You're listening to The Partially Examined Life, a podcast by some guys who were at one point set on doing philosophy for a living, but then thought better of it.

Our question for episode 376 is something like, to what degree, is society supposed to make us more virtuous?

And we read selections from Plato's lengthy, late dialogue of the laws.

More information about the text and the podcast, please see partially examined life.com.

This is Mark Glinson-Myer, leaving my children an abundance of awe rather than gold in Madison, Wisconsin.

This is Seth Paskin laying the groundwork for my benevolent dictatorship in Austin, Texas.

This is Wes Awen, drinking my way to justice in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

This is Dylan Casey unmelted in Madison, Wisconsin.

A dialogue that we have put off for a long, long time, this Internet Encyclopedia

philosophy article that Wes U had found for us, that was a good summary of the whole thing,

since we were going to read the whole thing.

In its hard copy, in this translation by Thomas Pangell, is 577 pages.

So obviously, that's not all the dialogue, but a lot of it is the dialogue.

It's, you know, 300-some pages.

So you're definitely not going to read the whole thing.

And I guess it's unfinished, too.

Is that right?

That's scholarly.

Apparently it is.

Yeah.

Apparently it's according to, was it Aristotle or some other commentator

who thought it was unfinished. So this internet encyclopedia philosophy article, the laws is Plato's

...