Du pastorat divin au gouvernement humain Sur la genèse et les limites de la politique dans le Politique de Platon

Abstract

The Statesman can be considered one of the most difficult platonic texts to read. However, if one analyzes the work carefully, it becomes easy to realize that it gives us, through the development of a dialectical research centered on the definition of the political man (πολιτικὸς ἀνήρ), a precious philosophical teaching on the nature of the politics and its inherently human character, teaching that should be taken into account not only for the understanding of the meaning of this particular dialogue but also for the understanding of platonic political theory as a whole. In this article, we will try to understand this aspect of the Statesman by analyzing two parts of the text that are of fundamental importance to its economy: that relating to the myth of Kronos (268d-277c) and that devoted to the theory of the best regime (292d- 303 d).