a regular articulation of every kind of “movement” is equally part of the vocalized text, the instrumental music, and the dance ‒ that is, it plays a role in all the components of the choral dance and it orders and harmonizes all parts of the choreia into a whole. Moreover, it is also the center of the effects of choreia on the dancers and the audience, and ultimately plays a key role in organizing the whole polis into a unified whole. Therefore, rhythm remains an essential category of any performative understanding of communal life and politics. 

Attila Simon is Professor of Comparative Literature at Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest. His research interest includes the philosophy of Plato and Aristotle, rhetoric, Homer, Greek drama, and the reception of ancient literature. He is the author of four monographs in Hungarian, numerous articles in international journals and edited volumes, and three major translations into Hungarian (Plato’s Phaedrus, Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, Cicero’s The Laws). He is currently working on the reception of Philomela’s myth from Ovid through Shakespeare to Ransmayr, and editing a collected volume of essays on “Breathing in Literature.”