Chaos and Control: Reading Plato's Politicus

Abstract

On first reading, the Politicus appears a dismal dialogue (compared, for example, to the immediacy of both the philosophy and the drama of the Theaetetus). This conversation between the Eleatic Stranger and the hopelessly complaisant Young Socrates seems unlikely to capture our imagination; the lengthy discussion of collection and division may do little for our understanding of dialectic; and even the joke (at 266c, a pun on being a pig and coming last which is marginally more amusing in Greek) will leave us cold. It may be hardly surprising that weary dialogue, as Gilbert Ryle called it, has been left alone by scholars. However a recent Symposium Platonicum has revived interest in the Politicus;2 this generated two volumes of papers given at the Symposium and, more importantly, a new translation with commentary by Christopher Rowe.3 The new OCT, moreover, gives a freshly edited text.4 This material makes it immediately clear that the Politicus should not be dismissed out of hand even although it stands revealed as an extremely complex composition, both from the literary and from the philosophical point of view.