Aither is a double-blind peer review, Open Access online academic journal. It is indexed at ERIH+ and Scopus. It is published by the Faculty of Arts of the Palacký University in Olomouc in cooperation with the Philosophical Institute of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic. It comes out twice a year. Every second issue is international and contains foreign-language articles (mainly in English, but also in German and French). The journal is registered under the number ISSN 1803-7860.

Aither 22/2019 (International issue no. 6):50-73 | DOI: 10.5507/aither.2019.006

Plato's Three Forms of Impiety in Context: Laws X 884a-887c

Vojtěch Hladký
Department of Philosophy and History of Science, Faculty of Science, Charles University, Prague

The article offers an in-depth analysis in the form of a close reading of the very beginning of Book X of Plato's Laws. It focuses on a passage where Plato defines three types of impiety which he claims to be the source of a wrong conception of the divine, the world, and human actions. To better understand Plato's seemingly conservative but actually uncommon and problematic definition of impiety, it is contrasted with partly similar reasoning of Xenophon's Socrates. By situating this key passage of the Laws within the context of the entire dialogue and within the relevant contemporary discussions, we arrive at a better understanding of the nature of Platonic revolution in a philosophical approach to traditional Greek religion.

Published: September 30, 2019  Show citation

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Hladký, V. (2019). Plato's Three Forms of Impiety in Context: Laws X 884a-887c. Aither, 11(22), 50-73. doi: 10.5507/aither.2019.006
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