La “verdad práctica” en los relatos míticos del modelo educativo platónico de la <i>República</i><b><i></i></b>

Scholars of Platonic thought agree in locating the conceptualization of practical or normative truth in books II and III of the Republic, where Plato develops the critique of the mythical-poetic educational paradigm. The Platonic educational model is based on a reworking of traditional paideia: for the formation of citizens, false myths are used which, nevertheless, contain some truth. There Plato does not criticize the factual falsity of poetry but its moral falsity, that is, the composition of false images about the gods and virtue, since they incorrectly shape the souls of those being educated. From this perspective, what distinguishes the mythical accounts of the poets and those advocated by Plato is not their factual truth, but their “practical” truth. In this paper I address the debate around the meaning of pseûdos in the passages in which Plato criticizes traditional poetry and conceptualizes myths as a pedagogical tool in order to elucidate the specificity of the truth of this particular class of discourses.