New Perspectives on Plato’s Internal Critique of the Athenian Politeia

Plato’s diagnosis of the pathologies of political freedom in Athens has sparked renewed interest, in classical scholarship (Fissel 2011; Arruzza 2018; Jordovic 2019) and beyond (Honneth 2015). These analyses have focused on one of the most visual passages in Plato: the description of democracy’s fall into servitude in book 8 of the Republic (557a2-570c8). The passage explicitly traces democracy’s doom to its excessive love of freedom (562b9-c3).

This paper explores neglected dimensions of Plato’s invocation of the institutions and practices of democratic Athens, embedded in his depiction of the dynamics of each city set within what G.R.F.

In recent years several public commentators have suggested that we are at the beginning of an era of political shamelessness in Western democracies. Lack of a sense of shame has been used to characterize the political behavior, statements, and actions of a number of leaders, who have broken with what are considered socially accepted norms of public and private behavior. Yet, accusations of shamelessness raise a set of complicated questions, such as the difference between shamelessness and anti-conformism or the social and cultural role played by shame in disciplining dissident behavior.

Consider the following ways of appointing political officials.

Plato’s Statesman aims at defining the true art of statesmanship. Section 291a-303d is devoted to distinguishing the true statesman from all politicians acting in existing constitutions, for ‘those who participate in all these constitutions’ must be removed ‘as not being statesmen (πολιτικούς) but experts in faction (στασιαστικούς)’ (Plt. 303c).