L'origine delle tecniche e la vita buona. Sul primitivismo di Platone

This paper examines Plato’s reflection on the origin of technai and their relation to the good life, asking whether his account can be interpreted within a primitivist framework. While Plato does not develop a systematic Kulturgeschichte of technical development, his dialogues repeatedly mobilize mythical and conjectural narratives of human origins – especially the myth of the Golden Age, the Prometheus tradition, the reign of Cronus, and the emergence of primitive communities after cosmic catastrophes. The paper argues that Plato’s position cannot be reduced either to a rejection of technical progress or to a nostalgic idealization of primitive life. Rather, Plato evaluates technai according to the moral economy in which they operate. When techniques remain limited to the satisfaction of basic needs and support forms of mutual aid and moderation, they contribute to an ordered and balanced way of life; when they become instruments of luxury, accumulation, expansion, and war, they generate civic disorder and moral corruption. This tension emerges clearly in the contrast between the “healthy city” and the “feverish city” in the Republic, as well as in the accounts of early humanity in the Laws, the Statesman, the Timaeus, and the Critias. The paper therefore identifies in Plato a distinctive form of primitivism: not a chronological or cultural primitivism aimed at restoring an original state of nature, but a critical use of primitive or archaic communities as comparative models for evaluating the relation between needs, techniques, political order, and the good life. Plato’s central concern is not the elimination of technai, but their subordination to measure, law, and rational political organization.