Plato is an enemy of the open society. Comment

Karl Popper was a critique of Plato, he mentioned his name in his book 'Enemies of the open society' with other thinkers like Hegel and Karl Marx. In his book's first volume 'Spells of Plato', he even mentioned him as Fascist. According to Karl Popper, Plato's concept of justice that is based on functional specialization restrict society into 3 classes this not only create boundaries in the movement of thoughts of each class but also indirectly creates a privileged system like guardian class have the power to rule but not the property and vice versa with producing class.

According to Popper, the institution of philosopher king is totalitarian in nature. Totalitarianism is considered bad, anti-democratic, anti-freedom in liberal thoughts. Totalitarianism exists between the two world wars (1919-1939) in European countries Germany, Itlay.

Popper criticizes Plato on three grounds. 1) Essentialism 2) Holism 3) Historicism

• Plato's hatred toward Democracy. Plato project democracy as the worst form of state. It is the rule of ignorants. Plato held that anyone can become a ruler just by chance.
• Plato proposes holistic change rather than piece meal social engineering.
• Plato believes in the essence or idea. Plato believes that he has an idea of Ideal state. An idea can be misleading.

Levinson does not consider Plato as the enemy of the open society. Because Fascism was a real concept and Fascists have established a very exploitative system. Plato's Republic was a utopia. We never know what form Plato's Republic could take place if this was ever implemented. It was seen that Plato's intention was not to exploit people. Plato's desire is to give a life of excellence and virtue to all the citizens of the state.

According to Karl Popper, if we do not see Plato as an enemy of the open society is because of the spell of Plato and the tradition of admiring Plato.