This is philosophy bites with me David Edmonds and me Nigel War Burton.

Philosophy bites is available at

www philosophy bites.

In his famous book The Open Society and its enemies, the 20th century Austrian-born philosopher Karl Popper traced the intellectual

roots of totalitarianism.

He wrote the book during World War II.

Nazism claimed the lives of 16 members of his family.

Marxism was soon on the march.

Almost heoretically, Popper pointed an accusing finger at Plato, whose work, the Republic, described the ideal state, ruled by the objective rational philosopher Kings.

Melissa Lane, who teaches at Cambridge University, is author of Plato's progeny, and

defends Plato against some, not all, of the charges against him.

Melissa Lane, welcome to Philosophy Bites.

Thank, Nigel. It's great to talk to you.

The topic we want to focus on today is Plato and totalitarianism.

Plato's Republic, the book which he wrote about, the Ideal State, has been accused of defending a totalitarian

vision of how we should live. But perhaps you could sketch something of the political background

against which Plato was writing in fifth century Athens.

Well Plato's writing actually in probably the early fourth century but he's looking back especially

to the fifth century struggles and particularly the Peloponnesian war between Athens and Sparta.

And what he saw was that there were really fundamentally two political choices in that world.

One was democracy.

It meant all the people rule, but in particular the many and including the poor people are equal citizens and have an equal voice versus oligarchy, meaning that only a few aristocratic elite rule.

...