Plato on Stasis

In this paper, we argue that stasis does not constitute, as Giorgio Agamben maintains, a zone of indifference between the unpolitical space of the family and the political space of the city. The Greeks of the classical period understood stasis as a disease (nosos) developed in the body politic. In Plato, this “stasis as disease” theme is developed into an elaborate theory. For Plato, stasis is a dysfunctional interruption (stasis also means “rest” in contrast to motion, kinesis) in the psychosomatic constitution of man or in the functional whole of the city-state, rendering them incapable of action (adynatos). Hence, rather than a zone of indifference between oikos and polis, stasis names the inoperativity of the body (be it individual or collective). For Plato, stasis as inoperativity is not civil war but its ontological condition of possibility.