Part ofa series on
Platonism
Life Theory of forms Intelligible form Hyperuranion Theory of soul Nous Thumos Phren Epistemology Anamnesis Peritrope Dianoia Cardinal virtues Moral rationalism Political philosophy Mimesis Orthotes onomaton Euthyphro dilemma
The Republic
Allegory of the cave Analogy of the Sun Analogy of the divided line Form of the Good Noble lie Philosopher king Plato's number Ship of State Ring of Gyges Myth of Er
Timaeus
Atlantis Demiurge World soul Organicism Classical element Platonic solid Tertium quid Khôra
Related articles
Commentaries The Academy in Athens Middle Platonism Neoplatonism Neoplatonism and Gnosticism Neoplatonism and Christianity Platonism in Islamic philosophy Platonism in the Renaissance Allegorical interpretations of Plato Plato's unwritten doctrines Pseudo-Platonica
Related categories
Plato
Philosophy portal
v t e

You can helpexpand this article with text translated fromthe corresponding article in German. (October 2023)Click [show] for important translation instructions. View a machine-translated version of the German article. Machine translation, likeDeepL orGoogle Translate, is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into the English Wikipedia. Consideradding a topic to this template: there are already 1,776 articles in themain category, and specifying|topic= will aid in categorization. Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low-quality. If possible, verify the text with references provided in the foreign-language article. Youmust providecopyright attribution in theedit summary accompanying your translation by providing aninterlanguage link to the source of your translation. A model attribution edit summary isContent in this edit is translated from the existing German Wikipedia article at [[:de:Politikos]]; see its history for attribution. You may also add the template{{Translated|de|Politikos}} to thetalk page. For more guidance, seeWikipedia:Translation.

TheStatesman (Ancient Greek:Πολιτικός,Politikós;Latin:Politicus^[1]), also known by itsLatin title,Politicus, is aSocratic dialogue written byPlato. The text depicts a conversation amongSocrates, the mathematicianTheodorus, another person namedSocrates (referred to as "Socrates the Younger"), and an unnamed philosopher fromElea referred to as "the Stranger" (ξένος,xénos). It is ostensibly an attempt to arrive at a definition of "statesman," as opposed to "sophist" or "philosopher" and is presented as following the action of theSophist.

TheSophist had begun with the question of whether the sophist, statesman, and philosopher were one or three, leading theEleatic Stranger to argue that they were three but that this could only be ascertained through full accounts of each (Sophist 217b). But though Plato has his characters give accounts of the sophist and statesman in their respective dialogues, it is most likely that he never wrote a dialogue about the philosopher.^[2]

The dialogue begins immediately after theSophist ends, with Socrates (the elder) and Theodorus briefly reflecting on the discussion before the Eleatic Stranger proposes to begin a dialectical investigation with Socrates the Younger into the nature of the statesman. The Eleatic Stranger and Socrates the Younger resume using themethod of division employed in theSophist, pausing to reflect on dialectical methods and amyth similar to themyth of ages.^[3] The interlocutors ultimately offer a complicated account of the statesman through a version of division that entails accounting for the object of inquiry 'by carving at the joints' like a 'sacrificial animal' (Statesman 287b-c).^[3]

According toJohn M. Cooper, the dialogue was intended to clarify that to rule or havepolitical power called for a specialized knowledge.^[4] The statesman was one who possesses this special knowledge of how to rule justly and well and to have the best interests of the citizens at heart. It is presented thatpolitics should be run by this knowledge, orgnosis. This claim runs counter to those who, the Stranger points out, actually did rule. Those that rule merely give the appearance of such knowledge, but in the end are really sophists or imitators. For, as the Stranger maintains, a sophist is one who does not know the right thing to do, but only appears to others as someone who does. The Stranger's ideal of how one arrives at this knowledge of power is through social divisions. The Stranger takes great pains to be very specific about where and why the divisions are needed in order to rule the citizenry properly.

• Greek text atPerseus
• Plato: Statesman, Philebus, Ion. Greek with translation by Harold N. Fowler and W. R. M. Lamb. Loeb Classical Library 164. Harvard Univ. Press (originally published 1925).ISBN 978-0674991828HUP listing
• Fowler translation atPerseus
• Jowett translation with introduction atStandardEbooks
• Plato.Opera, volume I. Oxford Classical Texts.ISBN 978-0198145691
• Plato.Complete Works. Ed. J. M. Cooper and D. S. Hutchinson. Hackett, 1997.ISBN 978-0872203495

• Works related toStatesman at Wikisource
• Quotations related toStatesman (dialogue) at Wikiquote
• Statesman, in a collection of Plato's Dialogues atStandard Ebooks
• Statesman, english translation by Benjamin Jowett public domain audiobook atLibriVox

• Dialogues of Plato
• Political philosophy in ancient Greece

• Articles with short description
• Short description matches Wikidata
• Articles needing translation from German Wikipedia
• Articles containing Ancient Greek (to 1453)-language text
• Articles with LibriVox links