Ser y utopía en la República

Abstract

The main aim of this paper is to examine the relation between Plato’s concept of being and the utopian project that he sustains in the Republic. In relation to the latter, his political proposal is not a mere literary or ironical strategy, but a political system that he considers possible and desirable as the best form of a political constitution. This proposal is based on a paradigm whose validity does not depend on existence and my thesis is that this character is absolutely congruent with Plato’s concept of being as exposed in the Republic, that does not depend on the existential meaning of eînai but on its predicative and veridical values. We must also take into account that the philosopher ruler, on whom the possibility of the ideal state depends, is delimitated as such by his capacity to contemplate being, for this ontological knowledge is in Plato’s view the best basis for the legitimation of power.