{"id":1274,"date":"2014-08-19T06:09:31","date_gmt":"2014-08-19T11:09:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ancientphilosophysociety.org\/?p=1274"},"modified":"2014-08-28T22:18:01","modified_gmt":"2014-08-29T03:18:01","slug":"comic-cure-for-delusional-democracy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ancientphilosophysociety.org\/website\/comic-cure-for-delusional-democracy\/","title":{"rendered":"Comic Cure for Delusional Democracy"},"content":{"rendered":"

This book shows how the discussion which is Plato’s Republic<\/em> is a comic mimetic cure for civic and psychic delusion. Plato creates such pharmaka<\/em>, or noble lies, for reasons enunciated by Socrates within the discussion, but this indicates Plato must think his readers are in the position of needing the catharses such fictions produce. Socrates’ interlocutors must be like us. Since cities are like souls, and souls come to be as they are through the mimesis<\/em> of desires, dreams, actions and thought patterns in the city, we should expect that political theorizing often suffers from madness as well. It does. Fendt shows how contemporary political (and psychological) theory still suffers from the same delusion Socrates’ interlocutors reveal in their discussion: a dream of autarchia called possessive individualism. Plato has good reason to think that only a mimetic, rather than a rational and philosophical, cure can work. Against many standard readings, Comic Cure for Delusional Democracy<\/em> shows that the Republic<\/em> itself is a defense of poetry; that kallipolis<\/em> cannot be the best city and is not Socrates’ ideal; that there are six forms of regime, not five; and that the true philosopher should not be unhappy to go back down into Plato’s cave.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This book shows how the discussion which is Plato’s Republic is a comic mimetic cure for civic and psychic delusion. Plato creates such pharmaka, or noble lies, for reasons enunciated by Socrates within the discussion, but this indicates Plato must think his readers are in the position of needing the catharses such fictions produce. Socrates’ interlocutors must be like us. Since cities are like souls, and souls come to be as they are through the . . . Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1275,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2],"tags":[61],"class_list":["post-1274","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-books","tag-plato","bookauthor_tax-gene-fendt"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.ancientphilosophysociety.org\/website\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/08\/Fendt-Cover.jpg?fit=1800%2C2700&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p276B2-ky","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":880,"url":"https:\/\/www.ancientphilosophysociety.org\/website\/schultz-publishes-platos-socrates-as-narrator\/","url_meta":{"origin":1274,"position":0},"title":"Schultz Publishes Plato’s Socrates as Narrator","author":"Christopher Long","date":"June 30, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"The APS is very pleased to announce the appearance of Anne-Marie Schultz's new book,\u00a0Plato at Narrator: A Philosophical Muse, published by\u00a0Lexington Books. 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