Platonism and Politics 1

In the last issue of Ceskâ mysl (Czech Thought), Dr. Smetacek polemically opposed political Platonism, which he reprehended for its inconsistency, but moreover, for some kind of principal inability to assert itself realistically in life. ² Smetacek does not principally prove this point, but rather only analyzes Benda’s “Discours à la nation européenne.” ³ Presently Benda only interests me secondarily. More important for me is the principal question concerning Platonism and Plato, and whether Benda, if he truly does make a mistake, makes it as a platonist. The root of the whole question, in my opinion, is that Plato is the person who conceived of a society which is governed purely spiritually and founded on the life of spirit, which according to Plato—and I do not consider his view once and for all discounted—has its own special organ in philosophy as Plato conceives of philosophy, namely, in a science of absolute rationale which is concerned with being itself and with the ultimate bases of all value. The ultimate meaning of Platonism is, I think, a spiritual universum, into which a person penetrates by means of a certain purely inner and active (but absolutely not mythical) purification. This purification or philosophy is at the same time the most important and most intensive praxis, solely able to give to the life of the individual as well as of society a necessary unity, to give life that inner center which one potentially keeps within oneself as the unfulfilled meaning of one’s life. Thus Plato’s political conception briefly means this: (1) there exists a single and coherent, truly human, spiritual behavior named philosophy; (2) the “object” of philosophy is not primarily the contents of this world; (3) the right of philosophy to establish norms for life consists in its inner truthfulness, in its absolute character; (4) all of human activity, not founded on philosophy and not illuminated throughout by philosophy, has the character of dissatisfaction, falsehood, and a lack of inner order. As a supporting argument to this, a parenthetical note: Plato is not an “intellectual” in some kind of modified modern conception, a person who only states things and accumulates information and skills. Greek philosophy (even for Aristotle) has absolutely nothing in common with something like this, and it is not possible to interpret into Greek philosophy a dualism of “theory and praxis,” which Greek philosophy went through and parted ways with immediately in its beginnings. Certainly men like Heraclites and Empedocles did not philosophize for entertainment, nor were they “armchair philosophers”. The Greek words νοείν and νόησις, but even φρονηέις and επιστήμη mean something quite different than our words “thinking” or “mere observing,” etc., which do not affect us, which are merely “taken into account.”