Abstract

Barker influentially posited a development from an absolutist Republic hostile to the idea of the rule of law, through an absolutist Statesman which now engages more seriously and to a degree sympathetically with the idea, to a Laws in which the rule of law displaces the earlier absolutism. This paper demonstrates that Barker's construction is unsustainable. The Republic presents a political philosophy much more like the Laws than the absolutism of the Statesman. There is a lot of law and lawgiving in the dialogue, and no more absolutism than in the Laws itself