Plato wants his readers to know that he abhorred the behavior of his friends and relatives, but it is worth remembering that his letter was written long after the failure of the coup was a well-established fact.
Writing about these events fifty years later, Plato recounts how he initially supported this antidemocratic coup in the hope that its leaders would “set the city back onto the path of justice.” Instead, they acted with brutality, slaughtering their opponents and tearing up the rule of law. When he was in his early twenties, Plato’s uncle and his mother’s cousin led a coup against Athenian democracy in the aftermath of defeat in the Peloponnesian War.
Members of Plato’s family were also heavily involved in contemporary politics. His father was descended from the old kings of Athens, while his mother’s family was even more prestigious, tracing its roots to the great Athenian lawgiver Solon. Plato was a member of the Eupatridae on both sides of his family. Starting with Solon’s reforms in the early sixth century BCE and continuing with the Cleisthenian reforms in 507, thousands of Athenian males won citizenship rights in the teeth of opposition from conservative aristocrats - members of the Eupatridae - who objected to this upending of the “natural order of things.” Plato’s most influential work, The Republic, is a highly sophisticated argument against the democratic approach to government. The Natural Orderīy the time Plato was writing in the early decades of the fourth century BCE, Athens had been a democracy for more than a century. Plato’s uncompromising defense of human inequality has appealed to conservatives ever since. His most influential work, The Republic, is a highly sophisticated argument against the democratic approach to government that had taken shape in Plato’s time. Another reason is the undeniable depth of Plato’s thought, which assimilates insights from his predecessors - Parmenides and Pythagoras in particular - while breaking new ground in many of the areas highlighted above.Ī third reason, far less remarked upon, is the historical role that Plato’s philosophy has played in attacking democracy. Across three dozen dialogues, Plato tackles everything from theology, metaphysics, and epistemology to political theory, the nature of love, and the theory of language. One reason for his enduring influence is the sheer breadth of Plato’s writing. Karl Popper once suggested that Western thought has been Platonic or anti-Platonic but rarely ever non-Platonic, while Alfred North Whitehead famously quipped that the history of Western philosophy has been little more than “footnotes to Plato.”
Modern commentators trace the emergence of Western philosophy back to Plato.
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