Cynthia Shihui Ma

At the peak of the Statesman’s myth of the reversed cosmos, the Eleatic Stranger asks after the conditions for human happiness. This paper suggests that philosophy and therewith human happiness is possible only in the age of Zeus, the age characterized by both the withdrawal of the gods and human neediness. The myth clarifies the inadequacy of the dialogue’s previous conception of the human being as a herd animal by illuminating what is missing from it: the erotic dimension of the human soul.