Popper's Inability to Explain Plato: the Weakness of Liberalism in the Analysis of the Dialectic of Political Platonism

Abstract

Having found ourselves at the beginning of the 21st century in a world global crisis that modern political systems are unable to solve, the question “what should politics really be” has become relevant again in political philosophy. Everything looks like there are no winners in the competition of modern political systems, and liberalism repeats the history of its predecessors. On the other hand, one of the interesting consequences of these events is the growth of interest in the political thought of antiquity, where the genesis of the doctrine of the state and politics actually took place, and this in turn leads to the revival of the ideas of Neo-Aristotelianism (Neoplatonism) in political philosophy. As a result, Plato's philosophical and political heritage naturally falls into the focus of discussions, and Plato himself becomes one of its central figures. Each side of the debate appeals to Plato, trying to “use” his legacy for their own purposes. For this reason, Plato has both many followers and a significant number of critics, whose voices began to sound louder already in the 20th century, among whom Karl Popper gained the most popularity. The task of this work is an attempt to analyze Popper's criticism of Plato, which he mainly presented in his book “The Open Society and its Enemies”, as well as to introduce an alternative point of view of Plato's “defenders” with a further comparison of the opinions and approaches of both sides, with the aim of revealing individual elements of modern political neo-Aristotelianism and understanding the importance of the Platonic-Aristotelian approach to politics in the 21st century. In general, Popper's opinion regarding Plato's “Republic” turned out to be erroneous in many respects, and a detailed analysis of these errors reveals the problems of liberalism. On the other hand, the political teaching of antiquity in its new understanding is manifested. Today, it is mediated by the knowledge of the entire history of philosophy and political practice of (post)modernity, which follows antiquity, and the disclosure of individual elements of this teaching is the most important result of this work.