But this is only half of the picture. Plato makes sense to the modern American reader because that reader is influenced by a physics and cosmology radically Platonic in historic origin and in content; and because he is influenced by mathematics and formal logic which are producing challenging original speculation, and which are of a Platonic character both in genesis and nature.

This is partly a verbal question, depending on the meaning of the word ‘caste’. I propose to assume that if we say that a State is a caste State we imply at least two things: that its members are divided into mutually exclusive endogamous classes, and that no one may be transferred from one class to another—unless possibly to a lower class. The State which Plato describes in the Republic satisfies the first of these conditions. Dr. Popper, who believes that (...) it is a caste State, maintains that it also satisfies the second. In addition he contends that the original basis of the class division is racial. My object in the notes which follow is to argue that both these contentions are false. (shrink)

In One of the few thoughtful essays that have come out of the controversy about the Republic's political theory, Renford Bambrough draws attention to the basic philosophical issue underlying the controversy in the following manner.

In Germany the claim is sometimes made that National Socialism incorporates the best of Plato’s political theory. In this country, too, Bertrand Russell and Mr. R. H. Crossman have emphasized, but with a different intention, the fascist elements in Plato's thought. It has to be admitted that whereas it would be merely laughable to claim that Jesus or Kant were exponents of the fascist philosophy, there is no such glaring incongruity with regard to Plato. It may be of some interest, (...) therefore, to examine anew the alleged likeness between the basic principles of fascism and the thought of Plato. No one would deny a strong likeness between some details of Plato’s. (shrink)

Like all my generation at Oxford, in the far-away years of the turn of the century, I received my first introduction to the Philosophical Theory of the State through the reading of Plato’s Republic. There followed Aristotle, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Hegel, Bosanquet— with a disapproving glance at Mill and Spencer. Alongside this survey of widely varying theories there ran a lively interest in the politics of the day under a “democratic,” i.e. parliamentary, system of government, with much experience of “democratic” (...) methods in the running of various college and university societies, the officials of which were elected by the members, and the actions of which were determined, after discussion, by majority vote. (shrink)