The Four Steps to the Sky

According to Socrates, a philosophic mind should possess reason, will, and the desire to be virtuous.

A philosopher should properly love wisdom and courage, making wisdom the basis of their conduct.Wisdom is the knowledge of virtue, or the right attitude towards all that exists.

Plato also makes interesting arguments about states and rulers.For example, he poses the question: Which is better, a flawed democracy or a country ruled by a tyrant?

He argues that it is better to be governed by a bad tyrant (since only one person can commit a bad act) than a flawed democracy (since all are capable of that act).

According to Socrates, a country is composed of many different souls, and it will naturally change from aristocratic politics to class politics, then to oligarchy, then to democracy, and finally to autocracy. [

Perhaps what Socrates was trying to warn posterity is that a nation will be ruled by many temperate souls, and those souls who are wise should try to counsel or temper those who love power, money, fame, and fame.

Plato attempted to make astronomy a branch of mathematics.I believe that astronomy, like geometry, can be studied by asking questions and solving them, regardless of the stars in the sky.

It is believed that the universe began as an indistinguishable chaos.The opening of this chaos was the result of the activity of a supernatural god.

According to Plato, the universe went from chaos to order.The most important feature is that the Creator has a rational plan for the world; the mechanical process by which this plan is put into practice is a natural event taken for granted.

Plato's cosmology is basically a mathematical cosmology.He imagined that the universe began with two kinds of right triangles.One is half of a square and the other is half of an equilateral triangle.

From these triangles, four kinds of regular polyhedrons are rationally produced, which constitute the particles of the four elements.The fire particle is a regular tetrahedron, the air particle is a regular octahedron, the water particle is a regular icosahedron, and the earth particle is a cube.

The fifth regular polyhedron is the dodecahedron formed by regular pentagons, which is the fifth element that makes up the matter in the sky, called ether.

The whole universe is a sphere.Because the sphere is symmetrical and perfect, any point on the sphere is the same.The universe is also alive and moving, with one soul filling all space.

The movement of the universe is a circular movement, because the circular movement is the most perfect and does not require hands or feet to move.

The quantity of each of the four elements in the universe is like this: the ratio of fire to air is equal to the ratio of air to water and the ratio of water to earth.

All things can be named by a number, which expresses the ratio of the elements they contain.

Plato's ideas are often compared to his most famous student, Aristotle.Aristotle's reputation was completely overshadowed by Plato in the early Middle Ages.

Plato's original writings were lost to Western civilization for millennia until they were brought out of Constantinople a century before the fall of the city.

Medieval scholars studied Plato's work through Latin translations, which at the time were second-hand translations from Greek into Arabic and Persian by Arab scholars.

Arab scholars not only translated the works of ancient Greece, but also wrote many comments and interpretations of the original works of Plato and Aristotle (such as Avicenna and Avius). At this time, Aristotle’s reputation began to exceed Plato.

Only came the Renaissance, when interest in classical civilization began to revive in the Western world.Only then did Plato's philosophy begin to receive widespread attention again.

Many early modern scientists and artists who broke away from scholasticism contributed to the progress of the Renaissance, and they saw Plato's philosophy as the basis for the progress of art and science.By the nineteenth century, Plato's reputation had recovered, at least as much as Aristotle's.

Since then, many Western philosophers have also based their theories on Plato's writings.Plato's influence was particularly strong in mathematics and science.Especially Gottlob, Frege and his students such as Kurt, Gödel and Alonzo Church and others.

Albert and Einstein also adopted Plato's claim that there is an eternal and unchanging reality, opposing the physical universe proposed by Niels and Bohr and his interpretation of quantum mechanics. [

The opposite of.Philosophers who have departed from ontological theoretical models and moral ideals often criticize Platonism from a variety of other perspectives.

For example, Nietzsche attacked Plato for dividing the world into two, Martin and Heidegger criticized Plato for blurring the essence of human life, and Karl and Popper in their

Leo, Strauss is considered by some to be the main philosopher who revived Plato's influence in moral philosophy, in a less metaphysical form.

However, due to the influence of Nietzsche and Heidegger, Strauss did not agree with their condemnation of Plato, but focused on finding possible answers to Plato's criticisms in the dialogues.

: "The Open Society and Its Enemies" examines the origin and development of historical determinism from the perspective of Western philosophy.

From Plato and Aristotle in ancient Greece to Fichte and Hegel in German idealism, they are all described as the founders of historical determinism.

Historicism is also regarded as the ideology of a closed society, incompatible with the rational critical spirit on which an open society depends.

All determinists are therefore enemies of the open society.In particular, he criticized the historical theories of Plato, Hegel and Marx, saying that they were all wrong prophets.

The subtitle of the first volume is Plato's spell, and the second volume is the climax of the prophecy: Hegel, Marx and their aftermath.

From this we can see the author's ambition, hoping to use the materials of the history of philosophy to fight against historical determinism.Criticize Plato's Utopia as a totalitarian model and an anti-democratic aristocratic establishment.

He believes that the Utopia is a utopian project out of fear of change.

Plato divided people into three grades and regulated everyone's position in the whole. The author believes that this is a closed society, while an open society encourages competition, and people's status is won through their own efforts.

Although Hegel established the most complete system in the history of philosophy, he was also attacked by emotion.The author believes that the reason why Hegel's philosophy is valued is that it meets the needs of the King of Prussia to establish cultural hegemony and becomes the official philosophy.

The core of Hegel's historicism is the supremacy of the state, more precisely, the supremacy of the state in Prussia.

Hegel believed that the law of history governed the movement of the world spirit. According to the law of history, the world spirit went through three stages: Eastern countries, Greek, Roman countries and Germanic countries.

The highest form of the Germanic state was the Prussian state.At this time, world history also reached its peak, so Hegel's works are full of fanatical worship of the state.And Hegel's nationalism was inherited by the later fascism and became an important ideological basis.

The author goes on to point the finger at Marxism, and he describes fascism and Marxism as the right and left wings of Hegel's philosophy.

In Marx's eyes, the laws of history are no longer the laws of the spirit of the world, but the laws of material life.History develops in accordance with the law of interaction between life force and life relationship, passing through primitive communist society, slave society, feudal society, capitalist society and socialist society respectively.

The author believes that Marx's historical determinism is a kind of economic historical determinism, that is, Marx's historical materialism believes that social existence determines social consciousness, and the economy, the substructure, determines the political, legal and other superstructures.

The author recognizes the importance of economy in social development, but opposes economic determinism.He said: It is not economic power that dominates political power, on the contrary, it is political power that controls and subdues economic power.

The reason why the author emphasizes the role of politics in the economy is to prove Marx's violent revolution and class struggle with the reformist plan.

It is pointed out that Marxism’s criticism of the ills of free capitalism is indeed sharp, but through political means, state intervention in economic activities has greatly eased social contradictions, and Marx’s theory appears outdated. [

This kind of political means does not come from the utopian social engineering of overall transformation planned by historical determinism, but from the so-called detailed social engineering that is gradual, gradual, and titrated.

The advantage of this kind of social engineering lies in its experimental nature. Instead of destroying everything and rebuilding it, it can be adjusted and corrected according to the facts at any time through gentle improvement, so as to avoid the huge price paid by social movement.

"The Open Society and Its Enemies" is not a rigorous academic work, but a thing of the times.

The author said: "The Poverty of Historicism" and "The Open Society and Its Enemies" are my war efforts.I think that under the influence of Marxist ideas of revitalization and mass planning, freedom will become a central issue.These books were thus meant to defend liberty against totalitarianism and ideology, and to warn of the dangers of deterministic superstition. (To be continued. If you like this work, you are welcome to come to the starting point to vote, monthly pass, your support is my biggest motivation. Mobile phone users, please go to read.)