Fighting Social Change

Abstract

The following essay analyses Chapter 10, The Background of Plato’s Attack, in the first volume, The Spell of Plato. The focus is on Popper’s interpretation of Plato’s sociological perspective discussing the social change and the role of the Great Generation in it, with the dawn of Athenian democracy. Also, the essay examines Popper’s analysis of the reactionary social events during and after the Peloponnesian war (431-404 BC). The highlight is on Popper’s view of these twitches of tribal, collectivist forces that want to keep their world’s old organic “stable” image at all costs. It is also essential to take a deeper look at the historical context and novelties such as trade and naval communications that Popper believes contributed to the birth of an open society. This new society brings individual responsibility and reason instead of group morale and emotions. Popper presented the tension between these opposites by looking at the first “modern” revolution (as he calls it) in ancient Greece and analysing Plato’s views on the changed social condition. Plato believed he found an argument for a return to the old society. Popper assails Plato’s project and accents the manipulation of Socrates. The first defeats of democracy by autocratic forces (tyranny of oligarchs) demonstrate the fine line between the two opposing concepts of society, the ease with which these retrograde processes take place and lead towards a backslide from an open (democratic) to a closed society.