Tópicos de filosofia política em Platão: um enfoque contemporâneo

Abstract

The present thesis follows the path indicated by Mario Vegetti, by understanding the figure of the political Plato concerning the ideological issues that affect the interpretation of the Platonic text itself, utilizing mainly three dialogues, Republic, Laws, and Statesman. Due to this critical key, the first part makes a brief survey of the main arguments criticized since Antiquity, from Aristophanes’ comedy and Aristotle’s refutation to Neoplatonism and the Byzantine period, but jumping straight to the 20th century and the Cold War, which contributed to the molding of biased readings due to the political thought of commentators such as Karl Popper and Leo Strauss, as well as highlighting the themes of Ancient History that were influenced by Karl Marx’s philosophy, especially the concept of social class employed in ancient societies. This is, therefore, an exploratory research that followed a thematic axis of analysis, based on themes that still stir our contemporary curiosity, which are interdependent and intertwined at various moments, aiming to better understand the main points of political issues in Plato. The discussion then goes through varied subjects, such as the manifestation of power through the persuasion of discourse or the necessary violence of coercion; the legitimacy of authority and the role of guardians and legislators; the ideology and the models of the cities between the Kallipolis paradigm and Magnesia; the criticism of democracy in relation to the affections and the parallel between soul and city; the Greek colonization and its influence in the elaboration of a normative utopia for the foundation of future societies where justice would be better distributed; gender equality and the abolition of the traditional family model; the criticism of property and the communism of goods and, finally, slavery and the contempt for the category of manual labor. As a result, the great theoretical differential of this work is the historical contextualization performed when approaching Platonic Political Philosophy, because it is this attitude that guarantees understanding Plato within the limits of his time, without falling into a shallow anachronism, nor into an idealization of the author, since it is able to highlight the experience shared among the Greek authors of the classical period in relation to the period referential that they held as a horizon.