In Plato's work, the Laws are pragmatic, and the Republic is an ideal. This can be compared to the Christian tradition, where the Mosaic Laws were a sort of minimum set of necessary rules for a well ordered community, and teachings of Jesus and in turn the idea of New Jerusalem as an ideal state that is probably never going to be attained. The unattainability of it does not make it less worthy of attention. In fact, it is the opposite. Only when an ideal is unattainable is it properly conceived of as an ideal, and the pursuit of it would forever be a pursuit and a striving towards. Just like how the Philosopher King is an oxymoron, the new man fully retaining the likeness of Jesus is impossible, at least in this life. Nonetheless, they provide us the models we need to live our lives — it is fiction that creates our reality, no the other way around.[^1] [^1]: Gregory Nagy, Homeric Questions