JULIO DE SOUZA COMPARINI

It is about discussing the status of rhetoric in Plato’s Laws, a political dialogue in which the regime (politeia) proposed is a mixed regime based on legislation (nomoi) shaped by the principles of wisdom (phronesis), friendship (philia) between fellow citizens and freedom (eleutheria). In this sense, on the one hand, norms are associated with rationality and, on the other hand, the work of the legislator must be willingly accepted by the people, which makes a significant part of the tasks related to the exercise of power consist of in the formulation of discursive persuasion strategies. The research begins with the resumption of the fundamental traits of the politeia of the Laws and recovers some historical elements and the position on the subject in other texts of the platonic corpus, to later dedicate itself to understanding education (paideia) and the law (nomos) in the dialogue in question, particularly regarding its rhetorical uses, which leads to the study of legislative preambles (prooimia).