Vaikuttaako Platonin filosofia tämän päivän yhteiskunnassa?
Many recent philosophers have diverged from what some would describe as the ontological models and moral ideals characteristic of traditional Platonism. A number of these postmodern philosophers have thus appeared to disparage Platonism from more or less informed perspectives. Friedrich Nietzsche notoriously attacked Plato's "idea of the good itself" along with many fundamentals of Christian morality, which he interpreted as "Platonism for the masses" in one of his most important works, "Beyond Good and Evil "(1886). Martin Heidegger argued against Plato's alleged obfuscation of "Being "in his incomplete tome, "Being and Time" (1927), and the philosopher of science Karl Popper argued in "The Open Society and Its Enemies" (1945) that Plato's alleged proposal for a utopian political regime in the "Republic" was prototypically totalitarian. The political philosopher and professor Leo Strauss is considered by some as the prime thinker involved in the recovery of Platonic thought in its more political, and less metaphysical, form. Strauss' political approach was in part inspired by the appropriation of Plato and Aristotle by medieval Jewish and Islamic political philosophers, especially Maimonides and Al-Farabi, as opposed to the Christian metaphysical tradition that developed from Neoplatonism. Deeply influenced by Nietzsche and Heidegger, Strauss nonetheless rejects their condemnation of Plato and looks to the dialogues for a solution to what all three latter day thinkers acknowledge as 'the crisis of the West.'
no