Akteure oder Marionetten?

The book examines the extent to which the members of the polis in Plato's Laws are not obedient recipients of orders from a knowing ruling elite, but rather, to an individual extent, virtuous agents capable of virtuous behaviour. They participate politically and legally, whereby the various procedures of selecting the office-holders enable them to participate to the extent that corresponds to their degree of agency. This perspective on agency allows for new insights into the view of the individual in Plato's late work, by which the book takes a middle path with regard to the existing research between the interpretation of the inhabitants as obedient puppets on the one hand and the assumption of an egalitarian concept of virtue on the other.