The statesman :: essays research papers

Final Paper.The concept of written laws and their side in government is one of the key points of intervention in the Platonic dialog the Statesman. In this philosophical work, a dialog on the spirit of the national leadership is discussed in order to determine what it is that defines the true national leader from all in all of those who may lay claim to this title. This dialog employs different methods of dialectic as Plato begins to depart from the Socratic method of argumentation. In this dialog Socrates is replaced as the drawing card of the discussion by the stranger who engages the young Socrates in a discussion about the statesman. Among the different argumentative methods that are used by Plato in this dialog division and fabrication play a central office staff in the development of the arguments put forth by the stranger as he leads the young Socrates along the dialectic path toward the nature of the statesman. The statesman is compared to a shepherd or caretaker of th e human pot. The conclusion that comes from division says that the statesman is one who Issues commands (with a science) of his own intellect over the human race. This is the prototypal conclusion that the dialog arrives at via the method of division. The dialog, however, does not end here(predicate) as the stranger suggests that their definition is still wanting of clarity because in that respect are still some (physicians, farmers, merchants, etc) who would lay claim to the title of shepherds of humanity. For this antecedent a new approach to the argument must be undertaken therefore we must begin by a new starting-point and travel by a different road (Statesman 268 D.) This new approach that is taken in their search for a definition of the statesman leads the stranger to use myth in order to show young Socrates what it is that the shepherd of the human flock does. It is in the development of this myth that it is shown why the statesman can be separated from many of those wh o would lay claim to his title. The myth that is used by Plato in this dialog revolves around the idea of the world as macrocosm a living creature. In the myth that is introduced the existence of the world is split into two epochs, the Age of Kronos and the Age of Zeus. As the myth goes the world is gift with motion, but alone it cannot move eternally.