THE PATHOS OF KNOWLEDGE: ON THE DIALECTICAL PLAY OF UNITY AND GOODNESS IN PLATO’S STATESMAN

Abstract

In Statesman, Plato stages a dialectical approach on one of his ‘unwritten doctrines,’ “that the good is one,” in the voice of his literary creation, the Eleatic Visitor. Though the dialogue begins by positing political philosophy as the concern for the ‘oneness’ of a properly political knowledge, the implicit drama and logic of the dialogue follows a series of successive attempts to reformulate the very structure and content of this ‘unity’ in order to accommodate and include the ever-broadening scope of political reality. The dialogue culminates in the dialectical realization that the philosopher is unable to account for the uniqueness of the statesman’s knowledge and the unity of political life in abstraction from the question of the goodness of this unity. Goodness, particularly the discernment of virtue in the dialogue of souls, comes to define the content both of the statesman’s knowledge and of the city’s unity.