Was Plato a Communist or Fascist? 

"Freedom is not taken as the ultimate goal; virtue or excellence is".

So many books, so little time.

Proto-fascist. You are skipping the whole part about the Myth of Metals in the Soul. The having "wives In common" and no private property are only meant for the Gold Soul leaders, which would only be a small minority who would live and rule in common, and not a by single person. The rest of society, the silver, bronze, and lead people could go about doing whatever they normally do. Then, the difference from today's leaders would not be technocrats, they would be Silver Soul people, the leaders would be more like a "Dalai Lama/Judge Judy". No one comes close today.

Plato never defends the end of private property for all of society. There are profit-seeking merchants (of the national AND of the international kind), wage laborers (as the lowest class imaginable, mind you; so the work doesn't defend slavery either), the citizens are under great division of labor, they voluntarily sustain the Guardian class (the people who are actually property-less) by monetary means & so on. Both views are anachronistic and only hold truth to those who haven't read the work or who can't read it apart from the current climate. Plato seems to be prone to that kind of anachronistic misinterpretation; another example would be the view of those academics who understand the Atlantis myth in Timaeus to be a mere analogy about hubris, when Plato makes it explicit and clear as day that he believes it to be factual. Plato is Fascistic and Communistic in the sense that there cannot be a political or philosophical doctrine that can ignore his magnitude (pun intended). As C.S. Lewis said: "All theology of the liberal type involves at some point - and often involves throughout - the claim that the real behaviour and purpose and teaching of Christ came very rapidly to be misunderstood and misrepresented by his followers, and has been recovered or exhumed only by modern scholars. Now long before I became interested in theology I had met this kind of theory elsewhere. The tradition of Jowett still dominated the study of ancient philosophy when I was reading Greats. One was brought up to believe that the real meaning of Plato had been misunderstood by Aristotle and wildly travestied by the neo-platonists, only to be recovered by the moderns. When recovered, it turned out (most fortunately) that Plato had really all along been an english hegelian, rather like T. H. Green. I have met it a third time in my own professional studies; every week a clever undergraduate, every quarter a dull american don, discovers for the first time what some Shakespearean play really meant. But in this third instance I am a privileged person. The revolution in thought and sentiment which has occurred in my own lifetime is so great that I belong, mentally, to Shakespeare’s world far more than to that of these recent interpreters. I see - I feel it in my bones - I know beyond argument - that most of their interpretations are merely impossible; they involve a way of looking at things which was not known in 1914, much less in the Jacobean period. This daily confirms my suspicion of the same approach to Plato or the new testament. The idea that any man or writer should be opaque to those who lived in the same culture, spoke the same language, shared the same habitual imagery and unconscious assumptions, and yet be transparent to those who have none of these advantages, is in my opinion preposterous."

I think it would make more sense to say that plato is pre bourgeois, projecting post bourgeois politics onto him seems like a mistake because there are such significant differences in the epochs in which these politics exist, that even projecting notions of bourgeois property onto plato doesnt make sense because the ancients conceptions of the nature of property where different, plato contra locke, even the lack of the nuclear family is more a pre bourgeois notion of the family than it is a proto expression of communism

Great video. What many people get wrong about Plato, especially his critics, but even some of his supporters, is that they treat them as didactic lectures rather than the dialogues that they really are. Just because a character - even Socrates - says something in a dialogue, that doesn't mean that Plato even thought that view was correct, much less that he was trying to preach that view. The Dialogues take the form that they do because they are first and foremost an exploration of ideas, not an exposition of them. The Republic is more of a thought experiment than it is a manifesto on how to build the ideal society.

I think you should make a video on the Iron law of oligarchy. Plato would probably heavily agree with this theory and it's in my opinion absolutely key to understanding politics, society and "democracy".

Excellent video as always Michael.

Love the new intro!

If what qualifies Socrates as a philosopher is that he knows nothing, then a philosopher is not a technocrat to Plato. More like a shepherd tasked with preserving the clearing of truth, as Heidegger saw. Thanks for stimulating video.

I have been working through the Laws, slowly as that is all my poor Greek will allow, but I have to confess I have found it far more rewarding than the other Dialogues; is it because here we have the real Plato without the pretence of Socrates, and so while different topics are treated, we are left with answers rather than questions? Anyway life would seem to be more attractive under the Laws than in the Republic.

I am intrigued with your views about Technocracy. If you can delve more into the space would be fascinating.

Thanks for posting this; I found it very informative. My feeling about these attempts to interpret Plato's political thought as fascist or communist is that it is, for the most post, ill-informed about those ideologies. For example, a defining feature of fascist states is the merging of industrial leaders and corporations with the state. You don't find that in the Republic. // What the philosopher king in the Republic knows, their expertise, is the nature of the soul and an experiential understanding of the transcendental; that's why the allegory of the cave is in the Republic. The philosopher king is aware of this transcendental dimension and its relationship to the material world; it is this that informs the decisions of the rulers. I'm not saying that this is a practical solution, but I think that Plato is both pointing out what is necessary for a just society and at the same time why there are no just societies on earth. // Thanks again for the video.

I’d love to hear more about Plato’s actual experience putting his ideas into practice. I thought he contributed to making a hash of things in Syracuse or somewhere. It seems to me this experience might reflect on his teachings but I confess I know little about the episode.

As you suggest, he's esoterically dystopian (if you will) in illustrating what certain ideal concepts taken to their extreme would look like in reality. He's an elitist of sorts in that it's clear that the best in terms of virtue and ability should rule. But it's the intellectual values and process on display in the dialogues which are so instructive and applicable to a range of forms of government, the presentation of human ideals as models to strive for if true attainment is nonetheless impractical.

Is The Republic as it is commonly called also the most accessible and most inscrutable?

As you said fascism and socialism has more in common with Plato's and Socrates ideas than a modern liberal conservative or a civic nationalist. But I think there was a regime in 30's which combined these ideas and made a regime which was closest to Plato's ideal state ;) And we should remember ancient Greeks weren't subjected to modern post-Christian morals.

Good talk. You are surely aware that when in the first few minutes you describe "fascism" you are in fact describing every Marxist regime past and present.

Is the political structure of the Roman Catholic church platonic? I hope that i used "platonic" in an accurate way.

For obvious reasons Plato wasn't even a platonist. A good cue is to think of him as the first critic of idealism.

I wish i had more time to read.

perhaps for those who never encountered geometry those who are engaged in it appear like they are doing some kind of witchcraft or alchemy.

Plato is saying that the ideal republic/polis can never be achieved but only exists in form. Lost in translation but know only few understand.

I wouldn't put Plato in either of these boxes.

Neither. Prescribing modern ideological labels to ancient thinkers (an especially a philosopher, rather than a "system builder" - see: Voegelin) is an incredibly modernistic, simplistic and childlike thing to do.

Neither of those concepts existed so im going to say neither

One needs virtue and excellence to sustain Freedom among free people. One needs thinking to be able to judge, and being able to judge well to be responsable in sustaining a political community and it's institutional structure, Hannah Arendt might perhaps still want to say. But if we could substitute somehow your extreme question- terms on Plato onto a more radical terminology, the fundamental political choice remains the one between Freedom and equality. And I think one can maintain Freedom without enforcing equality but one cannot (in a late modern condition, that is) maintain equality without forcing Freedom out. So, in your terminological imposition, yes, give me then (all reductionist as this thus would be, as You rightly pointed out), yes give me Plato the proto fascist, as he would be closer to garantueeing Freedom for all, equal or not. But all of this is in reality here being said by a catholic steadfast believer in subsidiarity who likes to be able to think of justice in the Gandhian terms of localism and it's Stewardship and Swadeshi and Swaray calling for the virtue of Satyagraha, as tought by my very early master, the french poet-thinker-Arche Community founder Lanza del Vasto. A strange answer to a strange question, dear Michael.

Until a move away from it about a century ago, to be educated in the West meant to be educated about Plato. Thanks, John Dewey.

The Republic was an allegory, you know? Trying to glean political theory from Plato is completely missing the mark.

It's too old. Life was too different. It's like imagining what political party they'd belong to. Or if Socrates would prefer tiktok to Instagram. Coke or Pepsi? Like the Spartans. Their government system was so one of a kind as far as we know no one ever duplicated it. Is it fascist? It's extremely militaristic. Everything resolves around the military state. But this is thousands of years before modern bureaucracy existed. It was kind of a monarchy but had 2 kings at the same time. Also throwing away weak babies (literally). But is that eugenics? Also you did have individual farms, property etc. But young men before marriage are and spent most of their time in the barracks. Point is you simply can't use modern terms for them. A monarchy/military death cult/ individualistic/very communal/ slave owning/proto fascist / proto Communist/ proto eugenics/ literally did the purge every now and then. It defies our spectrums and paradigms

People who think Plato was proto communist miss the irony of his writing. When he is laying out the ideal state the whole point is to demonstrate how ridiculous having an ideal state in an imperfect world would actually be. He is pointing out the discrepancy between the form of a perfect state and reality. Especially with his female examples considering Ancient Greece was patriarchal his representation of women would have been for comic effect. He relates the perfect state to the perfect individual in the Republic because man is fallible and will never be able to transcend human nature. Think of it more like Cervantes' Don Quixote than Marx.

He was neither and both...such questions confuse.

There are no good answers to bad questions

2:26 *Zion Williamson has entered the chat*

So, was he a socialist nationalist or socialist internationalist.

Plato is also a proto-Jesuit. When you are that influential and that far back in history, there is a little bit of you in everybody.

Plato was a bore - Nietzsche

Plato was neither. He wanted to find the absolute truth and reach the One, but he failed. Only christianity, as revealed truth, went further and helped the Greeks to find the absolute truth and reach the One. Plato was a philosopher who looks at us, closes his eye and says to us secretly ''Do you like a world as I described it in my Politeia? No, you do not. What does it mean? It means we humans are basically and deeply flawed and we can not build a paradise on earth. So, the only thing you can do is make yourself the better you''. Of course, christianity assures us that we can not do even this. Our salvation is ONLY Christ, by grace, in faith and baptism.

Stalin was a Platonist.

I find it peculiar that you equate the Philosopher King with a technocrat. You are free to view it as you like, but from my point of view, the Philosopher King would be quite repulsed by technocrats. The Philosopher King would be the wisest man--wise in the ways of Nature. (And of course human nature). The technocrat is just an asshole who makes money from propagating the religion of science and technology. Sure, the technocrat has technical knowledge, but he doesn't know or care about Nature. I realize you were using that to illustrate your point--it just set me off haha---I hate technocrats. Excellent channel!

Would plato prefer hitler or stalin?

"Plato is simply a record-keeper - he has not a single idea of his own! He is a devoted lover of Socrates, and whatever Socrates says, he goes on recording it, writing it. Socrates has not written anything - just as no great master has ever written anything. And Plato is certainly a great writer; perhaps Socrates may not have been able to write so beautifully. Plato has made Socrates’ teachings as beautiful as possible, but he himself is no one. Now the same work can be done by a tape recorder. And Aristotle is merely an intellectual, with no understanding of being, or even a desire to search for it. These people are taught in the universities. I was constantly in a fight with my professors. When they started teaching Plato, I said, “This is absolute nonsense, because Plato has nothing to say of his own. It is better to teach about Socrates. Plato can be referred to - he has compiled it all. But Socrates’ name has become almost a fiction, and Plato has become the reality. . Plato’s allegory is of slaves who, working in a cave, see only their shadows on the walls and believe that what is happening on the walls is the only reality. They don’t know of any other reality except those shadows… they don’t even know that those shadows are their own. They know nothing about the outside world, outside their cave; it doesn’t exist for them. This is one of the most beautiful allegories - of tremendous importance. It is our allegory. Translated into our life, it means we are living in a certain cave and we are seeing shadows on a certain screen and we know nothing else about the screen. We know nothing about there being a world beyond the screen; we know nothing about these shadows on the screen, even that they are our own. Looked at rightly, it is the allegory of our mind. What do you know of the world? Just a small skull is your cave; and just the screen of your mind… and the things which you call thoughts, emotions, sentiments, feelings, are all shadows - they don’t have any substance in them. And you get angry, you get depressed, you are in anguish - because you have learned to be identified with those shadows. You are projecting them; they are your own shadows. It is your own anger that is projected on the screen of the mind. And then it becomes a vicious circle: that anger makes you more angry, more anger projects more anger, and so on and so forth. And we go on living our whole life without ever thinking that there is a world of reality beyond the mind, on the outside, and there is also a world of reality beyond all these sentiments, feelings, emotions - beyond your ego. That is your awareness. The whole art of meditation is to bring you out of the cave so that you can become aware that you are not those shadows but that you are a watcher. And the moment you become a watcher, a miracle happens: those shadows start disappearing. They feed on your identity; if you feel identified with them, then they are there. The more you identify with them, the more nourished they are. When you are just a watcher - just seeing, not judging, not condemning - slowly, slowly those shadows disappear, because now they don’t have any food. And then there is such a tremendous clarity, perceptivity, that you can see the world beyond - the world of sunrise and the world of clouds and the world of the stars; that is your outside. And you can become aware of your inside, which is far more mysterious. The outside world is so beautiful, but the inside world is a thousand fold more beautiful."

How about asking instead whether Communism or Fascism is Platonic?

"Yes, please, both." Both fascism and communism place the collective over the individual. So did Plato, though his collectivism manifested as THEOCRACY.

He was certainly baZed

Clickbait. This shouldn't even be a question.

I'll tell you what he is...a waste of time,only confuses you in the end and contradicts himself,stick to other thinkers.

I wonder about this question myself .Am I a fascist or communist. I believe in equality but also in sacred hierarchy. Plato is the great philosopher

Neither he cannot fit into any category because he created them all.