There are three major themes in the dialogue thought to be Plato’s Statesman: the nature of statesmanship, the difference between perfect and less than perfect regimes and the method of division. In this paper I focus on the first two themes. I argue, first, that the dialogue makes a plausible case for what it takes to be a wise statesman. In doing so, I play down the importance of the second theme: the difference between regimes. In fact, I consider this (...) discussion to be deeply flawed and even irrelevant to the argument of the first. My main purpose is to provide a critical analysis of the political theory articulated in the dialogue. My analysis is made plausible by abandoning the traditional view that the Statesman was written Plato in its entirety as a unified whole. In my view, a close reading of the text supports the hypothesis that it is, at best, semi-authentic; namely, that it is most likely a collage of fragments written at different times by Plato and other members of the Academy. (shrink)

In the wake of a series of corporate scandals, there has been a growing call for authentic leadership in order to ensure ethical conduct in contemporary organizations. Authentic leadership, however, depends upon the ability to draw a distinction between the authentic and inauthentic leader. This paper uses Deleuze’s discussion of Platonism as a point of departure for critically scrutinizing the problem of authenticating the leader—drawing a distinction between authentic and inauthentic leaders. This will be done through a reading of Bill (...) George’s book Authentic Leadership. Informed by Deleuze’s inverted Platonism, the paper challenges the practice by which authentic leaders are distinguished from inauthentic leaders. In conclusion, the paper suggests that an adequate concept of authentic leadership should consider how ethics can occur when the authentic leader is able to critically reflect his or her own value-commitments. (shrink)

Plato's Republic lurks in cybernetics, a word popularly attributed to US American mathematician Norbert Wiener (1894–1964). In his accounts of how he came up with it, however, Wiener never mentions Plato, though he does note it was formed from the ancient Greek word kubernētēs (navigator). Among the earliest popular books about the cybernetics craze are three published in France, and their authors show a special interest in the origin of cybernetics. In something like learned rebukes to Wiener, all three books (...) credit Plato with significant use of kubernē-based terms. This article presents evidence, one, that Wiener knows well he has chosen a word with a Platonic history and, two, that Wiener deems the technical and social climate of ancient Athens (and of the Republic) instructive only as an anti-model for the mid-20th-century United States and so does not feel compelled to associate cybernetics with Plato. Instead, Wiener focuses on the challenges cybernetics and automation pose for his own engineering-oriented, capitalist, multiracial, democratic republic. Wiener's decisions not to use Plato as an authorizing force and not to put ancient Athens on a pedestal merit recognition, since subsequent writers link ancient Athens with cybernation via a presumption that cybernation will enable and fully democratize the sort of leisure activities, including thinking and participation in public life, deemed by some to be emblematic of ancient Athens. (shrink)

Michael Naas’s Plato and the Invention of Life, which I review in this essay, formulates the question that is at the core of Plato’s thought. This question is: What is life? Naas’s inquiry into life indicates a field for prolific research in ancient and continental philosophy, as it calls on us to rethink the difference, the priority, and the relationship between beings and Being. Our understanding of this coupling, which first set into motion the “gigantomachia” of Western philosophy, depends on (...) retracing Plato’s view of life which, as Naas brilliantly shows through recourse to Derrida, is invested with death through and through. (shrink)

The article researches the historical transformation of the dichotomy of civilization and barbarism, which originally in ancient Greece did not have a pejorative connotation. This dichotomy has become relevant today to justify the classification of states according to their degree of acceptance of “civilization standards,” which are understood as the standards of the European model of development. The main features of the stereotype of the divide between civilization and barbarism, which took shape in the Roman era, have survived to the (...) present. The premise of “civilizational superiority” of European culture is accompanied by a moral depreciation of other civilizations, turning a barbarian into an enemy of civilization with an explicit racist connotation. Civilization itself is seen as a “vaccination” in the process of missionary work. There emerges the concept of “Eastern barbarism,” coupled with the concepts of terra nullis and the innate irrational behavior of the population of these countries, which justify the seizing of territories for a “more rational” resource management. This activity is historically accompanied by colonization and, in the modern world, by forceful forms of “promoting democracy.” According to the logic of the divide between civilization and barbarism, non-Western countries are doomed to imitate and perpetually fall behind, which causes the disunity of society and internal hostility of “second-rate Europeanized” nations. The Western mentoring has transformed from protectorate to the creation of governance structures that are headed by Western-educated local elites and are designed to change the cultural patterns of society. There was a conception that the world is divided into spheres, in the first circle of which there is a progressive civilized European world, followed by a number of countries similar in structure and values to the European model, and then there is a sphere of barbarism and backwardness. In the contemporary version, this theory presumes the division of states into “pre-modern,” modern, and post-modern states. It the conclusion, it is noted that this divide contradicts to the humane essence of culture and civilization process. (shrink)