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Bezig met laden... Plato as Critical Theoristdoor Jonny Thakkar
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 Meld je aan bij LibraryThing om erachter te komen of je dit boek goed zult vinden. Op dit moment geen Discussie gesprekken over dit boek.  stillatim | Oct 23, 2020 |  geen besprekingen | voeg een bespreking toe
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What is the best possible society? How would its rulers govern and its citizens behave? Such questions are sometimes dismissed as distractions from genuine political problems, but in an era when political idealism seems a relic of the past, says Jonny Thakkar, they are more urgent than ever. A daring experiment in using ancient philosophy to breathe life into our political present, Plato as Critical Theorist takes seriously one of Plato's central claims: that philosophers should rule. What many accounts miss is the intimate connection between Plato's politics and his metaphysics, Thakkar argues. Philosophy is the activity of articulating how parts and wholes best fit together, while ruling is the activity that shapes the parts of society into a coherent whole conducive to the good life. Plato's ideal society is thus one in which ideal theory itself plays a leading role.Today's liberal democracies require not philosopher-kings legislating from above but philosopher-citizens willing to work toward a vision of the best society in their daily lives. Against the claim that such idealism is inherently illiberal, Thakkar shows that it is fully compatible with the liberal theories of both Popper and Rawls while nevertheless pushing beyond them in providing a new vantage point for the Marxian critique of capitalism. Geen bibliotheekbeschrijvingen gevonden. |
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 Google Books — Bezig met laden...GenresDewey Decimale Classificatie (DDC)321.07Social sciences Political Science Political Systems Political Systems Ideal state; UtopiasLC-classificatieWaarderingGemiddelde: (4)
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Thakkar's reading of Republic is an interesting one, and his suggestion that we should take from it the idea of informed citizenship (rather than informed kingship) might well be productive, but at times it's hard for me to get into the argument. The main interlocutors are other Plato scholars (fair enough), as well as various political science people who dispute the usefulness of 'ideal theory.' Coming from a very different way of thinking, I'm inclined to suggest that nobody cares what those political science types say, and that such arguments are precisely what makes much political science unbearably stupid. Thakkar himself knows this, but the audience is political science people, and so one must go through Sen, Rawls, and so on.
Another way of phrasing the argument, for those of us more to the left, is to ask about the relationship between theory and society, and this comes up a little towards the end of the book, in a chapter that rehashes much of Thakkar's essays for The Point Magazine. This seems to me a stronger analysis of society than anything we can get in Plato, and this points to the most obvious difficulty in the book: stitching together the Plato scholarship and the Marxian social theory. It's not clear to me, at least, that adding Plato does Marx any good (or Plato, for that matter).
Smaller complaints include the pointless numbering of paragraphs, and the attempt to make Plato into Aristotle--something that I complained about when this book was just a gleam in Thakkar's eye.
But this book is extremely well-written, ambitious, and fascinating in the details. I read it for two reasons, first, because I know Thakkar, and second, to help me prepare to teach Plato; it was extremely helpful in that. Had it not filled me with regret over my wasted education, I would have given it five stars. (