Comic cure for delusional democracy : Plato's Republic / Gene Fendt.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Fendt, Gene, 1955- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Plato. Republic.

Plato.

Democracy--Philosophy.

Democracy.

Republic (Plato).

Physical Description:

xxiv, 289 pages ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Lanham : Lexington Books, [2014]

Summary:

Comic Cure for Delusional Democracy: Plato's Republic shows how the discussion of Plato's Republic is a comic mimetic cure for civic and psychic delusion. Socrates provides reasons to his pharmaka, or noble lies, but these indicate that Plato must think his readers are in the position of needing the catharses that such fictions produce. Socrates' interlocutors must be like us. Since cities are like souls, and souls come to be as they are through mimesis of desires, dreams, actions and thought patterns in the city, we should expect that political theorizing often suffers from madness as well. Gene 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 shows that the Republic itself is a defense of poetry; that kallipolis 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. Book jacket.

Contents:

1 The Madman at the Door: Delusion and Mimetic Art in Republic-and Modernity 21

2 Psyche's Pharmacy 59

3 Enlarging Homer: An Aristophanic Sex Comedy 83

4 Out of the Cave: The Divided Line as Pharmaceutical Outline of the Republic 109

Interlude: Of Analogy, Tri-partition, and Logical and Poetic Form 151

5 From Mathematics to Social Science: The Six Geometries of Regime in Republic 167

6 Polymorphous Perversity; Desires, Delusions, and Catharses of Republic's Characters 219.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780739193907

0739193902

OCLC:

877365401