Statesman

Summary

The Statesman (Politikos) is one of Plato's late dialogues, usually dated to the 360s or 350s BC. It continues the conversation of the Sophist, held the day before: a visitor from Elea, a follower of Parmenides, has defined the sophist, and now, at Socrates' request, he undertakes to define the statesman or king. His partner is a young Athenian also named Socrates, a friend of Theaetetus, while the elder Socrates and the mathematician Theodorus listen. The library text is Benjamin Jowett's translation of 1892, preceded by his long Introduction and Analysis. The Stranger begins with the method of division, cutting knowledge into theoretical and practical, directive and critical, and narrowing the class until the statesman appears as the herdsman of a herd of tame, hornless, two-footed animals. The result is unsatisfying, because merchants, farmers, physicians and trainers all claim to care for the human herd, and because the image of a shepherd fits a god better than a man. To show the error the Stranger tells a great myth. In the age of Cronos the god himself steered the universe, men sprang from the earth and grew younger rather than older, and every creature had a divine shepherd and lived without toil, cities or families. Then the pilot of the universe let go the helm, and the world, turning back on its own course, gradually forgot its maker's instruction and slid toward disorder until the god resumed control. Human rulers belong to our age, the age of Zeus, and are men caring for men, not gods tending flocks. The Stranger then uses weaving as a model, distinguishing the art itself from its many contributory arts. On that pattern he separates the statesman from those who supply the city's tools and goods, from servants and officials, from priests and diviners, and finally from the greatest sophists, the counterfeit politicians who rule existing cities. A long digression on measure distinguishes measurement by relative size from measurement by the due mean, the standard of every art. The central argument concerns law. True kingship is a science, possessed by one or a very few, and the ruler who has it, like a physician or a pilot, could rule without written laws. Law is like an obstinate and ignorant tyrant, unable to fit every case. Yet since true statesmen are rare, cities must keep their laws strictly as a second best. The Stranger ranks six constitutions: rule by one, by few and by many, each lawful or lawless. Lawful monarchy is the best, tyranny the worst, and democracy the worst of the lawful and the best of the lawless. Finally the statesman is separated from the general, the judge and the orator, whose arts he directs. His own work is royal weaving: by education and by marriages he joins the courageous and the temperate natures, which tend to drift apart, into one fabric of the city.

Top Lessons

• Ruling is a kind of knowledge

  The Stranger insists that the mark of a true ruler is not birth, wealth, numbers or the consent of the ruled, but knowledge of how to care for a city. Like a physician or a pilot, the true statesman is judged by whether he makes those in his care better. This sets a high standard against which every actual government is measured.

• Law as a second best

  Written laws are too general to fit every case, and the Stranger compares them to an obstinate tyrant who will not listen. Yet because true statesmen are almost never found, a city does best to hold strictly to laws that came from experience and counsel. The dialogue honours both the ideal of wise rule and the practical safety of law.

• Weaving opposite virtues together

  Courage and temperance, both good, can pull people apart; the bold find the gentle sluggish, the gentle find the bold violent, and each type marries its own kind until it grows extreme. The statesman's highest work is to bind these natures together by shared convictions about the good and by marriage, so that the city has both energy and restraint.

• Myth and method in the search for truth

  The Statesman combines dry, step-by-step division with one of Plato's grandest myths. The myth corrects an error the method had made: the human ruler is not a god herding sheep. The dialogue shows that patient analysis and imaginative story can serve the same inquiry.

Verified Quotes

Medical Lens

Medicine is the Statesman's most important analogy for ruling. The Stranger argues that a physician is a physician because of his knowledge, whether he treats patients with or against their will, by cutting, burning or other painful remedies, and whether he follows written rules or not; so too the true ruler. He then imagines a city that, distrusting doctors and pilots, summons an assembly of laymen to vote rules for treatment and navigation, inscribes them on tablets, audits practitioners each year and punishes anyone who inquires beyond the written code. The passage is a vivid fourth-century picture of the tension Plato sees between expert judgment and fixed regulation, and it can be read alongside Hippocratic concern for adjusting treatment to the individual patient and season. Plato is using medicine to think about politics, so the passages tell us about Greek attitudes to physicians, consent and written prescriptions rather than about clinical practice in detail. The herdsman of the opening division is also called the physician, midwife and musician of his flock.

• 267e–268b

  Rivals of the royal herdsman include physicians and trainers, while the true herdsman is himself the physician and midwife of his flock.

• 293a–c

  The physician who heals with or against the patient's will, by cutting or burning, as the model of rule by knowledge.

• 295b–296c

  A physician or trainer going into a far country leaves written notes for his patients, and on his return should be free to change them if circumstances have changed.

• 298a–299e

  The thought experiment of an assembly of laymen legislating rules for medicine and navigation, with annual audits and penalties for inquiry beyond the written code.