Method and Politics in Plato's Statesman

LANE, Melissa. Method and Politics in Plato's Statesman. Cambridge Classical Studies. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998. xiii + 229 pages. Cloth, $59.9-In recent years there has been a renewed interest in Plato's Statesman. The dialogue is certainly one of Plato's most recalcitrant works and requires of its interpreter a peculiar combination of quickness and steadiness, and in particular, a sufficient immersion in and sympathy with Plato's intention and style to attend with the requisite subtlety to the extremely heterogeneous content, much of which is initially soporific (I am thinking especially of the opening diaereses and the long analysis of the art of weaving). In sum, one has to strike a happy balance between attention to the details, and the perception of the god who dwells in these details. Melissa Lane's book scores very well by this standard. Her study is divided into three main parts, corresponding to the three main themes of method, the story of the reversed cosmos, and politics. Underlying and organizing these parts is the central thesis that in the Statesman, Plato presents the fullest statement of his conception of example (as Lane translates paradeigma) as an instrument of cognition and pedagogy, and hence as a necessary prelude to the exercise of diaeresis in its various versions (p. 18 and throughout). More particularly, Lane argues for the link between examples and the branch of measure that is concerned with the appropriate or timely (kairos) (pp. 132 and following). She insists that political expertise (techne politik&) is a type of science or objective knowledge (that is, episteme) concerned with when to do what the technicians tell us needs to be done (pp. 5, 142-5). The divisions of diaeresis are an exercise in the clarification of true beliefs which can establish knowledge (p. 18); the example (such as weaving for politics) is used to establish relations of resemblance and provides us with a path from true belief to knowledge, along which path we analyze and revise, but do not reject, the former (pp. 19, 63-5). According to Lane, the initial division of the art of the statesman fails because of the absence of a preliminary example; she also says that its inhuman treatment of politics (as similar to the shepherd's art and that of other tenders of brutes [p. 44]) is intended to make the reader uncomfortable. The story of the reversed cosmos is needed as a supplement to the method of diaeresis because the latter has no mechanism for dealing with history, that is, with temporal political existence (p. 115). However, she continues, the example of cosmology is too great to serve as a prelude to the analysis of politics. As the Stranger himself holds, we must practice on a smaller or slighter example (pp. 22, 73, 121 and following); the example invoked is that of weaving. Lane summarizes the function of the weaving example as illustrating the dependence of the art of politics upon "a great deal of prior and ongoing preparation, nurture, and maintenance of the people and material within the city" (pp. 9, 58). In the third part of the book, Lane argues that the art of politics is the ability to distinguish between the right and the wrong time for doing something devised and recommended by an auxiliary specialist (pp. 141 and following). There is an instructive comparison between the Stranger's use of weaving and the role of that art in Aristophanes' Lysistrata (pp. 164 and following), which leads in turn to a reflection on why the Stranger is silent about the connection between weaving and women (pp. 168 and following). An especially important conclusion is that the conflict of values in the city is attributed by the Stranger to a conflict between two equally good but unlike temperaments, and not to sophistry or a decline in political virtue (pp. 185, 191).