Nomos and Nous. Which Are Plato’s Criteria for the Definition of a Just City?
Abstract
SIn Plato, two different visions of politics coexist: care of the soul and care of the polis. A second point is Plato’s systemic and holistic view. Every reality is a whole made up of parts that depend on the whole. Finally, the whole is a principle of order that has a rational foundation in the Ideas. Consequently, the action of the human being is and must be rational. The link between intelligence and law, underlined by the similarity of the two words, nous and nomos, is posed in various ways. The centrality of intelligent intervention clashes with the lack of credit that Plato gives to human action. The polis is marked by diversity and conflict. Human constitutions must use the laws, a rigid tool that, if imitate the paradigm, can counteract the prevalence of disorder. In Plato’s political philosophy the concept of imitation is fundamental. The ideal paradigm is useful for guilding the true politician in his rational effort to propose laws.
But this centrality of intelligent intervention clashes with the lack of credit that Plato gives to human action. When this action is positive, it is a sort of miracle. In fact, the polis is marked by diversity and, therefore, by the conflict.
In this situation Plato proposes a complex of ideal models: the first, a perfect model of polis in the Republic, and a second model in the Laws, that is similar to the first at the highest possible level, and a third, that Plato did not have time to write. These paradigms can be useful, but it is impossible to govern the state “in a scientific manner”. The human constitutions must use the laws, a rigid tool that, if imitate the paradigm, can counteract the prevalence of disorder. In Plato's political philosophy the concept of imitation is fundamental. The ideal paradigm is useful because it guides the true politician, in his rational effort to propose laws.
In summary, Plato does not have a utopian or abstract vision of politics. It is not possible to close him in an elementary and one-sided formula: its vision of human complexity, both personal and social, and its theoretical richness propose and require a structurally multifocal reading
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References
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