A educação como mediadora entre filosofia e política na República de Platão

Abstract

The present work is the result of a theoretical and bibliographical research of hermeneutic nature that investigates the way in which politics and philosophy are articulated in the configuration of the ideal State described in the Plato's Republic. We defend the hypothesis that Plato finds through education a way to bring politics and philosophy together, making the yearning for a rationally constituted pólis a humanly feasible attempt. Under this bias, we can not read the Republic isolated from the material and socio-intellectual context in which it was generated, nor to absolutize aspects of a transcendent order that make dialogue merely empty theorized, expressed in a utopian or dogmatic proposition. Having as its guiding principle the quest for the essence of justice, the Republic establishes the need for a profound and radical reform in the polis, which leads the dialogue to the urgency of a perfectly constituted state to serve as the antithesis of inauthentic political models. In this context, the Platonic critique of the degenerate Athenian democracy gains decisive contours. The only way to bring about the approximation between ideality and materiality is the elevation of wisdom to the status of legitimizing power. The primacy of a philosophical government is the cornerstone of the entire argumentative political-educational structure of the work, to be guaranteed by a carefully established educational model. The philosopher-ruler, at the end of the formative process, would have in equal degrees the theoretical knowledge of philosophy and the mastery of political technique in its practical features. It is education that unites and harmonizes politics and philosophy, brings man closer to his divine portion and makes Kallípolis a feasible project in the essence of its fundamental presuppositions. In short, in the Republic education constitutes the real condition for the building of the ideal City.