Erzsebet Lichtblau

Many falsely believe that Plato, according to Sir Karl Popper, was an enemy of the open society. This is undoutedly a wrong interpretation, since Plato was the initiator of dialog and communication by furthering the education of his society through discussions between Socrates and offspring of high-ranking officials. In this dissertation I therefore do not take Sir Karl Popper's view into consideration. It distorts Plato entirely and judges him as the cause of WWII. This view is commonly held in liberal and democratic societies, such as the U.S. , but is entirely off-key. It would be wrong, if I were to take Sir Karl Popper's interpretation of Plato into consideration, because it is an interpretation, which arose from Popper's time, a time of discrimination, lack of openness and communication through utmost subjection, violence and brute force. Thus, Popper's openness is but an answer to the closing of dialog by force and the predetermined rule of law. Therefore, to give Plato the blame for WWII is completely absurd, because quite the opposite is the case: Plato foresaw what happens, if politicians in power do not engage in philosophical debate, discussion and dialog. This is the case in our "post-human" robot age. In this thesis, I try to show, how Plato without giving final results and decisions and absolute answers, rather tries to make us aware of our problems through his dialogs, which he then calls "philosophy": philosophy is thus the beginning of openness for questions, the beginning of freedom from determination as well as freedom of speech. It is the freedom to think for oneself, not conform to the power of force, which is determined by politicians and demagogues as legal.