Taking Care of the City: the Appeal to Notions and Methods of Hippocratic Medicine in Plato’s Political Thought

This paper develops the question of the important role played by Hippocratic medicine as a paradigm of knowledge and skill in Plato’s thought. Specifically, it focuses on Plato’s exploitation of the analogy between the medical notion of health as a balanced condition of the body, on one hand, and political justice on the other. First, I examine Plato's thought on the status of the technai and particularly of medicine, prompted by the “Socratic” connection of moral virtue and knowledge, through an analysis of the relevant passages in a number of dialogues from the Apology of Socrates to the Gorgias and the Phaedrus. In the second section I endeavour to clarify the specific function of the references to medical techne in diverse contexts of the Republic and the Laws, aiming to claim its positive role as a model in the Platonic “psycho-political” project against Levin’s recent attempt at undermining it.