Plato and democracy’s ambiguous beauty (ii): philosophy and power

nº20 (May, 2017) • Archai: As Origens do Pensamento Ocidental

Autor: Alexandre Franco de Sá

Resumo:

The opposition between philosophy and philodoxy in Plato’s thought seems to suggest that philosophy could be taken, at first sight, as the sketch of an alternative political project to democracy. If democracy lies on the crowd’s power, and the opinions (doxai) current among it, philosophy would rest on philosopher’s power, i.e. on the power of those who possess the “art of ruling”. The present paper focuses on the insufficiency of this first approach and questions the relationship between philosophy and power. We will argue that Plato places this relationship on a twofold notion. On the one hand, the notion that if philosophy would have enough power to oppose the democratic city, this power, consisting in absolute tyranny, would mean the corruption of philosophy as such. On the other hand, the notion that if philosophy rest exclusively on its arguments with no relationship with power whatsoever, it would be simply powerless and have no place within the polis.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.14195/1984-249X_20_1

Texto Completo: http://periodicos.unb.br/index.php/archai/article/view/3865/3535

Palavras-Chave: Democracy,Multitude,Philodoxy, Tyranny,Power

Archai: As Origens do Pensamento Ocidental

Archai: Journal on the origins of Ancient Thought is published three times a year by Archai UNESCO Chair (University of Brasilia, Brazil).

It is published in Brazil (University of Brasília/Annablume) and in Portugal (Coimbra University Press, IUC), both printed and electronic free online access.

All manuscripts will undergo blind-review by peers.

Archai Journal is committed to a speedy and author-friendly review process; Authors can expect to receive notification the editorial decision within four months.

It is indexed by Web of Science - ESCI (Emerging Sources Citation Index), SciELO, European Reference Index for the Humanities and Social Sciences (ERIH Plus), L’Année Philologique, Philosopher‘s Index, DOAJ, Phil Brasil, Latindex, Cengage Learning, Google Schoolar, BASE, Diadorim, PKP Index and Portal de Periódicos da CAPES. It has Impact Factor 5.171 in the Scientific Journal Impact Factor and it got the second best grade (A2) of its field (Philosophy) in the latest Qualis CAPES evaluation.