Utopian hermeneutics: Plato’s dialogues and the legacy of aporia (original) (raw)
Related papers
“Plato and Utopia: Philosophy, Power, and Practicability in Plato’s Republic”
in Pierre Destrée, Jan Opsomer and Geert Roskam (eds), Utopias in Ancient Thought. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2021
What will we do when we get there? Utopia and Dicing in Greek Comedy 41 Thornton C. Lockwood 3 What Thomas More learned from Herodotus about Utopia 57 Carol Atack 4 Temporality and utopia in Xenophon and Isocrates 77 Julia Annas 5 Plato's ideal society and Utopia 103 Dimitri El Murr 6 Plato and Utopia: Philosophy, Power, and Practicability in Plato's Republic 121 Antony Hatzistavrou 7 Plato and the utopia within us 145 Christoph Horn 8 Aristotle's 'City of our Prayers' within the History of Political Utopianism 167 Suzanne Husson 9 Utopia and the quest for autarkeia 185 G. Reydams-Schils 10 Were the later Stoics anti-utopians? 199
Reading the Republic: Is Utopianism Redundant?
The aim of this article is to present a reading of Plato's utopianism, as expressed mainly through the 'big letters' of the Republic, which will lead us beyond Karl Popper's and Leo Strauss' modernist understandings of Plato and of his world. The author argues that, despite the 'transcendent' aspects of Platonic utopianism, the ideal city should be understood neither as a blueprint to be realized through some totalitarian political project nor as a mere fiction that cannot by definition give rise to a viable existential prospect. The power of Platonic utopianism lies in its articulation to a value-laden cosmological continuum, which may be understood in terms of the self -instituting (through political persuasion and story-telling activites, among others) capacities of the ancient Greek city. The utopian perspective is marked by shareability of political reason and by mutuality between participants in a common discursive venture rather than by individualist authoritarian projections or by harmless (that is, nonpolitical in its orientation and ideological in its repercussions) day-dreaming. Even if Plato's philosophical project aspires to transcend the boundaries of the ancient Greek cosmos, Platonic politics cannot be separated from its historical context, that is, the circumstances that gave rise to philosophy as a silent perhaps, but revolutionary in it intentions, political act.
The Dialectic Interplay between Utopia and History: Plato's The Republic and Thomas More's Utopia
Depictions of Utopias in English (pp: 17-38) (ISBN: 9789754914436), 2017
Utopias stem from the hope for better circumstances to live in and to provide alternative lands replacing discontent conditions of their related eras. While one of the first examples of the utopia genre, "The Republic" (c. 380 BC) by Plato focusing on the nature of justice mirrors Athens in the first quarter of the fourth century BC, "Utopia" (1516) by Sir Thomas More meditating on the nature of politics projects England in the early sixteenth century. The characteristics of these fictive narratives essentially refer to the historical realities of both the Athenian society and the English one. The imagined lands portrayed by Plato and More focus on the political turmoil and social upheaval of their eras; thus, the authors’ attempt to refine and re-shape the systems and institutions in their real lands by means of idealised conditions which are fundamentally shaped by justice and philosophy. At that point, the relationship between the concepts of history and utopia needs to be examined because these two concepts are mostly accepted as opposite notions. It is a common understanding that history is concerned with the past and utopia is concerned with the future. For that reason, history is perceived as the ‘other’ of utopia which could potentially create positively different experiences in the future of the society in question. The aim of this paper is, first, to place a particular emphasis on the backgrounds of the primary representative utopias by Plato and More and to reveal distinctive instances about the connections between utopian proposals and historical facts. Then, the go-between/intermediary notion of utopia in terms of benefiting from the past events will be analysed, along with examining historical problems with the recommendations and reformative solutions for the future given in these utopias.
UTOPIA AND PESSIMISM IN PLATOS´ REPUBLIC
UNIVERSIDADE ESTADUAL DE CAMPINAS, 2021
ABSTRACT: This work addresses the controversial issue of the utopian nature of Plato's Republic. The thesis is that it is legitimate to consider the Republic as the first utopia in the history of Western literature only if it is considered, simultaneously, as the first critique of utopia in the history of Western literature. The core of the argument is that the twofold paradigm (psychological and political) present in the book is counteracted by a pessimistic philosophical position, and that this is the reason why the utopian nature of the Republic is problematic. The first chapter concentrates on the use of mockery and ridicule as strategies to refrain a set of naïve and optimistic positions suggested by Socrates about human motivation. These dramatic gestures constitute, even if implicit, are a good ground for pessimism. The second chapter focuses on how, in crucial moments of the dialogue – namely: the allegory of the Cave, the theory of the tripartite soul and the simile of the Divided Line - Socrates himself advances philosophical theories with an explicit pessimistic content. The third chapter concentrates on philosophical pessimism as such, trying to expound its roots and its connection with Plato´s Republic. The conclusion will be that, far from constituting a paradox or a contradiction, the concomitancy of utopia and pessimism in the Republic constitutes a valid philosophical argument or, better, a coherent philosophical exercise, which is in no way conclusive, but intentionally open towards further, and perhaps conciliating, interpretations: the main message lies rather in a methodological recommendation regarding the search for a better psychological and political state than in definitive prescriptions in relation to those subjects or an equally consolidated path for their realization. Plato embarks on the construction of the ideal, but invites the reader to perform a serious critique of that very ideal, a critique based on an exhaustive consideration of the limitations of human condition and experience.
Analecta Hermeneutica, 2021
The aim of this article is to explore Gadamer’s early reflections on Plato’s utopian thought and its potential topicality. In the following section, I will show how areté, understood as a hermeneutical and existential virtue, is dialectically related to ethics and politics in Gadamer’s phenomenological reception of Plato’s philosophy. I argue that, in Gadamer’s eyes, Socratic-Platonic self-understanding enables human beings to be aware of their political responsibilities, to recognize how they are existentially and mutually related to the other, and to clarify dialectically their own existential possibilities in order to transcend their inherited world of values. In the third section, I aim to show how these are the grounds on which Gadamer’s initial thoughts on the utopian dimension of Platonic political philosophy developed, mainly through his further critical account of the works on the German “political Plato” published in Germany between 1927 and 1933, i.e., Kurt Singer’s Platon, der Gründer (1927), Julius Stenzel’s Platon. Der Erzieher (1928), and Kurt von Hildendrandt‘s Platon, Der Kampf des Geistes um die Macht (1933). Then, in the fourth section, I will express my own views on the relevance of reconsidering how the notions of areté, phrónesis, and andreía are already related in Plato’s dialogues, complementing the insights on Gadamer’s interpretation of areté in section two. My purpose is to go beyond Gadamer’s reading and provide us with a more solid ground to address his late reflections on political courage and its relations with his dialectical understanding of Platonic utopia as a myth. Therefore, I will explore the problem of civil disobedience, a topic that was actually not at the centre of Gadamer’s concerns, as a genuine mode of utopian political action which can enact a true deviation from the sophistic pólis and its understanding of power. Finally, in the conclusion, I will characterize Gadamer’s portrait of Platonic utopia as a dialectical myth which enables human beings to recognize when politics are being reduced to mere power abuse by the State and also suggest why Gadamer’s approach to utopias is still relevant today
Utopianism: Literary and Political
Utopian Horizons: Ideology, Politics, Literature, 2017
The introduction to the edited volume Utopian Horizons (CEU Press, Budapest and New York, 2017) discusses the problems arising during the analysis of utopianism, the necessity of the coopration of literary scholars, political scientist and historians of ideas. These disciplines treat certain concepts, such as fictionality or the role of the author differently. An excerpt is uploaded, for a full text contact CEU Press or email the author.
Morus (English translation, originally in Portuguese), 2008
This work intends to present Plato’s Republic as an ancient source of the utopian tradition,not only for its project to found a just city in speech, but also for its project to justify the legitimacy of this literary/philosophical genre mostly through considerations about the possibility of this political form. The thread to guide us is the platonic usage of the concept of dunamis (power) and its cognate adjective (dunaton) through two central axes: i) The argument that what is being drawn with this speech that founds cities – which despite of the anachronism we will call utopian – is a structure of political power based on the human power to prevent mistakes through knowledge. If this is not a really infallible power, this does not undermine revoke the capacity of speech to unveil the consequences that would follow from this hypothesis. ii) It is stated in the text that the just city there built does not exist, did not exist and will not exist, but lies like a model for anyone who would take it as a reference for one’s own actions. This point indicates a carving of the ordinary sense of “possible”, which no longer refers to the practical effectiveness of a whole system, but now denotes a properly metaphysical reference that can be accomplished in different degrees. In the intersection of these two lines of inquiry lies the definition of the genre of philosophy, understood as a speech that longs for immunity from the making of mistakes even if aware of its impossibility. In this scenario, it seems reasonable to conclude that the Republic inaugurates a discursive project defined as philosophy which will function like a pattern for the utopian genre that will be developed later on. Key words: Republic, Plato, dunamis, dunaton