Hey. Have you ever wondered who such a politician is?
How to classify them and what they should to do?
Let us turn to the Dialogues of Socrates.
More specifically, to the “Statesman” one of the 3 dialogs of the “State” cycle.
It all starts with the fact that Theodore, this guy, in his speech equates the philosopher and the politician.
This is the opening of the whole dialogue.
Socrates indicates the mistake and Theodore asks the stranger to make out essentially a politician and a philosopher.
The stranger tries to attribute the science of reign to one of the dominant groups: practical (needlework) and cognitive(knowledge)
The stranger conclude that the Science of reign refers to the second group
Next comes a few divisions of reign groups
Command (active participant) and Judgment (outside participant)
The king is an active participant
And the kings command for producing living or lifeless object
Then, after agreeing on the fact that the king commands living objects which can be either one creature or an entire herd,
Young Socrates proposes the idea to divide them into human herds and ‘others’.
but Stranger criticizes this idea and calls it too ‘manly and straightforward’.
After some more attempts, they come to the conclusion that all this divisions will be wrong
as the king is supposed to be specific human being and to be above all other people
After this Stranger proposes to distract from all this divisions and tells a tale
about the ages when the king of time Kronos lived, that he thinks will help finally to define a statesman.
As a morale of this story Stranger says
that the world is divine and at the same time it is body that is guided by god.
At this times its flow of life is right and human souls are living easy and free life,
but in the contrast when the world is not guided, it becomes more random and uncertain
and human souls are suffering from this uncertanty, contrasting the times of Kronos
Stranger concludes by this stating that this happens because of
“fate and lust inherent in the cosmos” for he is incorporeal and at the same time involved in the body.
Previous consideration of world leaders is recognized as naive and wrong.
A true politician is measured by the greatness of his task,
which can be compared with the structure of the Kronos world
Then, conversation is followed by a comparison of political art with weaving,
which allows to divide art to auxiliary and producing, dividing weaving to the preparation and weaving itself
This example shows isolation of the politician from the auxiliary areas.
After that the art of the political administration is delimited from the objectives of the slave class,
from economic activity and from the activity of the people that are close to the government,
from the priesthood and from such royal authority, which have power by inheritance
Also, they introduce the delimitation of political art from five possible types of political system,
such as tyranny, monarchy, aristocracy, oligarchy and democracy.
Finally, the art of politician is defined as a knowledge of managing people.
The following is a discussion of the doctrine of less perfect, imitative forms of government,
which require strict obedience to laws.
Plato notes the possibility of abuse of the art of government
and believes that managers must also act within the law, be verified and punished in case of violations.
Plato identifies 3 main forms of government with their distorted versions:
royalty and tyranny, oligarchy and aristocracy, democracy and anarchy.
After that, in the continuation of the search for true political knowledge, using the example of metal cleaning,
he claims the need for a clear separation of this knowledge.
On the example of musical practice and theory, he clarifies the difference
between practical teaching science and science, which shows whether in each case it is necessary to learn or not and how to learn.
And he calls it - the commanding science.
In addition, a distinction is made between politics and oratory, martial art, jurisprudence, and that all these are executive and creative arts,
not governing ones, and true political art must intertwine it all.
Finally, Plato in his Socratic dialog defines statesman as quintessence of two virtues -
fortitude and intellect.
At the same time he shows that states that are controlled only by intellect or only by fortitude are doomed to slavery.
And history shows that he was right.
Let us look at the two largest and richest Greek policies Athens and Sparta.
As everyone knows the first one was a Centre of intelligence and the culture
and the other one was a Centre of military power, so that we can say that the first was managed by the intellect and the last by fortitude
Spartans because of the envy to the Athens were unleashed an internecine war.
Athens due to military weaknesses lose this war
and Sparta due to lack of knowledge in public administration doesn’t recognize the growing power of their neighbourhood Macedonia,
which led to the weakening of Greece and capturing it by Philip || Macedonian.
Ellins for a long time lost their independence.
Now they became only a part of other empires.
So that Plato thinks that the state should be managed not only by the right statesman,
but it also should take care of properly ordered and excluding the split of society kinship ties.
