Mythopoiesis and the Constitution of the Mytho-State in Plato and Heidegger

Is the state, by that we may loosely take as the ensemble of social practices that pertain to the management and authority of the polity, ever solely a rational construction? Liberal social contract theory, roughly speaking, posits the possibility that rational self-interested beings develop a consensus as to the need and constitution of the state. The state through its various forms and modalities as it evolved from its original constitution-making event is thus taken as inherently legitimate because of its intrinsic reflection of the original consent of the people. In this essay I seek to problematize this notion of the rational state by returning to the ways in which Plato, and more implicitly, Heidegger justifies, legitimizes and operationalizes the state as such. To do so is to first recognize the importance of the role of mythical thought in both Plato and Heidegger. Following the work of Leo Strauss, Ernst Cassirer and Hans Blumenberg, I argue that the theorization of the state also involves myth. In particular, following some of Strauss’ insights, rather than reading Plato’s Republic as a repudiation of myth as such, the Platonic “state” may be seen as an instance of, what may be called, mythopoiesis as reflected, for example, in the discussion of noble lie or the myth of Er. While Plato’s Republic provides the ground for the elaboration of the concept of mythopoiesis, Heidegger’s arguments against modern society, technology, and in fact art as aesthetics may perhaps be read as an attack against the very liberal idea of the state as a mechanical entity (as in Hobbes). In which case, the turn towards poetic language implicitly prompts the need for (re)establishing what I would call the mytho-state.