On Plato's Statesman (Meridian: Crossing Aesthetics)

This posthumous book represents the first publication of one of the seminars of Cornelius Castoriadis, a renowned and influential figure in twentieth-century thought. A close reading of Plato s Statesman, it is an exemplary instance of Castoriadis s pragmatic, pertinent, and discriminating approach to thinking and reading a great work: I mean really reading it, by respecting it without respecting it, by going into the recesses and details without having decided in advance that everything it contains is coherent, homogeneous, makes sense, and is true. Castoriadis brings out what he calls The Statesman s quirky structure, with its three digressions, its eight incidental points, and its two definitions, neither of which is deemed good. He does not hesitate to differ with the text, to show that what is, in appearance, secondary is really essential, and that the denunciation of the Sophists accommodates itself quite well to t