The Art of Politics as Weaving in Plato’s Statesman

Bibliographic Data

ID6107643
AuthorsKristin Sampson (0000-0002-7477-4346, University of Bergen Bergen Norway, corresponding author)
Year2020
Volume37
Issue3
Pages485-500
Publication date2020-09-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenuePolis The Journal for Ancient Greek and Roman Political Thought (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0142-257X • E-ISSN: 2051-2996
PublisherWalter de Gruyter GmbH (PUBLISHER • DE)
DOI10.1163/20512996-12340296
OpenAlexW3081877682
LanguageEN
Citations received1

This article asserts the significance of the portrayal of the political art of statesmanship as weaving, and aims to show how this image emphasizes two main aspects of the political art of statesmanship. Firstly, the image implies a three-dimensionality, both through the process of weaving and through the thickness of the protective fabric this produces, that in turn indicates the vital aspect of corporeality in politics. Secondly, weaving as a paradigmatic example of the art of statesmanship presents a way of incorporating different entities and joining diverse threads into a cohesive unity, without reducing them to a form of sameness as mere mathematical counting would. These two aspects are in turn connected to an emphasis on the importance in good statesmanship of recognizing the specificity of the occasion (kairos) and the variety and difference of the innumerable qualities to be interlaced in weaving the fabric of a good society

Aesthetics · Art · Epistemology · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Variety (cybernetics · Weaving · Artificial Intelligence · Classical Antiquity Studies · Classical Philosophy and Thought · Computer Science · Engineering · Law · Mechanical Engineering · Philosophy · Seventeenth-Century Political and Philosophical Thought

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