This article argues that the Statesman should be read as a historically informed reflection on the nature and possibility of political rule, and that it presents us with a dilemma precisely in this regard. On the one hand, as indicated by the famous myth on the evolution of the cosmos, politics is only possible today, in the age of Zeus, when man no longer is like a sheep, ruled by a caring herdsman, as he used to be in the age of Cronus. Instead, he has become an expert who is capable of some degree of self-rule. On the other hand, however, as a ‘technocratic’ age, the present is marked by its loss of the ‘natural’ model for statesmanship. More specifically, when politics tends to be identified with technical expertise, it becomes difficult to make sense of the very idea of political rule.

本文认为，政治家应被视为对政治统治的性质和可能性的历史了解，而这恰恰在这方面给我们带来了困境。一方面，正如关于宇宙演化的著名神话所表明的那样，政治只有在宙斯时代的今天才有可能，那时宙斯时代的人不再像绵羊一样，由一个有爱心的牧民统治，就像他过去那样。在克罗纳斯时代。取而代之的是，他已经成为具有一定自治能力的专家。但是，另一方面，作为“技术官僚”时代，现在的特点是它失去了政治风气的“自然”模式。更具体地说，当政治倾向于以技术专长来识别时，就很难理解政治统治这一概念。