Philosopher-King on a Leash
Combining Plato’s Republic , Statesman and Laws in the Justinianic Dialogue On Political Science
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 21291573 |
|---|---|
| Authors | René De Nicolay (Universität Zürich Historisches Seminar Culmannstrasse 1 Zurich Schweiz, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2022 |
| Volume | 106 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 207-235 |
| Publication date | 2022-10-20 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0003-9101 • E-ISSN: 0943-3988 |
| Publisher | Walter de Gruyter GmbH (PUBLISHER • DE) |
| DOI | 10.1515/agph-2021-0168 |
| OpenAlex | W4306779202 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 33 |
Late antique political Platonism was not unoriginal in its thought. The paper takes as an example the Justinianic dialogue On Political Science (ca. 550), which creatively engages with Plato’s political works. It shows that the dialogue tries – and manages, as I argue – to combine two apparently inconsistent Platonic models: what I call the “divine” model, in which a philosopher-king endowed with divine knowledge rules unhindered by civic laws; and the “human” model, characterized by the rule of law. The divine model comes mostly from Plato’s Republic and Statesman ; the human one, from the Laws . On Political Science demonstrates that its (anonymous) author was acquainted with these three Platonic texts, in addition to other texts. That is philologically noteworthy, but also philosophically interesting: the dialogue manages to integrate the two models into a common framework. It puts forward an original political model, in which a philosopher-king, although endowed with divine knowledge, still has to be bound by civic laws because of his human frailty. The article concludes by discussing the polemical import the dialogue could have had in its Justinianic context
Antique · Context (archaeology) · Epistemology · Platonism · Political science · Politics · Sociology · The Republic · Classical Antiquity Studies · Classical Philosophy and Thought · History · Law · Philosophy · Seventeenth-Century Political and Philosophical Thought
Economy and Administration
Platonic Studies
Against Democracy
Legislation and Demiurgy
Plato's Philosopher King in the Political Thought of Sixth-Century Byzantium
Killing Socrates
Plato and the Theodosian Code
Héros, dieux et philosophes
Plato and Politics
The Place of the Timaeus in Plato's Dialogues
The Demiurge in Politics
Acclamations in the Later Roman Empire
Politics as Architectonic Expertise? Against Taking the So-called ‘Architect’ (ἀρχιτέκτων) in Plato’s Statesman to Prefigure this Aristotelian View
Eusebius of Caesarea’s Un-Platonic Platonic Political Theology
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |