Division and Proto-Racialism in the Statesman

Abstract

Section 1: Introduction In Plato's Statesman, the Eleatic Stranger applies a specialized method of inquiry-the "method of collection and division", or "method of division"-in order to discover the nature of statecraft. This paper articulates some consequences of the fact that the method is both a tool for identifying natural kinds-that is, a tool for carving the world by its joints (Phaedrus 265b-d)and social kinds-that is, the kinds depending on human beings for their existence and explanation. (This notion of "social kind" is drawn from Haslanger (2012a), which is meant to be intuitive, general, and compatible with acknowledging that there may not be boundaries between natural and social kinds as they are traditionally conceived.) The Stranger uses the method to identify the natural structure of social kinds in political society. This is significant, because it connects Plato to contemporary work seeking to articulate how blurred lines between nature and society can be the basis for pernicious social and political aims. I am guided by Haslanger's (2012b: 157) idea that a principle of feminist metaphysics is the question of how oppressive and exploitative social and political projects can claim to draw authority from the way the world is "by nature". 1 One of my goals will be to illuminate the extent to which the method of division 1 See Mills (1997) on "naturalizing" fictions about human origins used to justify racial systems.Conversely, Spencer (2014: 1036, cf. 2019: n.10) writes of his biological racial realism: "if individuals wish to make claims about one race being superior to another in some respect, they 2 allows us to identify Plato as an early historical forerunner of racialism, the construction of an ideology according to which humanity divides into races differentiated by heritable physiological, cultural, and intellectual traits, as a way of vindicating oppressive and exploitative social systems. 2 This is similar in spirit to contemporary work on Aristotle's idea of a "slave by nature" (Politics I.2-7). 3 My argument will attempt to balance two competing strands. On the one hand, Plato often thinks that aspects of society require fundamental re-thinking, reform, or rejection. On the other hand, his alternatives can be deeply worrying. 4 I argue that the Stranger's collections and divisions in the Statesman reflect each of these strands by constituting a revisionary naturalizing project. 5 I defend an interpretation of the Stranger's claim, much discussed in the literature, that the division of humankind into Greek and barbarian is unnatural (Politicus 262c-263a). I argue that, in the Stranger's view, this division reflects subjective illusion and prejudice, rather than the fundamental, and teleological, structure of human social organization, which concerns how will have to look elsewhere for that evidence."