Another footnote to Plato

Somebody once said: "The entire history of philosophy is a series of footnotes to Plato". Karl Popper is one of those footnotes.

"The Open Society and its Enemies" was originally published in 1945. The first volume attacks Plato, the second takes on Hegel and Marx. The work is considered to be a classical defense of liberal democracy against Nazi and Communist totalitarianism. In reality, Popper must be one of the most overrated thinkers of the 20th century. His over-simplistic notion of "falsification" is another case in point.

Obviously, it's impossible to fully criticize Popper in a short review. This critique is therefore only a short outline.

First, Poppers interpretation of ancient Greece is deeply flawed, almost hopeless. He claims that a strong abolitionist movement existed in Athens, that slavery was on the verge of dissolution, that a politician like Pericles was egalitarian and humanist, and that Athenian imperialism was essentially benign, devoted to spreading liberal democracy to all corners of Hellas. COME AGAIN?

These ideas are fantasies. True, Athenian democracy was "plebeian" in the sense that all free native-born men were citizens, regardless of their income status. However, the majority of the Athenian population were slaves, many of whom were brutally treated. Athens was also strongly patriarchal: women were not citizens. Thus, Athens was fundamentally a hierarchic, non-egalitarian society, despite the nominal equality between, say, a free farmer and a free aristocrat. Nor was Athens pluralistic in the modern sense: all citizens were expected to worship the same gods. This, of course, is what Poppers hero Socrates was accused of not doing.

Popper rightly points out that Plato was more regressive than Pericles on the subject of democracy. However, on the subject of slavery, Plato was actually more "progressive", since he opposed the enslavement of other Greeks, and called for a code of conduct during armed conflicts between Greek city-states. Pericles most certainly did not.

Unsurprisingly, Popper sees Sparta as the "totalitarian" antithesis to Athens. This, I believe, is another anachronism. To the helots, Sparta was indeed deeply oppressive. But so was Periclean Athens to its slaves! And while Sparta's constitution was more oligarchic than the Periclean, the Spartan system had other traits that were plebeian: common meals, male bonding, harsh military training for all citizens, perhaps even greater gender equality. All free native men regardless of income status were citizens, just like in Athens. Thus, many Spartan citizens were low-income rather than oligarchs. Yet, they must have supported the oligarchic system, since it worked for centuries! Thus, *both* Athens and Sparta had certain "plebeian" and "egalitarian" traits that would have looked quite alien to, say, a Persian or Egyptian observer. Plato apparently regarded the Spartan version as more stable and effective than the Athenian one. Technically speaking, he was quite correct.

It's also curious that Popper constantly accuses Plato of being utopian. True, there are certain utopian elements in Plato's writings. Overall, however, his political ideas were clearly derived from Sparta, and perhaps from Egypt. His last dialogue, "Laws", is quite pragmatic and mostly based on Sparta and Crete. Nor is it serious to accuse Plato of being a pathetic megalomaniac, as Popper does. Both Plato himself and his Academy intervened in Greek politics. There was nothing "megalomaniac" about Plato putting forward his political ideas to those willing to listen, especially not the more realistic proposals in "Laws".

To Popper, the main sin of thinkers like Plato and Marx seems to be their belief in Absolute Truth. But here too, Popper is contradictory. On the one hand, he sounds like a moral relativist. On the other hand, he constantly accuses his opponents of being immoral! Of course, Popper is not alone in this error. It seems to be a common malaise of the 20th century, that philosophers imagine Absolute Morality can exist, even if we embrace relativism. Popper also criticizes essentialism, and yet he is forced to concede that some kind of essence or natural law might exist after all. He admits that humans are bound by certain psychological laws, by economic laws, and that they at least should be bound by conscience. He even comes across as a kind of liberal Christian, speaking highly of the Sermon on the Mount. And yet, he tells us that all morals are just opinions?!

These, then, are some of the objections I have to Poppers "Open Society and its Enemies".