Plato's Statesman: A Philosophical Discussion

Plato's Statesman, A Philosophical Discussion, is the second volume in the Plato Dialogue Project series. It provides a comprehensive philosophical analysis of the dialogue, dividing it into self-contained sections and examining each theme in detail. The aim is to explore the interconnectedness of all the dialogue's parts and to encourage readers to form their own views on how they fit together as a unified philosophical work.

Format: Hardback
Length: 304 pages
Publication date: 13 July 2021
Publisher: Oxford University Press

Plato's Statesman, A Philosophical Discussion, is the second installment in the Plato Dialogue Project series. Similar to its predecessor, Plato's Philebus, A Philosophical Discussion, it provides a comprehensive philosophical examination of the entire dialogue it treats. The present volume organizes the Statesman into argumentatively self-contained sections, each of which is meticulously scrutinized. This treatment style proves particularly valuable for the Statesman, an intricate dialogue that explores numerous and seemingly unrelated themes, including state leadership and the ideal constitution (politeia), philosophical methodology and epistemology, the doctrine of due measure (to metrion), dialectical practice of collection and division, and ancillary investigative methods such as the use of myth and models (paradeigmata). The present volume addresses all the issues raised in the dialogue while refraining from making a overarching claim on the dialogue as a whole, other than the one implied by the notion that all its parts are interconnected, equally important philosophically, and collectively constitute a unified whole. The objective is to bring to the forefront each one of the dialogue's numerous themes and provide them with the attention necessary for them to establish their claim as part of a cohesive philosophical work. In this regard, the present volume challenges the readers to form their own interpretation of how the dialogue coheres as a whole, only after having undergone a thorough philosophical discussion and reflection on its constituent parts.

Weight: 588g
Dimension: 162 x 243 x 28 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780192898296