Politiche dell’evasione. Andare e restare secondo Platone

Abstract

In Plato’s Republic there is something suffocating, something that makes it be less apt than Aristotle’s Politics to function as a point of reference for the theoreticians of an open society. This was already noted by its detractors. Plato’s enormous disadvantage in terms of contemporary political theory when compared to Aristotle might however constitute his advantage in a different respect. Perhaps Plato is simply more aware than Aristotle of the situation of saturation, block, and lack of exit ways that for the most part connotes the political space. Whereas Aristotle keeps being the reference for all theories of democracy, precisely because of his tendency to make distinctions Plato tries to invert violence into the good. In this sense, Plato is not the theoretician of distribution but rather of saturation and addition. Where there is saturation (and therefore violence), the good intervenes as an addition.