Tae-Yeoun Keum's "Plato and the Mythic Tradition in Political Thought"

Session Submission Type: Virtual Author meet critics

Session Description

This author-meets-critics panel brings together a diverse group of political theorists to discuss Tae-Yeoun Keum's recently published book, Plato and the Mythic Tradition in Political Thought (Harvard University Press, 2020). The panelists include scholars of ancient political theory and its reception, scholars of rhetoric and of the political imagination, as well as scholars interrogating the dynamics of canonicity.

In Plato and the Mythic Tradition in Political Thought, Keum offers a new account of Plato and his legacy. By recovering a tradition of authors who found Plato’s myths just as significant and worthy of emulation as his arguments, she also challenges the conventional opposition between myth and reason in political theory.

We have secured provisional commitments from Bryan Garsten (Yale), Kinch Hoekstra (Berkeley), Jennie Ikuta (Missouri), Melissa Lane (Princeton), Sophie Smith (Oxford).

Book Abstract:
Plato and the Mythic Tradition in Political Thought examines a tradition of political thinkers who sought to understand the place of myth in politics, and who in particular turned to Plato for guidance in their efforts.

At different junctures in the history of the reception of Plato, the myths that Plato wrote inspired some of his most significant readers to imitate them in their own writing, and to regard them as a vital touchstone for theoretical reflection on the relationship between myth, philosophy, and politics. Together, their efforts constituted a coherent, specifically Platonic tradition of writing and thinking about myth. If Plato has long been celebrated for making reasoned argument the foundation of philosophy, this book recovers a neglected tradition in the reception of Plato, in a discipline dominated by a different aspect of both Plato and his legacy.

In turn, a revised understanding of Plato’s legacy on these terms opens up a broader theoretical discourse concerning the role of myth in political thought. Myth is often construed as the opposite of reason, and is thought to be alternately irrelevant to, or undesirable in, a politics committed to ideals of rational progress. Plato and the Mythic Tradition challenges this prevailing bias. It shows how some of the most pivotal figures in the history of political thought have perennially raised the question of whether there might be a more nuanced, constructive role for myth to play in political theory.

Sub Unit

• Division 1: Political Thought and Philosophy

Chair

• Jennie Choi Ikuta University of Missouri-Columbia

Presenters

• Bryan Garsten Yale University

• Kinch Hoekstra University of California, Berkeley

• Melissa Lane Princeton University

• Sophie Smith University of Oxford

• Tae-Yeoun Keum University of California, Santa Barbara