Prime Junta
RPGCodex' Little BRO
- Joined
- October 19, 2006
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If we have to use a word to describe him, taking into account all his works, that word would be "idealist", not "fascist".
I was speaking about his ideas (and behavior) on politics, not his philosophy in general. However, I don't agree with you even so, unless you're using "idealist" in the sense of "Platonic idealist," which he most certainly was. "Idealist" in the common usage sense -- "an individual who puts beliefs in abstract ideals before self-interest or pragmatism" -- certainly doesn't fit Plato; he acted very much in his own interest and was quite pragmatic as a politician.
Calling him a fascist is certainly a stretch, since the economic and social underpinnings of fascism didn't exist in his time. However, I think it's a pretty descriptive analogy: just like it's completely wrong to call Pericles a democrat in modern terms, in the Athenian/Greek political field of the time, he occupied a similar position that democrats occupy in today's political field. Similarly, Plato's position was analogous to that of fascists in modern history.
Unfortunately, the only way we can hope to understand how someone like Plato thought is through analogies -- we're so far removed from the mental landscape of Athens at the time. So, keeping in mind that these are analogies and as such limited, it is IMO fair to characterize Socrates as a counter-cultural maverick hippie type, Plato as an authoritarian fascist type, and Pericles as a democratic statesman type, to pick three examples at random.
To go off on another tangent, I've often wondered what it is that Socrates really said or did that pissed off the Powers that Be in Athens badly enough to have him executed. I'm fairly certain that Plato didn't give us the whole truth of the matter: while he appears to have transmitted us a fair bit of the real Socrates, he also cheerfully turns him into a sock puppet when propounding some of his own ideas.
But that we'll never know, sadly.
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