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How is Karl Popper's critique of Plato as having given way to totalitarianism received among contemporary scholars? (self.askphilosophy)

submitted by eGe_aYd

Karl Popper identifies Plato as a major intellectual source of totalitarianism in his Open Society and Its Enemies. I remember reading Alex Callinicos say that this view has been dismantled by Plato scholars. Is that an accurate description of the current state of the scholarship?

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[–]RieuxxWittgenstein, Metaphilosophy, phil. of education 49 points50 points  (1 child)

Honestly, within contemporary classical scholarship, I would say the consensus is that Popper’s portrayal of Plato is pretty flawed. Most experts (I think) in ancient philosophy would say that Popper was guilty of a profound anachronism, projecting the horrors of twentieth-century fascism and Stalinism onto a fourth-century BCE context. Scholars such as Julia Annas and M.F. Burnyeat have pointed out that Plato’s motivations were rooted in a metaphysical quest for the Form of the Good rather than the more modern will to power or any of the racialised ideologies Popper attributed to him. Annas thinks that Popper treats Plato as though he were a modern political theorist with a programme for social change, which misses the point that the Republic is fundamentally a work of ethics, and she said (something along the lines of) the book was more akin to a legal brief or prosecution than a work of philosophy. Burneyat really took Popper to task as he saw Popper's engagement with Plato as almost an act of violence. Basically, he saw him as vandalising and perverting the true intent and meaning of The Republic. I think Burnyeat even went so far as to say that, as far as being a contribution to the understanding of Plato's ideas, it's almost completely worthless.

The issue is that the specific textual evidence Popper used to support his thesis has been extensively critiqued. Critics argue that he relied on really questionable translations that made Plato’s Greek sound like modern military jargon. There is also a widespread scholarly view that Popper fundamentally misread the literary nature of the Republic. Rather than a literal blueprint for a totalitarian state, many modern readers interpret the dialogue as a psychological allegory meant to explore the internal harmony of the soul or as a theoretical exercise intended to demonstrate the impossibility of perfect earthly justice. He just seemed to have seen it as something way more literal than it really is.

Now, of course, Popper’s legacy remains significant even if his historical accuracy is rejected, because his philosophical warning about the dangers of utopian social engineering continues to be important for liberal thought. I would say that contemporary political theorists often acknowledge that Popper correctly identified the authoritarian potential within certain Platonic ideas, such as the defence of the Noble Lie and the rejection of democratic pluralism, but that he didn't appreciate the form or intent of the work which has a huge impact on it's meaning and interpretation.

[–]Traditional_Fish_504political phil, continental 1 point2 points  (0 children)

So i havent read poppers treatment, but from what you’re saying here how do these contemporary scholars treat Plato’s laws? I think the Laws challenges any treatment of the Republic as simply an allegory of the ethical soul, since I just think it’s much more explicit in its constitutional commentary which has a lot of similarities to the Republic. Also didn’t Plato try to institute the politics from the Republic into the failed “philosopher king” in Syracuse (which would give rise to the Laws)?

I’m not saying that Plato is a “totalitarian” or anything of the sort, though I do think Arendt makes a compelling case for how he can be seen in a tradition leading up to such. My own understanding of Plato is that the Republic and the Laws are both attempts to conceive of how to situate the rational Good in the community or polity. For Athens, in the midst of sophist corruption, Plato attempted to conceive of how to have a political leadership completely focused on the rational Good through a rigorous constraints over leaders’ lives solely focused on cultivating rationality as the basis of their decisions. This of course comes with the ancient view of liberty more focused on cultivation than on modern notions of negative rights. Even the Laws, which is much more relaxed on the treatment of the guardians, still has some pretty extreme measures over citizens lives to make sure they are politically acting with reason above all else.

I think it’s silly to dismiss this all as totalitarian, and ahistorical, but I don’t get why this means you have to drop the interesting political dimensions of Plato’s text. Even Aristotle, Plato’s contemporary, treated Plato as advocating for a program, as did a good bit of western philosophy. Sorry if I’m misreading your summary of the literature.

[–]wokeupabugancient philosophy, modern philosophy 10 points11 points  (2 children)

Is that an accurate description of the current state of the scholarship?

Yeah. Popper's engagement with historical thinkers is notoriously terrible. Not only his treatment of Plato, but also of Freud and of Hegel, is so bad it plausibly counts as academic fraud. Popper has some interesting and worthwhile ideas, but when reading him you have to just ignore what he says about other thinkers, just treat this stuff as if he's imagining up hypothetical foils to use to express his own views, and focus on understanding his own position, without taking anything he's saying as informative about anyone else's position.

Incidentally, while Popper is particularly bad in this regard, this is not an uncommon fault among philosophers. Lots of great philosophers are dreadful at characterizing other philosophers. E.g., I love Putnam, but almost everything he says about another thinker is idiotic. You just have to understand that a lot of the time philosophers aren't doing history of philosophy, they're just expressing their own views and are perfectly happy to use whatever ridiculous things they've heard about other thinkers as occasions for articulating these views of theirs, without doing any due diligence to check whether what they're saying about these other thinkers is actually correct.

[–]anasfkhan81 1 point2 points  (1 child)

what are some good references detailing Popper's misreadings or mistreatment of Hegel?

[–]PrurientLuxurienthistory of German idealism, Hegel, history of contemporary cont. 2 points3 points  (0 children)

The classic reference is Kaufmann's "The Hegel Myth and Its Method" (1951), which you can find for free online in multiple places, though it is also collected in several books, including Hegel Myths and Legends (ed. Stewart) or Kaufmann's own From Shakespeare to Existentialism.

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