Opinion - Plato and the Right

My decently extensive study of Plato has produced the following conclusion: Platonism is very relevant to the Right and all serious members of the Right should make it their business to study Plato.

I do not exaggerate when I say that Platonism is the stark antithesis of modernity and is extremely reactionary. Anyone who wishes to critique modernity should express strong interest in Plato’s works.

Why is Plato relevant to the Right?

To demonstrate this, we shall examine Plato’s metaphysics and his epistemology. Here, I will show why Plato is reaction and why Plato should be of great interest to any serious right-winger.

Plato’s Forms: The Nature of Ultimate Reality

If read properly, Plato’s Theory of Forms is postulating that there is only one reality, which is the world of Being, the immaterial. In other words, reality is spirit, thought, consciousness. This is the exact opposite of how the modern world conceives of reality, which postulates that the material is what is reality, not the immaterial.

Plato’s Forms: Universals and Particulars

Plato’s Forms are also an attempt to explain the existence of universals even when the world is populated with seemingly particular objects. The very short version: his Forms are sort of “paradigms”, abstract properties shared by all objects that partake in the Form.

Take for example an apple, a pear, a banana, and grapes. they are all quite different from each other, yet objectively they are all fruits. Plato’s Forms therefore proposes that while these fruits participate in fruit-ness (which is why they are fruits), an apple is ultimately still an apple and not fruit-ness. Therefore, the apple still retains its individuality even if it participates in the universal called fruit-ness. This has serious implications politically because this means Platonism is essentially the third way between radical individualism and the collectivism of the demos.

Plato’s Epistemology

Plato essentially says that sense-perception is insufficient in obtaining all knowledge and that there are some things that can only be accessed by thought. If you will recall how Plato says that reality is consciousness, this is logically the next step, for sense-perception is limited only to the material. Additionally, knowledge to Plato is basically recollection, which means both you and I already possess something that is there.

Saying that sense-perception is insufficient in perceiving the world is an attack on the philosophical god of the scientist, the god that is empiricism, the god that says knowledge is obtained through sense-perception. Additionally, saying that knowledge is recollection is also an assault on the popular notion that all men are born as blank slates.

Conclusion

Through this quite short article, I hope I have made the convincing case that Plato has great relevance to the Right. I have shown that Plato’s metaphysics is proof that he is firmly on the side of Tradition, of reaction: what Marxist or libertarian would ever dare to say that there is a third way between radical individualism and collectivism? Also, modern man would express strong disbelief that the immaterial is what is actually real and that man might be *gasp* born with a certain essence and therefore meaning, let us say.

I understand any sentiments expressed regarding the shortness of the article, however this is not meant to be an in-depth analysis of Plato. Rather, this article serves more as a very short and hopefully easy to read introduction to Plato that will also generate more interest in Plato. For a more in-depth explanation of Plato, you’ll have to wait for me to update the already-existing Fascipedia article on Platonism (which I think I can start working on quite soon, fortunately).

Recommended Reading

I have found Eric Perl’s book Thinking Being to be utterly indispensable for my study of Platonism. Thinking Being puts Plato’s works in crucial context and is just as importantly quite easy to read and understand for anyone who is both sufficiently intelligent and open-minded.

In my experience however, hard-copies can be quite expensive. However, gornahoor.net has a free PDF of said book which anyone can download and read for themselves.