Statesman
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by Plato
Started reading July 1, 2018
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Shall we call this art of tending many animals together, the art of managing a herd, or the art of collective management?
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you should not chip off too small a piece,
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That a class is necessarily a part, but there is no similar necessity that a part should be a class; that is the view which I should always wish you to attribute to me, Socrates.
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STRANGER: The king is clearly the shepherd of a polled herd, who have no horns.
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STRANGER: There is a measure of difference which may be appropriately employed by you and Theaetetus, who are students of geometry. YOUNG SOCRATES: What is that? STRANGER: The diameter; and, again, the diameter of a diameter. (Compare Meno.)
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STRANGER: Then here, Socrates, is still clearer evidence of the truth of what was said in the enquiry about the Sophist? (Compare Sophist.)
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STRANGER: The science of pure knowledge had, as we said originally, a part which was the science of rule or command, and from this was derived another part, which was called command-for-self, on the analogy of selling-for-self; an important section of this was the management of living animals, and this again was further limited to the management of them in herds; and again in herds of pedestrian animals. The chief division of the latter was the art of managing pedestrian animals which are without horns; this again has a part which can only be comprehended under one term by joining together ...more
Brian
Summary thus far
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STRANGER: No, not that; but another part of the story, which tells how the sun and the stars once rose in the west, and set in the east, and that the god reversed their motion, and gave them that which they now have as a testimony to the right of Atreus.
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STRANGER: Listen, then. There is a time when God himself guides and helps to roll the world in its course; and there is a time, on the completion of a certain cycle, when he lets go, and the world being a living creature, and having originally received intelligence from its author and creator, turns about and by an inherent necessity revolves in the opposite direction.
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In those days God himself was their shepherd, and ruled over them, just as man, who is by comparison a divine being, still rules over the lower animals. Under him there were no forms of government or separate possession of women and children; for all men rose again from the earth, having no memory of the past. And although they had nothing of this sort, the earth gave them fruits in abundance, which grew on trees and shrubs unbidden, and were not planted by the hand of man. And they dwelt naked, and mostly in the open air, for the temperature of their seasons was mild; and they had no beds, ...more
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Deprived of the care of God, who had possessed and tended them, they were left helpless and defenceless, and were torn in pieces by the beasts, who were naturally fierce and had now grown wild.
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STRANGER: I mean to say that when we were asked about a king and statesman of the present cycle and generation, we told of a shepherd of a human flock who belonged to the other cycle, and of one who was a god when he ought to have been a man; and this a great error. Again, we declared him to be the ruler of the entire State, without explaining how: this was not the whole truth, nor very intelligible; but still it was true, and therefore the second error was not so great as the first.
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STRANGER: All other herdsmen 'rear' their herds, but this is not a suitable term to apply to the Statesman; we should use a name which is common to them all.
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STRANGER: On the principle of voluntary and compulsory.
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STRANGER: Let us consider, in the first place, that there are two kinds of arts entering into everything which we do. YOUNG SOCRATES: What are they? STRANGER: The one kind is the conditional or co-operative, the other the principal cause.
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STRANGER: Well, then, as in the case of the Sophist we extorted the inference that not-being had an existence, because here was the point at which the argument eluded our grasp, so in this we must endeavour to show that the greater and less are not only to be measured with one another, but also have to do with the production of the mean; for if this is not admitted, neither a statesman nor any other man of action can be an undisputed master of his science.
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STRANGER: The next step clearly is to divide the art of measurement into two parts, as we have said already, and to place in the one part all the arts which measure number, length, depth, breadth, swiftness with their opposites; and to have another part in which they are measured with the mean, and the fit, and the opportune, and the due, and with all those words, in short, which denote a mean or standard removed from the extremes.