The Platonic Political Art: A Study of Critical Reason and Democracy

In this first comprehensive treatment of Plato's political thought in a long time, John Wallach offers a "critical historicist" interpretation of Plato, Wallach shows how Plato's theory, while a radical critique of the conventional ethical and political practice of his own era, can be seen as having the potential for contributing to democratic discourse about ethics and politics today. The author argues that Plato articulates and "solves" his Socratic Problem in his various "dialogues in different but potentially complementary ways, The book effectively extricates Plato from the straightjacket of Platonism and from the interpretative perspectives of the past fifty years - principally those of Karl Papper, Leo Strauss, Hannah Arendt, M.I. Finley, Jacques Derrida, and Gregory Vlastos.