This paper aims at showing how Gadamer understood the impossibility of any properly unpolitical
stance for philosophy by examining the relation of philosophy and politics in his interpretation of
Plato’s Republic . I argue that Gadamer’s rejection of the possibility of the ἄπολις (as presented by
Aristotle) was prompted by the thoughts of his friend and interlocutor Leo Strauss on the question
of the relation of the theoretical life and political life in Platonic-Aristotelian philosophy. I then turn
to Gadamer’s reading of the Republic and focus on three aspects of his interpretation: philosophical
education in the context of utopian thinking, the Forms and the Idea of the Good, and philosophical
knowledge. Tied together, these three elements convene a picture of philosophy that is by no means
above or against politics, but rather exists in a harmonious and mutually influencing relation with the
political community. I finally suggest that the interpretive conditions of this harmony are not without
consequence on how we conceive of philosophy itself, its nature and its task.
