>Plato was the first deconstructionist. He deconstructed all the "slogans"
>around which the popular party in Athens organized themselves. That's
>the process one sees in the first book of the Republic re Thrasymachus.
Ellen Meiksins Wood writes in _Peasant-Citizen and Slave: The Foundations of Athenian Democracy_ (London: Verso, 1988)
***** Rulers and Producers: The Philosophical Subversion of Athenian Democracy
There is, however, one sense in which Plato can be read as an expression of democratic ideals -- and that is, paradoxically, precisely in his adoption of the ethic of craftsmanship as a means of attacking democracy. His attitude to the arts as normally understood by Athenians is unambiguously revealed in the hierarchy of souls which he outlines in the _Phaedrus_, where artisans and farmers are seventh in a list of nine, superior only to demagogues, sophists, and tyrants in their moral capacity. Yet the analogy of the arts, the concept of _techne_, is the very foundation of his political philosophy. In his doctrine, the ideal of craftsmanship and respect for those who work with their hands is transmuted into an argument for the exclusivity of politics and for a hierarchical division of labour which excludes the possessors of _techne_ from the '_techne_' of citizenship. By placing _techne_ at the centre of his argument, Plato pays democracy the tribute of turning its ideals against itself, of meeting his enemies on their own ground. And perhaps this is the most eloquent testimony to the tradition of craftsmanship which the Athenians may have been the first to articulate as a cultural ideal.
Plato's transformation of _techne_ is not the only instance in which he conducts a political argument in opposition to democracy by redefining concepts so as to turn them against the democratic meanings implicit in conventional usage. In fact, this is arguably the principal strategy of his political philosophy, and its effect is to undermine precisely those principles that most specifically defined the democratic polis. It might even be fair to say that one way of identifying what Athenians regarded as most essential to democracy is to look for the targets of Plato's attacks, those principles whose conventional meaning he most radically redefines. (145-146) *****
Yoshie