¿Cuán utópica es la Calípolis de Platón? Reflexiones sobre la "ciudad ideal" y el valor del paradigma en la explicación filosófica

Abstract

One of the key features of any utopian project is that it is not realizable. If the Platonic just city is a utopian model, it is not realizable. But Plato maintains that his city is possible. In this paper I argue that the sense of ‘possible’ Plato is thinking of can be better grasped if it is associated with the view that the just city of the Republic is a model. If it is a model (and if such a model coincides with the Form of justice, which can be instantiated in the empirical city), what exists in ‘reality’ must be what approximates as closely as possible to the model. This is the usual account Plato provides when he relates a model to its copy: even though the model and the copy are to some extent symmetric structures, they are not entirely isomorphic. If they were, a model could not be distinguished from its copy.