{"id":1878,"date":"2024-07-08T16:30:53","date_gmt":"2024-07-08T13:30:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ucy.ac.cy\/groupminds\/?p=1878"},"modified":"2024-07-08T16:36:41","modified_gmt":"2024-07-08T13:36:41","slug":"political-implications-of-group-agency-in-platos-republic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ucy.ac.cy\/groupminds\/political-implications-of-group-agency-in-platos-republic\/","title":{"rendered":"Political Implications of Group Agency in Plato\u2019s “Republic”"},"content":{"rendered":"

For the 2024 edition of the MANCEPT Workshops taking place on 4-6 September at the Manchester Centre for Political Theory, University of Manchester, Stephan Stephanides, a post-doctoral researcher of our GROUPMINDS team, will be presenting a paper entitled \u2018Political Implications of Group Agency in Plato\u2019s Republic<\/em>\u2019 for the panel \u2018Group Agency in Political Theory\u2019. Building on his current postdoctoral work for the European Research Council (ERC) project \u201cGroup Minds in Ancient Narrative\u201d and representing the University of Cyprus, Stephan will offer a historical perspective to the interdisciplinary panel by addressing some of the political questions arising from the model of group agency suggested in Plato\u2019s Republic<\/em>. His paper will be arguing that whilst the members of the polis<\/em> envisaged in this dialogue subscribe to a \u2018group perspective\u2019 or \u2018common ethos\u2019 through shared beliefs of a certain kind and a commitment to joint societal functions, anticipating various recent insights in social science and ontology, Plato\u2019s model of the polis<\/em> as group agent rests on an extreme vision of the unity of the polis<\/em> which generates significant points of contrast with contemporary discussions of groups as well as pressing implications for political theory.<\/p>\n

In the ideal city of the Republic<\/em>, citizens are required to share the \u2018same beliefs\u2019 (\u1f41\u03bc\u03bf\u03b4\u03bf\u03be\u03af\u03b1) about how the city ought to be hierarchically arranged, constituting an ideal of \u2018agreement\u2019 (\u03bf\u0314\u03bc\u03bf\u0301\u03bd\u03bf\u03b9\u03b1) or perhaps \u2018sameness of mind\u2019 in a much stronger sense on the central political question of which class in the city should rule and which classes should be ruled. Whilst these cognitive states are assumed to hold citizens in bonds of friendship (\u03c6\u03b9\u03bb\u03af\u03b1) and harmony (\u1f01\u03c1\u03bc\u03bf\u03bd\u03af\u03b1), impacting the way that they see themselves as integral parts of a unified community towards which all their joint actions are aimed, Stephan\u2019s paper will also stress that the potential merits of this model of group agency must also be countenanced against the restrictions on the individual rights<\/em> and freedoms<\/em> of citizens that such cognitive states might be thought to impose. For instance, does \u03bf\u0314\u03bc\u03bf\u0301\u03bd\u03bf\u03b9\u03b1 undermine the individual autonomy<\/em> of citizens to govern their own lives democratically as part of a group? Conversely, since it has been suggested that membership in a group necessarily entails a certain loss of individual autonomy and agency, should we be weary of models of group agency which encourage strict like-mindedness as opposed to individuation and plurality of thought? These are some of the questions that Stephan hopes to shed light on in his contribution to this year\u2019s MANCEPT Workshops, showing that ancient depictions of groups are still relevant to considerations about group agency and political theory today.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For the 2024 edition of the MANCEPT Workshops taking place on 4-6 September at the Manchester Centre for Political Theory, University of Manchester, Stephan Stephanides, a [\u2026]<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":497,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1878","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"modified_by":"kmikel02","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-13 09:24:30","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ucy.ac.cy\/groupminds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1878","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ucy.ac.cy\/groupminds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ucy.ac.cy\/groupminds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ucy.ac.cy\/groupminds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/497"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ucy.ac.cy\/groupminds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1878"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.ucy.ac.cy\/groupminds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1878\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1884,"href":"https:\/\/www.ucy.ac.cy\/groupminds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1878\/revisions\/1884"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ucy.ac.cy\/groupminds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1878"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ucy.ac.cy\/groupminds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1878"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ucy.ac.cy\/groupminds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1878"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}