Statesmanship in light of the limits of political science

• In Event: Moral and Theoretical Underpinnings of Political Life

Abstract

In Plato’s Statesman, Socrates quietly observes as the Eleatic Stranger, in response to a question that Socrates has posed to him, gives an account of political science and the art to which that science gives rise. The political art, according to the Stranger, is a puzzling, even seemingly facile, account of harmonizing the manly with the moderate types of human beings. This paper explains the Stranger’s account of statesmanship in light of his account of the problem of political science that precedes it. It further begins to address whether what we know of Socrates’ own political art (of which he claims he is the only true practitioner) indicates whether Socrates shares the Stranger’s understanding of political science.

Author

• Linda Rabieh, Massachusetts Institute of Technology