ISSN 1392–1126. PROBLEMOS 2014 86
Filosofijos istorijos tyrimai THE STATE IS NOT LIKE A BEEHIVE: THE SELF-CONTAINMENT OF PLATO’S STATESMAN* Vilius Bartninkas University of Cambridge Jesus College Jesus Lane, Cambridge, CB5 8BL, United Kingdom E-mail: vb338@cam.ac.uk
Abstract. The paper explores Plato’s Statesman in the perspective of its philosophical unity and auto nomy. The relevance of this approach arises from the problem posed by the traditional readings of the Statesman – the developmental and unitarian. Both methods interpret the Statesman in the context of Plato’s major political dialogues of, the Republic and the Laws, thus preventing the exposing of the in ternal theoretical coherence of the dialogue. Hence this paper focuses on the analysis of the main poli tical themes of the dialogue – conlict, statesmanship, and political knowledge – and their relations to each other. By discussing the emergence of the political and its importance for conceptualizing political practice, as well as by indicating the structural elements of statesmanship, the author of the paper ar gues that the Statesman contains a coherent and internally completed political theory. Keywords: Plato, the Statesman, statesmanship, conlict, political knowledge.
Plato’s Statesman has been rightly described as a ‘lonely’ and ‘unlovely’ dialogue (cf. Lane 1998: 1; Márquez 2012: xiii). The dialogue was ignored by students of Plato for quite a period due to its bizarre structure, dubious assumptions, deceptive discussion and enigmatic arguments1. To redeem its * This piece is based on a Vilnius University Bachelor thesis written under supervision of dr. Vytautas Ališauskas in 2014. The quote in the title is from Benjamin Jowett’s translation of the Statesman. 1 For instance, in Lithuanian so far there are three papers on Plato’s Statesman: Važgėlaitė. R. 2011. ‘Audimo, kaip tekstą organizuojančio elemento, vaidmuo Platono Valstybininke’ [‘Weaving as a Text Arraging Element in Plato‘s Statesman’], In: Literatūra, 53 (3): 100-114; Važgėlaitė, R. 2014. ‘Platono Valstybininkas: draminiai aspektai ir ilosoinis mitas’ [‘The Myth and Drama of Plato‘s Statesman’], In: Literatūra, 55 (3): 50-
uncomfortable and alien nature scholars have been trying to read the dialogue through the lens of the Republic and the 71; Bartninkas, V. 2014. ‘Meistrysčių vadyba Platono dialoge Valstybininkas’ [‘The Conlict of Arts in Plato’s Statesman’], in: Literatūra 56 (3), 32-44. Važgėlaitė in both articles deals with the composition, structure and philological issues of the Statesman. However, my previous paper approaches the dialogue from the political perspective: I aim to deine the meaning of τέχνη in the Statesman, its proximity to knowledge and philosophy, its status in the political realm and its political signiicance. A part of this paper is based on this article (see note 3). I also regret to inform the reader that I was unable to include the most recent indings in Plato’s Statesman published in Plato’s Statesman. Proceedings of the Eighth Symposium Platonicum Pragense (ed. by Aleš Havlíček, Jakub Jirsa and Karel Thein, Prague, 2013) as it reached me when this paper was already completed.
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