Popper’s Plato

> Popper argued that Plato had produced a vision of one such closed society. He pointed to the stratification of the social order in Plato’s ideal city, the strict division of labor between the intellectual and productive classes, the absence of social mobility, state censorship of most culture, and, above all, the promulgation of an openly fraudulent myth, the so-called Noble Lie, to legitimize the status quo.

I am not sure I know what Plato envisioned as a society, but his strict division between intellectual and working class seems like a receipe to disaster. Two or three generations in nothing would have been left of the potential advantages of putting the intellectuals in power, because their sons would've taken that power for granted and soon you would've ended up with an ordinary aristocracy.

Granted, those were other times — slavery was totally common for example. But I still think Popper has the better take on how to organize power and who knows, maybe Plato would have agreed if he had the chance to read Popper.

Traumatized is the wrong adjective to describe Plato's reaction (though probably an apt description of Popper's characterization) but Plato was shaped by the trial in respect to his view of the relationship of the philosopher and the (democratic) city.

This is depicted not just in the apology but also for example in the Gorgias where Socrates' death is foreshadowed:

>For as it is, if somebody should seize hold of you or anyone else at all of your sort [philosophers], and drag you off to prison, asserting that you were guilty of a wrong you had never done, you know you would be at a loss what to do with yourself, and would be all dizzy and agape without a word to say; and when you came up in court, though your accuser might be ever so paltry a rascal, you would have to die if he chose to claim death as your penalty.

There is further complexity here, after all Socrates proves himself quite capable of defending himself both in his reply to Callicles here and in the Apology, he was by no means at a loss of what to say. And so the notion that a philosopher cannot defend themselves in the political arena should not necessarily be taken to be Plato's position. Neither is Callicles espousing a particularly democratic position here, in fact the idea that the law can and should be abused like that would never be espoused by an Athenian democrat.

Still, the idea found in the Republic that a wise man would do well to stay quiet in a democratic city was certainly not shared by Socrates (and so may be a reflection of Plato's attitude).

http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%...