1990 Legislation and demiurgy.pdf

History of Political Thought, 2016

Political theorists remain divided on the question of Plato's utopianism. Some associate his dialogues with an uncompromising vision of the human good, one that Plato is thought to build into blueprints that he would have humanity implement as far as possible. Others read Plato as a brilliant critic of utopian thinking and insist that his blueprints are not to be understood as normative paradigms at all, but rather as self-destructive parodies. This article develops a third approach to Plato's utopianism by turning to the treatment of 'imitation' (mimÂsis) in the Laws. I argue that the Laws requires a distinction between three ways in which an imitation might resemble its 'model' (paradeigma). Attending to this distinction adds credence to the view that, for Plato, the good in speech must be 'revised' in order to find satisfactory expression in human deeds.

The aim of this article is to present a reading of Plato's utopianism, as expressed mainly through the 'big letters' of the Republic, which will lead us beyond Karl Popper's and Leo Strauss' modernist understandings of Plato and of his world. The author argues that, despite the 'transcendent' aspects of Platonic utopianism, the ideal city should be understood neither as a blueprint to be realized through some totalitarian political project nor as a mere fiction that cannot by definition give rise to a viable existential prospect. The power of Platonic utopianism lies in its articulation to a value-laden cosmological continuum, which may be understood in terms of the self -instituting (through political persuasion and story-telling activites, among others) capacities of the ancient Greek city. The utopian perspective is marked by shareability of political reason and by mutuality between participants in a common discursive venture rather than by individualist authoritarian projections or by harmless (that is, nonpolitical in its orientation and ideological in its repercussions) day-dreaming. Even if Plato's philosophical project aspires to transcend the boundaries of the ancient Greek cosmos, Platonic politics cannot be separated from its historical context, that is, the circumstances that gave rise to philosophy as a silent perhaps, but revolutionary in it intentions, political act.

Persuasión y coacción como instrumentos de la nomos para el logro de andreia y sophrosyne en las Leyes de Platón , 2019

A través de la comprensión de la finalidad del proyecto político platónico planteado en las Leyes, y una lectura interpretativa de los libros I y IV de la obra, el presente artículo trata de establecer la relación existente entre las virtudes de la valentía (andreia) y la moderación (sophrosyne) como virtudes fundamentales para el adecuado cumplimiento de las leyes de la polis, con el equilibrio del elemento persuasivo y coactivo que Platón propone precisamente para lograr la obediencia de los ciudadanos a la ley. Nos centramos al mismo tiempo en el papel que juega la mixis politeia que según Platón ha de realizar el legislador, en la que juegan un papel clave los modelos de gobierno preexistentes de Atenas y Esparta. Palabras clave Leyes, persuasión, coacción, andreia, sophrosyne.

According to a current reading of Plato's political philosophy, the Republic and the Laws propose a set of measures to remedy the evils of the cities. Among them, the alliance of power and philosophy is undoubtedly the most massive and famous. My claim is that such a reading fails to recognize that the functional centrality of the philosophy and the philosopher in Plato's political thought goes hand in hand with their structural precariousness or uncertainty. As a result, Plato's political philosophy in these two dialogues deals less with how to found a just city than with the uncertainty of politics itself-politics understood here as the institutional space arranged for the optimal development of the human being.

Abstract. This article offers a study of literary criticism in Plato’s Laws. According to standard accounts of the history of literary criticism, fourth-century philoso- phers represent a break from archaic and democratic notions of poetic judgment. The interpretation presented here suggests that the Laws synthesizes archaic and contemporary critical practices. In doing so, it fashions literary criticism as a performance of philosophy, combining claims to social and political authority with the evaluation of texts according to independent, objective criteria. The Laws thereby offers a hybrid model of contemporary critical practices to extend the ideal city’s political and moral philosophy into contexts of performance.

Desidero ringraziare, per aver letto e commentato alcune versioni di questo articolo, Maria Michela Sassi, Bruno Centrone e Alfonso Maurizio Iacono. 3 Cfr. Platone, Cratilo, 412a: «Ed episteme significa che la psyché […] si accompagna (hepetai = segue) alle cose (pragmata) che sono in movimento, e non viene lasciata indietro, e non le precede: cosicché, dunque, noi dobbiamo introdurre e, chiamandola hepeisteme». (Dove non altrimenti indicato, le traduzioni sono mie). 4 Cfr. Platone, Cratilo, 437a. 5

Classical Rationalism and the Politics of Europe (ed. Ann Ward), 2017

Plato is usually considered a critic of poetry and of tragedy in particular. In the Laws, however, we read of a city-in-speech whose “whole regime is constructed as the imitation of the most beautiful and best way of life, which we at least assert to be really the truest tragedy” (817b3-5). This chapter takes up the apparent rehabilitation of tragedy in the Laws and argues that it is in fact consistent with the critique of tragedy in the Republic. Although the Athenian stranger appears to praise the regime that he conceives in calling it a tragedy, I show that he quietly means to insult it. The regime is a tragedy, he implies, because it merely—and hence regrettably—imitates the way of life that is best and truly serious. Attending to key passages that Plato dramatically connects with 817a-d, I argue that the reasons adduced for this shortcoming are the very ones responsible for tragedy’s enduring appeal. Like Socrates in the Republic, the Athenian in the Laws counsels the censorship of tragic lamentations. But his arguments suggest that the allure of tragedy is ineradicable and the cause of the unfortunate necessities to which politics must resort even or precisely at its best.

While traditionally Plato has been read as a critic of democracy and an advocate of philosopher-kingship, a number of more recent interpretations have argued that Plato's views about these issues changed over the course of his life. Several scholars argue that Plato shifts from an authoritarian outlook in "middle period" dialogues, such as the Republic, to a more democratic view in "late" dialogues, such as the Laws. In contrast to these scholars, this article argues that Plato's attitude towards authority and democracy is consistent in his " middle " and " late " periods. I show that Plato defines law as the writing of political experts, and that the Laws turns to written law as a second-best method for instituting the rule of the wise. This interpretation enables us to understand the Laws as a dialogue about the political use of writing, which helps illuminate some of the more peculiar features of the Laws and account for its place in the Platonic corpus.

2019

In this article, the question of if there is a parallel between the depic-tions of the philosopher-king and the depictions of the god (Demiurgos) depicted in the Timaeus dialogue is sought. This specific question, which we are looking for the answer, is related to another question which can be expressed as if there is a parallel between the image of God and the image of the philosopher in Plato's dialogues. To find the answer to the question, passages selected from the Republic and Timaeus dialogues will be evaluated comparatively around specific themes. The article is structured around three basic points. The first point is that the ideals are models. The second point is the manager, who manages according to the ideal, is absolute good. The final point is that the management is to give standard, order and harmony. From these three central points, the Republic and Timaeus dialogues will be compared and the similarity between them will be shown.

The modern rationalist idea of rule of law, and modern rationalism in general, owes much to Plato and to Platonism. However, Plato's stance towards the laws of the city is all but clear. On the one hand, we have the seemingly 'totalitarian' Plato of the Republic, a dialogue which defends the absolute authority of philosophical wisdom over all prescriptions that are ensuing from existing cities and their laws. On the other hand, we have the 'more liberal-democratic' Plato of the Laws, a dialogue which promotes a combination of philosophical wisdom with rule of law. This ambivalence as to the issue of laws permeates one of the most enigmatic of Plato's works, the Politicus, a dialogue that was written after the Republic and before the Laws. The present essay rejects both the 'totalitarian' and the 'liberal-democratic' understanding of Plato's stance towards the laws of the city. The author defends the thesis that laws in the Politicus do not constitute a static Form that works against or with philosophical wisdom and/or democratic selflegislation, but a factor that generates a series of inescapable philosophical and political ambivalences. This approach corresponds with many of the findings of the so-called 'post-modern jurisprudence'. That is, it brings to the fore the immanent aporias of philosophical dialectics, it emphasises the irreducible un-decidability between violence and consent as foundational elements of the law, and it stresses the adiakrisia (our inability to discriminate) between the poisonous and the healing effects of laws as regards the attainment of conditions of social and political justice.