“Giocare alla città” : discorsi e pedine nella «Repubblica»

I begin my paper by stressing the special status of the game petteia, which stands out for its “seriousness”. Against this backdrop, I examine a passage from Plato’s Republic, in which Adeimantus criticizes Socrates for resembling a petteia player, keen on trapping his interlocutor. The image arguably refers to a version called polis, and it is no coincidence that Socrates’ launches into the celebrated image of the ship of state, thus adopting another polis metaphor. Socrates, however, fails to mention a rule of petteia, i.e. the possibility to take back a move, in contrast with a number of other passages in which Socrates adopts it as sign of dialectical fair play. The metaphorical adoption of the rule, then, serves to distinguish fair dialectic from the fatuous and aggressive game of eristics. Paradoxically, the seriousness of Platonic dialectic is defined in relation to a popular game.