The Platonic Political Art

In this first comprehensive treatment of Platos political thought in a long time, John Wallach offers a "critical historicist" interpretation of Plato. Wallach shows how Platos theory, while a radical critique of the conventional ethical and political practice of his own era, can be seen as having the potential for contributing to democratic discourse about ethics and politics today. The author argues that Plato articulates and "solves" his Socratic Problem in his various dialogues in different but potentially complementary ways. The book effectively extracts Plato from the straightjacket of Platonism and from the interpretive perspectives of the past fifty yearsprincipally those of Karl Popper, Leo Strauss, Hannah Arendt, M. I. Finley, Jacques Derrida, and Gregory Vlastos. The authors distinctive approach for understanding Platoand, he argues, for the history of political theory in generalcan inform contemporary theorizing about democracy, opening pathways for criticizing democracy on behalf of virtue, justice, and democracy itself.