To Poikilon (Plato, Alfarabi, Aristotle)

Abstract

Plato’s characterisation of democracy in terms of to poikilon (multiplicity, variegation, motley) is rehearsed, reinforced with reference to Alfarabi, and shown to persist in contemporary thinkers such as Badiou. The persistent analogy between the State and the human body, in Plato and beyond, is shown to be tendentially incoherent, and its incoherence stressed. Aristotle’s more hospitable treatment of motifs of multiplicity and diversity is explored, and his apparent belief in the superiority of Absolute Monarchy or the One Best Man is shown, contra Derrida, to rely on an unduly hasty reading of the Politics. Rather, the One Best Man’s affinity with the undecidable pair of Beast and God introduces a complication into the structure of sovereignty that is read against Heidegger’s understanding of a line in Sophocles’ Antigone that Derrida strangely ignores.