The Disenchantment Of The Closed Society:The Critics Of Karl Popper On Plato's Thought

Karl Popper's political philosophy was constructed under the background of reflecting on the origin of totalitarianism.On this premise,Popper held that totalitarianism is based on historicism implying that there is historical laws determining human destiny,the source of which could be traced back to ancient times.The target of social science is to find out the law in order to predict historical process and to work out specific plans to achieve the ideal society.In Popper's view,historicism exaggerates the limitation and utility of reason,and it aspires after the ideal society(closed society termed by Popper)being at the fixed-point of historical process,while painful lessons would be learned from ultimate ends and radical means.With deep concern over human destiny promoting,Popper criticized the philosophy of closed society based on the philosophy of open society.He focused on the totalitarian inclination in Plato's thought,considering Plato was the first one to bring the philosophy of closed society to climax.With the purpose of elaborating Popper's critics on Plato's thought,this thesis would dissertate at three following levels that are abstract philosophical foundation,general political principle and concrete political program.At the level of abstract philosophical foundation,Plato's theory of idea is metaphysical dualism which means things like world as well as cognition is divided into two opposite sides and only the world of noumenon composed of idea(Republic termed by Plato)is authentic and eternal.On the contrary,Popper held that reason is bounded and human is fallible,therefore,the ultimate truth Plato elucidated is nothing but the result of overstating cognitive ability.He thought Plato's totalistic epistemology would result in submitting oneself to authority unconditionally.Judging a society with the notion of good that is the highest-ranking criterion,Plato remained the view that changing society deviates its idea,so only going back to tribal society,could the polis be the one closet to its idea.In Popper's opinion,the backwards feature of historicism shows that Plato's thought is conservative and reactionary.At the level of general political principle,Popper thought what Plato held was totalitarian viewpoint of justice,considering that the latter praised natural privilege,collectivism and state-oriented principle.Based on the viewpoint of humanistic justice,Popper criticized Plato not only deprived individual natural right of equality,but also negated individual freedom and withheld the space of individual personality.Plato emphasized ruler's ability plays a decisive role in maintaining stability of the polis,so the fundamental issue of politics is “who should be the ruler”.Instead,Popper thought the fundamental issue of politics should be “how to control bad governance by means of institutions”,while the view taken by Plato is difficult to set up and is likely to lead to dictatorship in which power is above reason.Plato proved the feature of historicism according to the degenerative process of regime and found that the cause of historical decline is interest conflict within ruling class,so it's indispensable to maintain unity to build the ideal polis,which is regarded as a tool to provide rationality for the tribal society and to put forward the overall construction scheme.At the level of concrete political program,Plato resorted to utopian social engineering that is to overturn existing social basis and to design specific institutions from the holistic perspective.Considering the limitation of reason and the reality of social complexity,Popper held that Plato's political program would result in tyrannical totalitarianism instead of achieving its aim.On the basis of the systemic analysis of Popper's critics to Plato's thought,it's necessary to examine contradictions of the critics so as to have an overall understanding to them.There are some contradictions could be taken as support to Popper's critics,such as occultism factor,potential destructive force in political power,ignorance to individual freedom and philosophical perspective.Meanwhile,there are some contradictions in Popper's theory of open society,such as negating historical laws one-sidedly,overemphasizing individualism,the relativity of criterion to divide social engineering and overrating of politics,all of which could be taken to prove the rationality of Plato's thought.