Statesman

This E-book (a Benjamin Jowett translation) is the last and final Platonic dialogue I’ve read. Jowett says that the Statesman has little of the grace, beauty and dramatic power of Plato’s earlier dialogues, but it is still “the highest and most ideal conception of politics in Plato’s writing.” The ruler is the True Herdsman, the King of Man. Or, rather, the Ruler is God, not man. He alone has knowledge. It is the science of pure knowledge. It is a royal science, the science of rule or command.

Jowett argues elsewhere that Plato has to be read as a whole. Any particular dialogue sits within a broader context of the Platonic corpus, each emphasizing one or more aspects. The Statesman can be read with that perspective in mind. The Republic describes the forms of government, with that led by the Philosopher-King as the best; rule by the many, democracy, is the worst. The Laws provide the specifics about how the Republic is to be run. The Statesman fills out this picture. This dialogue highlights the role of the philosopher-king, which is much along the line of what Jowett puts forward.

Many interpret Plato’s philosopher-king notion in a secularized – philosophical, not theological – sense. One commentator writes that the philosopher-king possesses this “special knowledge of how to rule justly and well” and that he has “the best interests of the citizen at heart.” Who could disagree with that? But what, for Plato, is “knowledge about” or, rather, what is “special knowledge” about? And what is the “best interests” of the citizens? In the dialogues, “To know” is not to know our material world. Rather, it’s to know a divine world or, for Jowett and the Neoplatonists, it’s the world of God. The job of the polity, and the philosopher-king in particular, is to lead the citizenry toward this more perfect world. It is the kingdom of God on Earth. This, not bodily well-being, is the “best interest” of the citizen.

In the Statesman, there is this odd interlude where Plato describes the age of Chronos. This is a time when the sun set on the east and rose in the west. It was an age where time was reversed. It was a Golden Age where there are no human needs. What is Plato doing here? He is separating humans from their body and the laws of cause and effect. This is the realm of the spirit. He has liberated human form from all those animal passions that make humans so imperfect. They have no place in the Age of Chronos. There, the spirit of humans is perfect and free. When humans stray from God in Plato’s cyclic world, their needs come back and they are ruled by humans who think they are God. It is an age that demands, again, a divine intercession, a savior who returns to this imperfect world and to lead humans back to God. This notion of earthly cycles is similar to the Buddhist avatar who repeatedly makes his appearance in cyclic time to lead humans back to their divine essence. This is Plato’s statesman. This is Jesus. This is the Christian rapture.

As a final note, the Socratic-Platonic dialogue is famed as a methodology for truth and knowledge but it is nothing of the sort. This dialogue is about Plato using lackeys to ask vapid questions that move the dialogue along and give Plato what he needs, including an affirmation about the wisdom of Plato’s metaphysical agenda and its everlasting Neverworld. Truth is about the Divine and Reason-Dialogue is how you get there.

In fact, the majority of the book is too confusing as he was trying to justify every single details in his philosophy on the statesman concept using many examples to the extent I felt lost. But still it is a very important contribution on his realistic track after the big fallacies of the book (the republic).

Interesting views on classification.

A política nobre é a única que pode unir as virtudes da coragem e temperança.
Ler o Político como uma obra isolada de Platão, sem entender o processo da alma de Platão, poderá levar um cidadão muito abaixo de Platão a pensar que pode regular a vida de todos os cidadãos.
Um homem muito abaixo de Platão e tirano quererá regular tudo com a seguinte consequência:

Estrangeiro — Além de tudo isso seria necessário ainda elaborar a seguinte lei: quem quer que procurasse estudar a arte náutica e a ciência da navegação, as regras da saúde, a exatidão da medicina sobre os ventos frios e quentes, fora das leis escritas, tornando-se conhecedor desses assuntos, não poderia, em primeiro lugar, ser chamado médico ou piloto e sim, visionário e sofista fraseador; em seguida, o primeiro que tivesse esse direito acusá-lo-ia diante de um tribunal, denunciando-o como corruptor de jovens a quem induz dedicar-se à ciência náutica e à medicina, arvorando-se eles próprios em senhores dos navios e dos enfermos, sem se orientarem pelas leis. Se ficar provado que ele instrui jovens e velhos no desprezo às leis e à palavra escrita, será punido com os maiores suplícios. Pois não temos o direito de sermos mais sábios que as leis nem de ignorar a medicina, a higiene, a arte náutica e a navegação, sendo permitido, a quem quiser, aprender os preceitos escritos e os costumes tradicionais. Se essas ciências, caro Sócrates, fossem tratadas da maneira por que descrevemos, inclusive a estratégia ou qualquer outro ramo da caça, a pintura ou qualquer outra parte da imitação, a marcenaria ou qualquer outra arte de fabricar móveis, a agricultura ou outra espécie da arte de cultivar plantas; se fossem reguladas por um código a criação de cavalos ou de qualquer outro rebanho, a náutica ou qualquer outra parte da ciência do trabalho, os jogos de damas ou a ciência dos números.

Sócrates: seja pura ou aplicada ao plano, ao sólido, ao movimento — o que aconteceria a tudo isso, conduzido pela sorte, regido pela letra escrita em lugar de orientado pela arte?
É claro que veríamos desaparecer completamente todas as artes, sem esperança alguma de retorno, sufocadas por essa lei que proíbe toda pesquisa. E a vida que já é bastante penosa, tornar-se-ia então totalmente insuportável."

The continuation of the dialog with strangers regarding the qualification of the statesman. What arts and abilities he must have. The dialog was more direct than the previous book, sophist.

The first two thirds of this dialogue are tedious to a ridiculous extreme.

The last third more than makes up for it. Reading Plato can be like riding a roller coaster, ranging from agreement and enlightenment to pure horror at clearly totalitarian suggestions. The real question is, can a true Statesman ever exist and if not, isn't the idea of one dangerous? The Greek idea that government exists to perfect men is just one I will never agree with.

The Statesman by Plato

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This is another book I read for Online Great Books. Again, if it wasn't for the seminar discussion after reading the book, I would have been lost in left field.

This is the second of a planned series of three books - Sophist, Statemen, and Philosopher. "Philosopher" never got written. Why Philosopher was not written is fodder for speculation. This dialogue also features the visiting philosopher who interacts with "Young Socrates," who is a young friend of Socrates. Socrates has only a few lines at the beginning of the dialogue.

The visiting philosopher again applies the taxonomic approach to identifying what makes for a statesman. The visiting philosopher concludes:

"VISITOR: Then let us say that this marks the completion of the fabric which is the product of the art of statesmanship: the weaving together, with regular intertwining, of the dispositions of brave and moderate people—when the expertise belonging to the king brings their life together in [c] agreement and friendship and makes it common between them, completing [311c] the most magnificent and best of all fabrics and covering with it all the other inhabitants of cities, both slave and free; and holds them together with this twining and rules and directs without, so far as it belongs to a city to be happy, falling short of that in any respect.

Plato. Plato: Complete Works (p. 402). Hackett Publishing Company, Inc.. Kindle Edition.

Well, gosh, that's nice, but a little bit impossible to achieve in our fallen world.

The dialogue itself is not easy to follow since it seems to jump tracks periodically. However, the reader does get a nice discussion of the various forms of government - monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy and their distorted counterparts. This is a review of Plato's Republic and a preview of some of Aristotle's writings.

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