On Political Virtue: Plato's Republic and the Politics of Desire
Paperback
Series: Suny Contemporary Italian Philosophy
Publisher: State University of New York Press
Published: Jul 2 2026
Pages: 322
Weight: 0.95
Height: 0.72 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
Translation of Carlo Sini's reading of Plato's Republic as the foundation of Western anthropology.
On Political Virtue is Carlo Sini's masterful reading of Plato's Republic as the foundation of both Western politics and anthropology. In his long career, Sini has built up a complex philosophical system that includes phenomenology, pragmatism, philosophical semiotics, a rereading of the Italian tradition from Bruno to Vico, a theory of writing quite independent from anyone else, and a philosophy of practices that makes science and the humanities talk together-not despite their differences but because of them. First published in 2004, On Political Virtue is an inquiry into the desire for politics and what politics desires from us. By reading Plato's Republic as a theatrical piece, Sini shows how the philosophical foundation of politics is the result of a very careful mise-en-scène, a magisterial setup that Plato conjures up only to make it disappear, so that the reader is left with the supposedly pure power of philosophical speech deprived of context. In Sini's interpretation, Plato's aim is to create a pure political subject still dependent on the male gaze yet supposedly free from the chains of desire.
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