Philosophy and the Social Concrete: The case of Unlikeness or Difference in Plato’s Statesman
This study in its interpretative course overpasses, leaving thus behind, the Symplegades for a philosophical reading of the platonic thought that undoubtedly consisted (and still consist) on one hand, the Scylla of the boring platonisms and on the other, the Charyvdis of the monotonous anti-platonisms. The only intention of this study is to visit and talk about an absolutely existing but completely strange philosophical topos for those who are –more or less – familiar to the philosophy of platonic Socrates and to the numerous approaches to it by the platonic studies. It is about the philosophical topos through which the line of argument of another platonic philosophizing subject is revealed, that of the (Eleatic) Stranger; and it is exactly this, the Eleatic Stranger, who, in an unrivaled tension and great variety of ways treats the relation between philosophy and social concrete through the investigation of three themes that have to do correspondingly with: the relation of the statesman – and of the statesmanship – to the unlikeness or difference, to the discussion about the unlikeness or difference itself and, finally, to the relation of philosophy to unlikeness or difference – but also vice versa, to the relation of the unlikeness and difference to philosophy. The discussion of all this philosophical themes by the Eleatic Stranger, is, always according to him, identical to the more dialectical and more heuristic thinking than that of dialectical heuristics, the starting point of which is the Statesman.
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