Crafting Order

Taxis and kosmos, both translated as 'order', signify differently in Plato’s dialogs. Taxis orders souls and cities through the giving of orders, which, taking their bearing from what is divine and immutable, prescribe, command and compel obedience. By contrast, and like the crafts of weaving and architecture analogized to statecraft in Statesman, kosmos gives order by taking its bearing from what is being ordered and the interdependent and dynamic relationships across craftspeople, their materials and their ends. This lecture develops an account of democratic order by exploring the political and theoretical implications of these differences in Statesman and other dialogs.