Statesman

The Statesman is a philosophical dialogue by Plato that uses the method of division, or diairesis, a technique of systematically subdividing a broad category into narrower species, along with myth and analogy, to define the true nature of the statesman and the science of governance.

The dialogue opens with a framing conversation among four speakers: Socrates, Theodorus (a geometrician from Cyrene), a philosopher known as the Eleatic Stranger, and a young man called Young Socrates. Theodorus promises that Socrates will owe him triple thanks once the Stranger has defined the Statesman and the Philosopher in addition to the Sophist, whom they examined in the preceding dialogue. Socrates pushes back, arguing that the Sophist, the Statesman, and the Philosopher are separated by an interval no geometrical ratio can express. The Stranger proposes that Young Socrates replace Theaetetus, the respondent from the previous inquiry, and the investigation begins with the premise that the Statesman should be ranked among those who possess science.

The Stranger divides the arts and sciences into the purely theoretical, such as arithmetic, and the practical, such as carpentry, placing statesmanship within the theoretical branch because the king governs through intelligence rather than manual labor. Theoretical science is further divided into sciences of judging and sciences of commanding; the king's science belongs to the commanding class, and his authority is self-originated, unlike heralds and prophets who merely relay orders.

The Stranger next assigns the king to the management of living beings rather than lifeless objects, and to collective herd management rather than the care of individuals. When Young Socrates proposes dividing herds into humans and beasts, the Stranger corrects this as a fundamental error: Proper divisions should cut through the middle to arrive at genuine classes, not isolate a small part from a vast remainder. He illustrates with the analogy of dividing humanity into Greeks and Barbarians, where "Barbarian" merely lumps innumerable unrelated peoples under one negative label. An intelligent crane, the Stranger adds, would similarly set cranes apart and relegate all other animals, including humans, to "beasts."

Restarting more carefully, the Stranger establishes that political science concerns tame, gregarious animals. Through a series of subdivisions, including land versus water herds, walking versus flying, horned versus hornless, and mixed versus unmixed breeds, the Stranger arrives at featherless bipeds. Yet the definition remains critically inadequate: Unlike an ordinary shepherd who is the sole caretaker of his flock, the political shepherd faces countless competitors, since merchants, farmers, physicians, and trainers all claim to manage humanity.

To address this inadequacy, the Stranger introduces a cosmic myth drawn from familiar Greek traditions. The myth describes two alternating cosmic cycles. In one, God directly guides the universe, granting life and immortality; in the other, God releases the helm and the universe reverses its motion. In the Age of Cronos, a mythic golden age named for a Titan of Greek tradition, God served as shepherd of mankind, and subordinate deities governed specific regions. There was no violence, war, or private property; the earth produced food spontaneously. The Stranger poses the question of whether this age or the present one is happier but argues it cannot be answered without knowing whether its inhabitants used their leisure for philosophy. When the allotted time expired, God withdrew, the world reversed, and humanity was left helpless among fierce wild beasts. The gods provided essential gifts: fire from Prometheus, arts from Hephaestus and Athene, seeds from other deities. From these, human civilization was gradually reconstructed.

The Stranger draws two corrective lessons. The first and greater error was modeling the king on a divine shepherd from another cosmic cycle rather than a human ruler who resembles his subjects. The second was declaring the statesman ruler of the state without explaining the nature of his rule. Additionally, the Stranger replaces the term "feeding" herds with the broader "tending" or "managing," and a further distinction separates voluntary management (true politics) from compulsory rule (tyranny).

The definition still incomplete, the Stranger introduces the concept of paradeigma, or example, selecting the weaving of wool as a model parallel to the political art. Through elaborate divisions, weaving is distinguished from related arts such as carding and felting and defined as the interlacing of warp (firm threads) and woof (looser threads). This analysis prompts a discussion of two kinds of measurement: one that measures things relative to each other, and another that measures against a mean or standard of what is fitting. All arts, including statesmanship, guard against excess and defect; without the concept of a mean, the arts could not exist. The Stranger argues that the inquiry into the Statesman, like the analysis of weaving, aims to improve not just political knowledge but general reasoning and dialectical skill.

Returning to the statesman, the Stranger separates the royal art from both co-operative arts and causal arts, those that work directly on their material. He classifies seven categories of possessions, including tools, vessels, vehicles, defences, ornaments, raw materials, and nourishment, none of which belong to the royal science. Among servants and ministers, purchased slaves, merchants, hirelings, and officials are eliminated as claimants. Priests and diviners are identified as significant pretenders but remain servants. Finally, the Sophists emerge as the chief rivals to the true statesman.

To separate the Sophists from the true ruler, the Stranger examines forms of government. Monarchy, rule of the few, and democracy expand into six forms through the criteria of lawfulness, voluntary versus compulsory rule, and wealth versus poverty. The Stranger argues that true government is defined solely by the possession of political science, not by the number of rulers or the presence of law. Just as a physician remains a physician regardless of method, the true statesman may act with or without law so long as he proceeds according to knowledge. The rule of a wise king surpasses law because law, being general and rigid, cannot accommodate the infinite variety of human circumstances. However, since genuine political knowledge is attainable by very few, the rule of law is the necessary second-best solution. The six imperfect forms are ranked: lawful monarchy is the best, tyranny the worst, and democracy the weakest in both directions. The true government, with a ruler possessing knowledge, stands as a seventh form that excels all others; the rulers of all other forms are themselves Sophists.

The Stranger then separates the statesman from generalship, jurisprudence, and rhetoric, each shown to be ministerial. The royal science does not act itself but governs those who can act, knowing the fitting occasion for initiative in the greatest matters.

The final definition presents the statesman as the royal weaver. Courage and temperance, though both parts of virtue, are antagonistic: In excess, energy becomes violence or madness, while gentleness becomes cowardice or sluggishness. In the state, the temperate class's love of peace can reduce a city to slavery, while the courageous class's love of war can lead to destruction. The true statesman weaves these opposed natures together through education, selecting suitable citizens and punishing the incorrigibly vicious. Courageous natures serve as the warp, gentler natures as the woof. Two bonds unite them: The divine bond consists of true, reasoned convictions about the honorable, the just, and the good, which only the Statesman and the good legislator can implant in rightly educated souls. The human bonds are laws of intermarriage ensuring that opposite temperaments are joined rather than separated, preventing the degeneration that occurs when like marries like. The royal science draws the brave and temperate into communion, enfolding all inhabitants in one web and securing the city's happiness. Young Socrates affirms that the Stranger's picture of the king and statesman is quite perfect.