Esoteric Roman v. Greek Ranting (was Philosophers)

[Tichy]

I'll accept that in part; the Laws are a very late work, and since at least the middle period of the Republic "Socrates" was at an almost explicitly critical distance from Socrates. My take is that in the Laws Plato finally abandons the ironic use of "Socrates" to offer his own view more directly. (Plato is the Athenian stranger, much as he was when he went to Sicily to try his own hand at statecraft...) A lot of what you say about the Laws seems right -- it's not a how-to manual for statecraft -- but it still seems that an aristocracy (in the meritocratic sense of rule by those whose intellects are capable, disciplined, and trained in philosophy) is supposed to be empowered to make and enforce the laws meditated upon in the dialogue.

My interest in all of this has been to avoid both the one-sided hero Plato and the villainous anti-open-society Plato, because both make him less interesting than he is. I got a bit rankled when you claimed me for a Popperite. And then the thread derailment began in earnest.

[Tichy]

And a game question: how successful are Oreiads at seduction? As good/better/worse than Succubi?

[noname]

I never meant to call you a Popperite. I apologize if I came across that way.

[Jazzepi]

What's a Popperite?

Jazzepi

[noname]

A Popperite a follower of Karl Popper, a writer who blasted Plato in his book "The Open Society and its Enemies", calling Plato a proponent of tyranny in spite of the fact that Plato considered tyranny to be the worst form of government. Of course, Popper's work is rather limited to science and his political philosophy is rather limited due to his distrust of historicism. Of course, Popper saw himself as a liberal, and yet his ideas on society were, if anything, degenerate and possibly Marxist.

[johan osterman]

Noname: Just curious, are you an objectivist noname?

[Tichy]

I can't envision a possible world in which Popper is a Marxist, the attack on historicism seems to preculde it. But I don't have any particular rancor about Popper's politics, and I haven't studied them carefully. I've always thought of him as a garden variety liberal. I just think his interpretation of Plato is one-sided.

Popper's best known as a philosopher of science. He coined the idea of 'falsification': that a scientific theory can only be legitimate if it is possible to be falsified (i.e. that it's possible for there to be concrete evidence *against* it).

In terms of his relation to Plato I've always thought of him as the opposite of Leo Strauss. Both point to the manipulative or elitist features of Plato's politics (rule by the 'best', the legitimacy of 'noble lies' told to the people by the leaders if they move society towards the Good, etc.) Strauss lauds these things in a roundabout way: he's a subtle (or subtilizing) reader, and doesn't treat the Republic as a blueprint for a state, but a meditation on politics more generally. Popper straightforwardly attacks them as the seeds of tyranny. I'm not a fan of either of them as readers of Plato.