Plato's Stranger

by Rodolphe Gasché

Author	: Rodolphe Gasché
Publisher	: State University of New York Press
Total Pages	: 288
Release	: 2022-10-01
Genre	: Philosophy
ISBN	: 1438490356

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The dramatic introduction in two of Plato's late dialogues—the Sophist and the Statesman, both part of a trilogy that also includes the Theaetetus—of a stranger, the Eleatic Stranger, who replaces Socrates, is a consequential move, especially since it occurs in the context of decidedly new insights into the philosophical logos and life together in a community. The introduction of a radical stranger, a stranger to all native identity, has theoretical implications, and, rather than a rhetorical or merely literary device, is of the order of an argument. Plato's Stranger argues that in these late dialogues, Plato bestows on the West a philosophical and political legacy at the core of which the stranger holds a prominent place because it provides the foreigner—the other—with a previously unheard-of constitutive role in the way thinking, as well as life in community, is understood. What is to be learned from these late dialogues is that, without a constitutive relation to otherness, discursive and political life in a community—in other words, also of the way one relates to oneself—remain lacking.

A Stranger's Knowledge

by Xavier Márquez

Author	: Xavier Márquez
Publisher	: Parmenides Pub
Total Pages	: 399
Release	: 2012
Genre	: Philosophy
ISBN	: 9781930972797

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The Statesman is a difficult and puzzling Platonic dialogue. In A Stranger's Knowledge Marquez argues that Plato abandons here the classic idea, prominent in the Republic, that the philosopher, qua philosopher, is qualified to rule. Instead, the dialogue presents the statesman as different from the philosopher, the possessor of a specialist expertise that cannot be reduced to philosophy. The expertise is of how to make a city resilient against internal and external conflict in light of the imperfect sociality of human beings and the poverty of their reason. This expertise, however, cannot be produced on demand: one cannot train statesmen like one might train carpenters. Worse, it cannot be made acceptable to the citizens, or operate in ways that are not deeply destructive to the city's stability. Even as the political community requires his knowledge for its preservation, the genuine statesman must remain a stranger to the city. Marquez shows how this impasse is the key to understanding the ambiguous reevaluation of the rule of law that is the most striking feature of the political philosophy of the Statesman. The law appears here as a mere approximation of the expertise of the inevitably absent statesman, dim images and static snapshots of the clear and dynamic expertise required to steer the ship of state across the storms of the political world. Yet such laws, even when they are not created by genuine statesmen, can often provide the city with a limited form of cognitive capital that enables it to preserve itself in the long run, so long as citizens, and especially leaders, retain a “philosophical” attitude towards them. It is only when rulers know that they do not know better than the laws what is just or good (and yet want to know what is just and good) that the city can be preserved. The dialogue is thus, in a sense, the vindication of the philosopher-king in the absence of genuine political knowledge.

Plato's Statesman

by John Sallis

Author	: John Sallis
Publisher	: State University of New York Press
Total Pages	: 336
Release	: 2016-11-28
Genre	: Philosophy
ISBN	: 143846410X

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The Statesman is among the most widely ranging of Plato's dialogues, bringing together in a single discourse disparate subjects such as politics, mathematics, ontology, dialectic, and myth. The essays in this collection consider these subjects and others, focusing in particular on the dramatic form of the dialogue. They take into account not only what is said but also how it is said, by whom and to whom it is said, and when and where it is said. In this way, the contributors approach the text in a manner that responds to the dialogue itself rather than bringing preconceived questions and scholarly debates to bear on it. The essays are especially attuned to the comedic elements that run through much of the dialogue and that are played out in a way that reveals the subject of the comedy. In the Statesman, these comedies reach their climax when the statesman becomes a participant in a comedy of animals and thereby is revealed in his true nature.

Myth, Metaphysics and Dialectic in Plato's Statesman

by David A. White

Author	: David A. White
Publisher	: Routledge
Total Pages	: 288
Release	: 2016-04-29
Genre	: History
ISBN	: 1317090853

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Plato's dialogue The Statesman has often been found structurally puzzling by commentators because of its apparent diffuseness and disjointed transitions. In this book David White interprets the dialogue in ways which account for this problematic structure, and which also connect the primary themes of the dialogue with two subsequent dialogues The Philebus and The Laws. The central interpretive focus of the book is the extended myth, sometimes called the 'myth of the reversed cosmos'. As a result of this interpretative approach, White argues that The Statesman can be recognized (a) as both internally coherent and also profound in implication-the myth is crucial in both regards - and (b) as integrally related to the concerns of Plato's later dialogues.

Plato's "Sophist" Revisited

by Beatriz Bossi

Author	: Beatriz Bossi
Publisher	: Walter de Gruyter
Total Pages	: 316
Release	: 2013-03-22
Genre	: Literary Criticism
ISBN	: 3110287137

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This book consists of a selection of papers which throw new light on old problems in one of Plato's most difficult dialogues. The papers included fall into three broad categories: a) those dealing directly with the ostensible aim of the dialogue, the various definitions of a sophist from different perspectives (T. Robinson, F. Casadesús, J. Monserrat-P. Sandoval, A. Bernabé, M. Narcy and K. Dorter ; b) a number which tackle a specific question brought up in the dialogue, and that is, how Plato relates to Heraclitus and to Parmenides in the matter of his understanding of being and non-being (E. Hülsz, D. O'Brien, B. Bossi, P. Mesquita and N. Cordero) ; and c) those discussing various other broad issues brought to the fore in the dialogue, such as the 'greatest kinds', true and false statement, difference and mimesis (F. Fronterotta, J. de Garay, D. Ambuel and L. Palumbo).The variety of schools and backgrounds of the authors makes this book unique as a tool for the appreciation of the different approaches possible to well-known hermeneutical problems.

Plato and Modern Law

by Richard O. Brooks

Author	: Richard O. Brooks
Publisher	: Routledge
Total Pages	: 616
Release	: 2017-07-05
Genre	: Law
ISBN	: 1351553984

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This audacious collection of modern writings on Plato and the Law argues that Plato's work offers insights for resolving modern jurisprudential problems. Plato's dialogues, in this modern interpretation, reveal that knowledge of the functions of law, based upon intelligible principles, can be reformulated for relevance to our age. Leading interpreters of Plato: Vlastos, Hall, Strauss, Weinrib, Annas, and Morrow, are included in the collection. The editor supplies an insightful introduction and extensive bibiography to the collection.

Memory and Political Art in Plato’s Statesman

by Catherine Craig

Author	: Catherine Craig
Publisher	: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages	: 177
Release	: 2023-04-17
Genre	: Political Science
ISBN	: 1666919675

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In Memory and the Political Art in Plato’s Statesman, Catherine Craig provides an original reading of Plato’s Statesman by bringing memory to the foreground. The dialogue itself explores various components of political memory, such as common speech, myths, and laws, and argues that these create a framework in which we live our political lives. Each of these aspects of political memory serves as an image to move the individual to rational inquiry. In this way, the dialogue suggests that political memory can serve as a starting point for philosophic recollection, allowing for a move from knowledge of the rational soul to first principles. Craig shows how Plato weaves together the personal, political, and philosophic dimensions of memory, providing a richer understanding of the significance of memory for political life. Beyond providing an analysis of the Statesman, this book helps readers consider the challenges of political memory in contemporary political life, while also arguing that memory mediates between universal, rational principles and the particular ends and circumstances of human life.

Plato's Persona

by Denis J.-J. Robichaud

Author	: Denis J.-J. Robichaud
Publisher	: University of Pennsylvania Press
Total Pages	: 353
Release	: 2018-01-08
Genre	: Philosophy
ISBN	: 0812294726

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In 1484, humanist philosopher and theologian Marsilio Ficino published the first complete Latin translation of Plato's extant works. Students of Plato now had access to the entire range of the dialogues, which revealed to Renaissance audiences the rich ancient landscape of myths, allegories, philosophical arguments, etymologies, fragments of poetry, other works of philosophy, aspects of ancient pagan religious practices, concepts of mathematics and natural philosophy, and the dialogic nature of the Platonic corpus's interlocutors. By and large, Renaissance readers in the Latin West encountered Plato's text through Ficino's translations and interpretation. In Plato's Persona, Denis J.-J. Robichaud provides the first synthetic study of Ficino's interpretation of the Platonic corpus. Robichaud analyzes Plato's works in their original Greek and in Ficino's Latin translations, as well as Ficino's non-Platonic writings and correspondence, in the process uncovering new aspects of Ficino's intellectual work habits. In his letters and works, Ficino self-consciously imitated a Platonic style of prose, in effect devising a persona for himself as a Platonic philosopher. Plato's dialogues are populated with a wealth of literary characters with whom Plato interacts and against whom Plato refines his own philosophies. Reading through Ficino's translations, Robichaud finds that the Renaissance philosopher seeks an understanding of Plato's persona(e) among all the dialogues' interlocutors. In effect, Ficino assumed the role of Plato's Latin spokesperson in the Renaissance. Plato's Persona is grounded in an extensive study of scholarship in Renaissance humanism, classics, philosophy, and intellectual history, and contextualizes Ficino's intellectual achievements within the contemporary Christian orthodox view of Platonism. Ficino was an influential figure in the early Italian Renaissance: the key intermediary between Greek and Latin, and between manuscript and print, giving voice to Plato and access to the ancient frameworks needed to interpret his dialogues.

Plato's Caves

by Rebecca Lemoine

Author	: Rebecca Lemoine
Publisher	: Oxford University Press, USA
Total Pages	: 289
Release	: 2020
Genre	: History
ISBN	: 0190936983

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Months before the 2016 United States presidential election, universities across the country began reporting the appearance of white nationalist flyers featuring slogans like "Let's Become Great Again" and "Protect Your Heritage" against the backdrop of white marble statues depicting figures such as Apollo and Hercules. Groups like Identity Evropa (which sponsored the flyers) oppose cultural diversity and quote classical thinkers such as Plato in support of their anti-immigration views. The traditional scholarly narrative of cultural diversity in classical Greek political thought often reinforces the perception of ancient thinkers as xenophobic, and this is particularly the case with interpretations of Plato. While scholars who study Plato reject the wholesale0dismissal of his work, the vast majority tend to admit that his portrayal of foreigners is unsettling. From student protests over the teaching of canonical texts such as Plato's Republic to the use of images of classical Greek statues in white supremacist propaganda, the world of the ancient Greeks is deeply implicated in a heated contemporary debate about identity and diversity. 0In Plato's Caves, Rebecca LeMoine defends the bold thesis that Plato was a friend of cultural diversity, contrary to many contemporary perceptions. LeMoine shows that, across Plato's dialogues, foreigners play a role similar to that of Socrates: liberating citizens from intellectual bondage. Through close readings of four Platonic dialogues-Republic, Menexenus, Laws, and Phaedrus-LeMoine recovers Plato's unique insight into the promise, and risk, of cross-cultural engagement. Like the Socratic "gadfly" who stings the "horse" of Athens into wakefulness, foreigners can provoke citizens to self-reflection by exposing contradictions and confronting them with alternative ways of life.