MARCOS TADEU NEIRA MIRANDA

The Platonic political proposition that the philosopher – the one who has knowledge or political technique – should govern the city for it to be a good and true city is a frequent target of attacks. The reasons that support it are in this sense much less examined than the repulsion to the thesis considered unacceptable. A detailed investigation into the relationship between technique and politics, however, reveals that the argument in Republic is sound and that it constitutes an unavoidable political reflection. We thus propose an examination of the relationship between technique and politics in Plato's Republic, with a view to exposing an important part of the nature of the Platonic political project in this work, revealing the unity underlying several reflections throughout the books that compose it. We argue that politics understood as technique constitutes the Platonic claim within the constitutional debate about who should govern the city.