The Featherless Biped and the Limits of Mathematical Reduction: Theaetetus and Plato’s Statesman

This article argues that Statesman 265a–266e continues the problem opened in Theaetetus 147d–148b: the limits of mathematical reduction. Theaetetus’ solution does not merely classify incommensurable magnitudes; it hides the apeiron within a finite class, δυνάμεις. In the Statesman the same gesture is transferred to the human being through division and produces the comically poor definition of the human being as a “featherless biped.” Plato thus shows that reduction may be mathematically powerful but insufficient as a λόγος of the human and the political.