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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 September 2021
In his dialogue Statesman (= Plt.), Plato first sets out one way of thinking of the statesperson, on the model of a nurturer of a herd such as a shepherd; then he sets out a very different way of thinking of him, on the model of a weaver of a social fabric. Critics have long been wondering whether Plato wants to combine the two models or, on the contrary, to abandon the nurturing model in favour of the weaving model.
This article shows that a particular passage in the dialogue, 275d8–e1, is crucial for this question. As this passage is understood by all commentators and translators, it says that the statesperson is not a nurturer. This ought to have settled the question. But the article argues that we cannot read the passage like that. For an adjacent passage, 275b1–7, says that the statesperson is a nurturer. There is no way out of this contradiction, unless we reconsider the traditional reading of 275d8–e1.
The article defends a different reading of 275d8–e1, which avoids the contradiction. On this new reading, the passage does not say that the statesperson is not a nurturer, it says that her/his being a nurturer is not the grounds for her/him deserving the title ‘statesperson’.
This paper was written in the autumn of 2018, when Jens Kristian Larsen led a term-long seminar, at The Trinity Plato Centre, on Plato's Statesman; I am grateful to the participants, and to Kristian above all. I also thank John Dillon and Christoph Horn for commenting on earlier versions; and Peter Larsen for his assistance in preparing the paper for submission.
1 This seems to be Weiss's reading: ‘the human statesman is still regarded as one herdsman among many, differing from these others only in having no direct hand in the feeding of his herd (275d8–e1)’; Weiss, R., ‘Statesman as ΕΠΙΣΤΗΜΩΝ: caretaker, physician, and weaver’, in Rowe, C.J. (ed.), Reading the Statesman (Sankt Augustin, 1995), 213–22, at 219Google Scholar, emphasis added. A similar suggestion is found in Rowe, C.J., Plato: Statesman (Warminster, 1995)Google Scholar. In addition to the items referenced here and below, I have benefited also from Murr, D. El, Savoir et gouverner. Essai sur la science politique platonicienne (Paris, 2014)Google Scholar.
2 Rowe (n. 1), 199: ‘This claim of E.S.'s [i.e. the claim that ‘the statesman … has nothing to do with rearing his herd (d8–e1)’] is something of a surprise, since he will go on to assign to the statesman a vital interest in his charges’ education and choice of partners—and match-making, at least, was one of the functions spefically assigned to herdsmen at 268a, by implication as part of the ‘rearing’ (τροφή) of their charges.’
3 I take νομεύονται at 295e7 as passive rather than middle; but my point does not depend on this.
4 For several critics who think that the nurturing model is abandoned in and through the myth, see Weiss (n. 1), 218. More recent critics who argue that the nurturing model is abandoned include K.H. Sayre, Metaphysics and Method in Plato's Statesman (Cambridge, 2006) and Schofield, M., Plato. Political Philosophy (Oxford, 2006), 165Google Scholar (‘The old idea of the king as shepherd of his flock is successively defended, criticized and then abandoned for a new model: the statesman as weaver’). Lane, M.S., Method and Politics in Plato's ‘Statesman’ (Cambridge, 1998), 48CrossRefGoogle Scholar says that ‘the shepherd-definition was not abandoned altogether’.
5 Weiss (n. 1), 218: ‘There is indeed no reason to think—as do virtually all commentators on this dialogue—that the herdsman paradigm is abandoned or that it is supplanted by the weaver paradigm.’
6 Weiss (n. 1), 217–19. See also Sayre (n. 4), 21–2: ‘As he points out in this regard (at 275d8–e1), the title ‘herd-rearer’ applied in human subjects is better reserved by a variety of experts, such as farmers, merchants, and doctors (from 267e), than by the statesman himself.’
7 Weiss (n. 1), 216: ‘In addition to the error it reveals, the myth should also enable one, says the Stranger, to see who alone merits the title of human nurturer in accordance with the paradigm of shepherds and cowherds (275b1–6). Let us note that the myth has indeed shown that the god alone has care of a human community in accordance with the paradigm of shepherds and cowherds.’
8 The translations I know of this passage all read the οὐ μετόν as saying that the statesman is not a nurturer: F. Schleiermacher: ‘dem Staatsmann gerade kommt es [i.e. τρέφειν] nicht zu, … ’; H.N. Fowler, Plato. The Statesman (Cambridge, MA, 1925): ‘but the statesman does not [share in τρέφειν], yet we gave him the name of herdsman’; Skemp, J.B., Plato's Statesman (London, 1952)Google Scholar: ‘This characteristic [i.e. nurturing] is absent in the statesman and yet we called him a herdsman’; Rowe (n. 1), quoted above. Waterfield, R., in Annas, J. and Waterfield, R. (edd.), Plato. Statesman (Cambridge, 1995)Google Scholar: ‘The statesman isn't [‘concerned with maintaining [his] herd’]’; P. Accattino, Platone. Politico (Rome and Bari, 2010 [orig. 1997]): ‘ma non il politico [condivid[e] la funzione di allevare …]’; Giorgini, G., Platone, Politico, a cura di Giovanni Giorgini (Milan, 2005)Google Scholar: ‘L'allevare ciascuno il proprio gregge è ciò che tutti i pastori hanno in certa misura in comune con gli altri, ma questo non avviene per l'uomo politico a cui abbiamo invece attribuito questo nome, mentre avremmo dovuto attribuire un nome in comune per tutti quanti’; Ricken, F., Platon. Politikos (Göttingen, 2008)Google Scholar: ‘aber obwohl es dem Staatsmann nicht zukommt [seine Herde aufzuziehen], haben wir ihm doch den Namen gegeben’; E. Brann, P. Kalkavage and E. Salem, Plato. Statesman (Indianapolis, 2012): ‘but we attached the name to the statesman, though it doesn't apply’; Dixsaut, M., Platon. Le Politique (Paris, 2018)Google Scholar: ‘mais le politique, lui, n'avait pas droit à ce nom [supposing she reads τροφός for the name]’.
9 Skemp (n. 8) takes the name to be ‘herdsman’ in his translation, as do many other translators. This is justified, on the traditional reading of οὐ μετόν.
10 See Rowe, commenting on this passage (i.e. 275e3–8): ‘Using the term “nurture” was another error’; Rowe, C.J., ‘The Politicus: structure and form’, in Gill, C. and McCabe, M.M. (edd.), Form and Argument in Late Plato (Oxford, 1996), 153–78, at 161Google Scholar.
11 So too Campbell, L., The Sophistes and Politicus of Plato, with a revised text and English notes (Oxford, 1867), 74 n. 4Google Scholar: ‘ἦν—ἐξῆν—ἐσήμαινεν] The imperfect is used because we are imagining what might have been done.’ Rowe also translates the δέον ἐπενεγκεῖν (‘we should apply’, ‘it is proper to apply’) in the last clause in 275d8–e1 (δέον τῶν κοινῶν ἐπενεγκεῖν τι σύμπασιν) counterfactually: ‘when we should have applied to all of them one of the names that belongs in common to them’. On the reading I have defended, this is not correct, and I have translated: ‘even though it is proper to apply’.
12 See 265e7 ὁ πολιτικὸς ἄρ᾽ ἐπιμέλειαν ἔχειν φαίνεται πότερα κοινογενοῦς φύσεως ἤ τινος ἰδιογενοῦς; 267d8 οὐκοῦν τῶν νομευτικῶν ἡμῖν πολλῶν φανεισῶν ἄρτι τεχνῶν μία τις ἦν ἡ πολιτικὴ καὶ μιᾶς τινος ἀγέλης ἐπιμέλεια; 268a2 παντάπασι τῷ λόγῳ διαμάχοιντ᾽ ἂν οὗτοι σύμπαντες, ὡς σφεῖς τῆς τροφῆς ἐπιμελοῦνται τῆς ἀνθρωπίνης, οὐ μόνον ἀγελαίων ἀνθρώπων ἀλλὰ καὶ τῆς τῶν ἀρχόντων αὐτῶν; and 275b5–6 quoted above. This is also why I understand ἦν at the opening of the sentence at 275e3 as a simple imperfect (‘And how was it not that “looking after” is common to them all’) and not, as Rowe does, as hypothetical (‘And how would—perhaps—“looking after” not have been common to them all’).
13 My translation. It is important that μᾶλλον καὶ προτέρα (‘more proper and prior’) qualifies the expertise of having care of humans.
14 Rowe, C.J., ‘Introduction’, in id. (ed.), Reading the Statesman: Proceedings of the III Symposium Platonicum (Sankt Augustin, 1995), 11–28, at 17Google Scholar.