War as a Principle? Plato against Thucydides and Heraclitus

Abstract

This paper intends to confront Plato’s thought on war and enmity in Laws 1 (625c-628e) to those of Thucydides and Heraclitus showing that Clinias’ thesis that the state of perpetual war is the principle of legislation has a deep similarity with some aspects of their political thoughts. Next, I investigate how the refutation by the Athenian Stranger of the place and status of war and conflict at the root of political realism is a key argument in the whole process of the Laws and in the emergence of the platonic meaning of political philosophy.