The Limits of the City: Leo Strauss on Plato’s Republic

This video is part of the PROTEUS project that has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (Grant agreement No. 758145)

Abstract

In this talk I will address the ironical interpretation of Plato’s Republic developed by the German-Jewish philosopher Leo Strauss. In the first part of the talk, I will focus on the main assumptions of Strauss’s esoteric reading, analyzing its philosophical-political implications. In the second part, I will contextualize Strauss’s controversial study into the framework of 20th Century reception of Plato’s Republic. In this way, I will argue that Strauss’s political understanding of the dialogue presents some innovative elements that should not be overlooked by contemporary readers. Nevertheless, the lack of an historical dimension in Strauss’s hypothesis shows its tautological character. I will suggest that a closer look to historical and literary evidences aims to a different evaluation of the political content of the dialogue.

Bio

Cristina Basili (Ph.D. in Political Philosophy at the Carlos III University of Madrid) is Adjunct Lecturer in Philosophy at the Humanities Department of the Pompeu Fabra University of Barcelona. Her main research field is the history of political thought. Among her interests there are also classical reception studies, utopian studies, Jewish philosophy and gender studies. She is a member of “L’archipel des devenirs-Centre de recherche sur l’utopie” of the Paris Diderot University and of “Nomos. Research Group on Ancient Thought and its Reception” of the Carlos III University of Madrid. She is author of various essays and articles on 20th Century political thought. She is member of the editorial board of the philosophical journals “Res Publica Litterarum” (Spain), “Azimuth” (Italy) and “Lo Sguardo” (Italy). In 2018 she was awarded with a Juan de la Cierva fellowship and in 2019 she will join the Philosophy Department of the Complutense University of Madrid.