Jacques Rancière, Leo Strauss, and the Meaning of Platonic Political Idealism

Abstract

This article contrasts the interpretations of Plato provided by Jacques Rancière and Leo Strauss. This contrastation makes evident that Rancière's reconstruction of political philosophy fails to account for a series of central contributions concerning the problem of politics. Specifically, this article argues that Platonic archipolitics, as reconstructed by Rancière, offers an unbalanced reading of Plato's work, which neglects most provocative and productive elements when it comes to account for the relation between philosophy and politics. It is argued that this lack of balance must be traced to the fact that Rancière's reading of Plato provides an inadequate comprehension of Plato's idealism, i.e., a superficial reading that fails to account for the political meaning and intention of the philosophical statement of the ideal city.