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Plato’s Republic : Critique

Plato’s Republic : Critique. 1. Is Plato’s Republic totalitarian? Karl Popper’s (b.Austria, British 1902-1994) charge in The Open Society and its Enemies (1945) Popper argues that the Republic is the source of all totalitarian systems in the West

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Plato’s Republic : Critique

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  1. Plato’s Republic: Critique • 1. Is Plato’s Republic totalitarian? • Karl Popper’s (b.Austria, British 1902-1994) charge in The Open Society and its Enemies (1945) • Popper argues that the Republic is the source of all totalitarian systems in the West • What features of the Republic might be regarded as totalitarian? Plato’s Republic: Critique - slide 1

  2. Plato’s Republic: Critique • What features mitigate somewhat the charge of totalitarianism? • Are the labels “authoritarian” or “paternalistic” a better fit than “totalitarian”? Plato’s Republic: Critique - slide 2

  3. Plato’s Republic: Critique • 2. The assumption that a few have a special kind of wisdom and therefore are justified in ruling • Critique • Contra Plato, knowledge does not equal virtue. • The position is internally self-justifying. Plato’s Republic: Critique - slide 3

  4. Plato’s Republic: Critique • Plato is not aware that power can corrupt. • The famous statement of Lord Acton (John Emerich Dalberg) (1887): “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men.” Plato’s Republic: Critique - slide 4

  5. Plato’s Republic: Critique • 3. Plato’s ideal is static • This is rooted in the fact that its foundation is the other-worldly realm of Ideas (permanent, unchanging, absolutes). • 4. Plato’s human nature dualism • The evidence of modern psychology and neurology runs counter to such an extreme dualism. Plato’s Republic: Critique - slide 5

  6. Plato’s heritage • The heritage of Plato (a few) • (1) His metaphysical dualism. • Arthur Lovejoy states that Plato set up the primary antithesis of other-worldliness & this-worldliness, the belief that the genuinely real and truly good are radically antithetic to anything found in natural human life (The Great Chain of Being, 1936, p. 25). Plato’s Republic: Critique - slide 6

  7. Plato’s heritage • (2) His dualistic view of human nature • The division into soul and body and the denigration of the physical and bodily Plato’s Republic: Critique - slide 7

  8. Plato’s heritage • (3) The position that intellectual and contemplative activities are superior to manual activities. • This was challenged by Christianity in the form of monasticism from the third century onwards, but without much success. Plato’s Republic: Critique - slide 8

  9. Plato’s heritage • (4) The position that things which are permanent and unchanging are more perfect than those which change. • A basic assumption in Western thought until Darwin (1859) Plato’s Republic: Critique - slide 9

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