Plato's Myth of Er and the Reconfiguration of Nature

Bibliographic Data

ID3537779
AuthorsTae-Yeoun Keum (0000-0002-4996-2724, University of California, Santa Barbara, corresponding author)
Year2020
Volume114
Issue1
Pages54-67
Publication date2020-02-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueAmerican Political Science Review (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0003-0554 • E-ISSN: 1537-5943
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0003055419000662
OpenAlexW2982704608
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited47

Why did Plato conclude theRepublic, arguably his most celebrated work of political theory, with the Myth of Er, an obscure story of indeterminate political-theoretical significance? This paper advances a novel reading of the Myth of Er that attends to the common plot that it shares with two earlier narrative interludes in theRepublic. It suggests that Plato constructed the myth as an account of a search, akin to the sorting of potential philosopher-kings that underwrites thekallipolis' educational curriculum, for natures that have successfully absorbed the cumulative effects of their philosophical upbringing. The model of nature presented in the myth, in turn, helps us approach the category of nature as a working concept: we can recognize contexts in which it is useful to assume in otherwise complex and fluid individuals a fixed, indelible nature, while granting that our sense of what that consists in is subject to revision

Aesthetics · Art · Epistemology · Linguistics · Literature · Mythology · Narrative · Political science · Politics · Reading (process · Sociology · Subject (documents · The Republic · Classical Antiquity Studies · Classical Philosophy and Thought · Computer Science · Historical, Religious, and Philosophical Studies · Law · Philosophy

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