Asclepio: Ecco il tuo Politico! La relazione etico terapeutica fra medicina e politica in Platone

The purpose of this paper is to examine the political dimension of the relationship between the doctor and the patient, and the therapeutic dimension of the relationship between the politician and the citizen in Plato’s philosophy. The purpose of the study is to show that the liaison between medicine and politics in the Platonic doctrine is not extrinsic, as if it were two disciplines analogous but of a different nature. We believe, on the contrary, that the relationship between the two sciences is substantial, by virtue of the political and therapeutic dimensions that both sciences essentially share. This affinity is possible as a result of the particular constitution of their object of study; the epistemological structure of the two sciences and the specific use of the persuasive discourse that both arts adopt to achieve their results. In order to examine our hypothesis we will investigate some passages from the Politicus, the Timaeus and the Laws.