Abstract
Was Socrates ‘the champion of the open society, and a friend of democracy,’ as Popper thinks?1 Or was he an enemy of democracy, as many others have concluded?2 I want to give Popper’s thesis a limited defence: I believe that the Socrates we find in Plato’s early dialogues3 cannot be accurately described as an opponent of democracy. On the other hand, I wish to reject the arguments Popper gives for this conclusion. Furthermore, I will try to show that he overrates Socrates’ credentials as a good democrat. If we want to call Socrates a democrat at all, he certainly was not the sort that Popper thinks he was.
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© 1985 Martinus Nijhoff Publishers. Dordrecht/Boston/Lancaster
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Kraut, R. (1985). Socrates and Democracy. In: Currie, G., Musgrave, A. (eds) Popper and the Human Sciences. Nijhoff International Philosophy Series, vol 19. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-5093-1_12
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-5093-1_12
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-90-247-3141-1
Online ISBN: 978-94-009-5093-1
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