Plato's Statesman A Philosophical Discussion

Plato's Statesman, A Philosophical Discussion, is the second volume in the Plato Dialogue Project series. Like the volume before it, Plato's Philebus, A Philosophical Discussion, it offers a comprehensive philosophical analysis of the entire dialogue it treats. The present volume divides the Statesman into argumentatively self-contained sections, each one of which is scrutinized thoroughly.

This style of treatment proves particularly useful for the Statesman, an acutely perplexing dialogue that deals with many and seemingly unconnected themes-such as leadership of a state and the best from of constitution (politeia), philosophical methodology and epistemology, the doctrine of due measure (to metrion), the dialectical practice of collection and division and ancillary investigative methods such as the use of myth and models (paradeigmata).

The present volume discusses all issues the dialogue raises while abstaining from making an overarching claim on the dialogue as a whole, other than the one implied by the notion that all its parts are interrelated, equally important philosophically, and together constitute a unified whole. The aim is to bring to the forefront each one of the dialogue's many themes and devote to it the attention that will permit it to stake its claim to be part of a unified philosophical work. In this respect, the present volume challenges the readers to come to their own view on how the dialogue hangs together as a whole, but only after having gone through a comprehensive philosophical discussion of and reflection on its constitutive parts.

Panos Dimas, Professor of Philosophy, University of Oslo,Melissa Lane, Class of 1943 Professor of Politics, Princeton University,Susan Sauv? Meyer, Professor of Philosophy, Department of Philosophy, Univ of Pennsylvania

Panos Dimas is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Oslo, and chair of the Steering Board of the Plato Dialogue Project. He is a former Mellon Graduate Fellow, Princeton, Fellow at Seeger Centre for Hellenic Studies, Princeton; and Director of the Norwegian School at Athens. He works primarily in Ancient Philosophy, in the areas of Metaphysics, Epistemology, Ethics, and has published several articles on Plato, Aristotle, and Epicurus.


Melissa Lane is the Class of 1943 Professor of Politics, Director of the University Center for Human Values, and associated faculty in Classics and in Philosophy, at Princeton University. A Guggenheim Fellow in classics, she taught previously at Cambridge, and has held visiting positions at the American Academy in Rome, ANU, Auckland, Harvard, Oxford, and Stanford.


Susan Sauv? Meyer is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania and a former editor of the journal Archiv f?r Geschichte der Philosophie. Her publications include Aristotle on Moral Responsibility (Blackwell 1993; 2011 OUP), Ancient Ethics (Routledge 2008), and Plato: Laws, Books 1 and 2 in the Clarendon Plato Series (OUP 2015).

1. Introduction
The significance of Plato's Statesman, Panos Dimas
Structure and methods of the dialogue, Susan Sauv? Meyer
An overview of this volume, Melissa Lane
2. Trailhead: 257a1-259d6, Gavin Lawrence
3. Defining the statesman by division: 259d7-268d4, Fabi?n Mi?
4. The myth and what it achieves: 268d5-277c6, G?bor Betegh
5. Learning from models: 277c7-283a9, David Bronstein
6. Plato on normative measurement: 283b1-287b3, Rachel Barney
7. Civic function and the taxonomy of skills: 287b4-290e9, Amber D. Carpenter
8. Above the law and out for justice: 291a1-297b4, Franco V. Trivigno
9. Ruling with (and without) laws: 297b5-303d3, Christoph Horn
10. Statecraft as a ruling, caring, and weaving dunamis: 303d4-305e7, Melissa Lane
11. Weaving together natural courage and moderation: 305e8-308b9, Rachana Kamtekar
12. Kingly intertwinement: 308b10-311c10, Dimitri El Murr