Abstract

This paper aims at showing how Gadamer understood the impossibility of any properly unpolitical stance for philosophy by examining the relation of philosophy and politics in his interpretation of Plato’s Republic. I argue that Gadamer’s rejection of the possibility of the ἄπολις (as presented by Aristotle) was prompted by the thoughts of his friend and interlocutor Leo Strauss on the question of the relation of the theoretical life and political life in Platonic-Aristotelian philosophy. I then turn to Gadamer’s reading of the Republic and focus on three aspects of his interpretation: philosophical education in the context of utopian thinking, the Forms and the Idea of the Good, and philosophical knowledge. Tied together, these three elements convene a picture of philosophy that is by no means above or against politics, but rather exists in a harmonious and mutually influencing relation with the political community. I finally suggest that the interpretive conditions of this harmony are not without consequence on how we conceive of philosophy itself, its nature and its task.