The Kallipolis soul

The Kallipolis soul

For a polity of truth and justice

A Reading of Plato’s republic by Stelios Ramfos.

Trunslated by John Raffan.

We continually re-read the classics in order to evaluate more maturely the gains and losses of our choices within an historical perspective. Our appraisal is made through the prism of the logic governing the original foundations and of that governing the way in which we receive them at each moment. We read the texts to measure ourselves against their meanings and we introduce our time into their spiritual duration as a mode of questioning, so as to give form to this duration and to recognise the value element inherent therein. The demand for power or for development assumes dimensions of activity in the perspective of a continual self-transcendence. This means that, while we are rooted in the finite world of nature, we do not rest on it, but stretch out towards the ideal infinite, the good beyond essence, and culture “produces” as its prime product not quantitative magnitudes, but more refined individuals.

About the author

Stelios Ramfos is born in Athens, Greece, in 1939. He studied Law in Athens and Philosophy in Paris. He taught Philosophy at Vincennes University (1969-1974). He returned to Greece where he settled permanently. His work focuses on the hermeneutics of Hellenism with special emphasis on the spiritual characteristics that Byzantium has passed down to Modern Greece, the ignorance of which prevents Greek self-awareness. He examines predominantly the implications that the cancellation of a Byzantine Renaissance has brought about to the psychical formation of the Modern Greek individual; it remains thereafter deficient and imponderable, at the mercy of the historical circumstances. In Athens he has taught, among other institutions, at the Goulandri-Horn Foundation, and at the present at Vasilis and Marina Theocharakis’ Foundation.

Prologue

This work is the product of a series of thirty lectures at the Goulandris- Horn Foundation during the academic year 1997-1998 and a corresponding series at the Vasilis and Marina Theocharakis Foundation between January 2012 and January 2013, with a break over the summer. The latter series was not a mere repetition of the former. The first series of lectures set out the framework and the spirit of my approach, while in the second I attempted to present those insights that had gestated over the intervening fifteen years. I perceived from the beginning the seeds of those deeper insights and decided to wait. The subject of my interpretative reading this time is Plato’s Republic. I do not, of course, have in mind here some return to the past. Since, however, material progress is not necessarily also moral progress (the dictates of efficiency make no such requirement), a rebaptism in the sources of the beginnings and their diachronic force can constitute an effective measure to test the divergence between the material and the spiritual. We continually re9read the classics in order to evaluate more maturely the gains and losses of our choices within an historical perspective. Our appraisal is made through the prism of the logic governing the original foundations and of that governing the way in which we receive them at each moment. We read the texts to measure ourselves against their meanings and we introduce our time into their spiritual duration as a mode of questioning, so as to give form to this duration and to recognise the value elements inherent therein.

Ο Χάρης Βλαβιανός συζητά με τον Στέλιο Ράμφο(video). Για τα αίτια της σημερινής κρίσης, για την απαξίωση του πολιτικού λόγου και την αδυναμία του να ανταποκριθεί στις υπαρξιακές ανάγκες των ανθρώπων. Με αφορμη το τελευταίο του βιβλίο: «Πολιτική από στόμα σε στόμα», που δίνει πολλαπλές αφορμές για συζήτηση.

The Kallipolis soul