Plato’s Republic is best read as a theory of social change
Evidence
This passage clearly reveals the typically Marcusean tendency, shared by the Frankfurt School, to integrate philosophy, social theory, and politics. While standard academic practice tended to separate these disciplines, Marcuse and his colleagues perceived their interrelation. Thus Marcuse and Neumann read ancient philosophy as containing a theory of social change that was basically determined by a search for the conditions that would produce the highest fulfillment of the individual. They read Plato, therefore, as elaborating “that form of social order which can best guarantee the development of human potentialities under the prevailing conditions.” — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 29
Categorization
- XREF: Reading Plato as proto-critical-theory challenges the standard reading of the Republic as a static ideal-form blueprint, a genuinely contrarian re-interpretation. — connects to: Marcuse planned a systematic theory of transitions between social systems — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the…, 26; Utopian political imagination tests postmodernism’s capacity to imagine change; Philosophy works by replacing one common sense with another aligned to the ruling group — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1507 (+2 more)
Broader Connections
- Marcuse planned a systematic theory of transitions between social systems
#expands(0.80) — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 26 - Philosophy works by replacing one common sense with another aligned to the ruling group
#qualifies(0.75) — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1507 - Social change resists explanation within any single social science
#expands(0.75) — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 28 - Utopian political imagination tests postmodernism’s capacity to imagine change
#qualifies(0.70) - Guénon grounds social change in metaphysical first principles, not economics alone
#contradicts(0.70) — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 310