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A 'Legend' In Crisis: The Debate Over Plato's Politics, 1930-1960, Kyriakos N. Demetriou

Kyriakos N. Demetriou

From the early 1930s to the early 1960s many scholars, whether liberal-minded or socialist ideologues, Marxist or scientific positivists, classical scholars or political theorists and historians, have shown a widespread consensus in discrediting and assailing the man and political philosopher Plato. Such an extensive assault led the ‘Platonic Legend’ to an unprecedented crisis. Philosophically, it was a reaction to the undisguised Platonolatry coming from Oxford and the school of the British Idealists. Ideologically, the appropriation of Plato by Nazi apologists fostered further this vehement indictment. But a lot of other causes worked to the same effect. The general anguish and …