According to Socrates, a philosophical mind should have the desire for reason, will, and virtue.

A philosopher should have a proper love for wisdom and courage, and use wisdom as the basis of their actions. Wisdom is the knowledge of virtue, or the right attitude towards all things that exist.

Regarding states and rulers, Plato also made interesting arguments. For example, he asks the question: Which is better, a flawed democracy or a state ruled by a tyrant?

He argues that it is better to be ruled by a bad tyrant (because only one person can do bad things) than to adopt a flawed democracy (because everyone can do that).

According to Socrates, a state is made up of many different souls, and naturally it will change from aristocracy to class politics, then to oligarchy, then to democracy, and finally to autocracy.

Perhaps Socrates tried to warn posterity that a nation would be ruled by many unbridled souls, and that wise souls should try to counsel or temper those who are keen on power, money, fame, and fame.

Plato attempted to make astronomy a department of mathematics. "Astronomy, like geometry, can be studied by asking questions and solving problems, without caring about the celestial stars. 」

It is believed that the beginning of the universe is a chaotic place where there is no difference. This chaotic opening is the result of the activity of a supernatural god.

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

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

From these triangles, four regular polyhedra are reasonably generated, which form particles of the four elements. Fire particles are tetrahedra, gas particles are octahedron, water particles are icosahedron, and earth particles are cubes.

The fifth type of regular polyhedron is the dodecahedron formed by the regular pentagon, which is the fifth element that makes up the heavenly matter, called the ether.

The whole universe is a sphere. Because the sphere is symmetrical and perfect. It's the same at any point on the sphere. The universe is also alive and moving, and there is a soul that fills all space.

The motion of the universe is a circular motion because the circular motion is the most perfect. No hands or feet are required to push.

The amount of each of the four elements in the universe is as follows: the ratio of fire to air is equal to the ratio of air to water and the ratio of water to earth.

Everything can be named by a number. This number is the proportion of the elements they contain.

Platonic thought is often compared to his most well-known student, Aristotle. Aristotle's fame was completely overshadowed by Plato in the early Middle Ages.

Plato's original writings were lost in Western civilization for thousands of years until they were taken out of Constantinople a century before the fall of the city.

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

Arab scholars did not only translate ancient Greek writings. At the same time, he wrote many commentaries and interpretations of the original works of Plato and Aristotle (e.g., Avicenna and Avihou), at which point Aristotle's fame began to surpass Plato's.

It was only during the Renaissance, when interest in classical civilization began to revive in the Western world, that Plato's philosophy began to be widely valued again.

Many modern scientists and artists, who had earlier separated from scholasticism, contributed to the Renaissance, and they saw Plato's philosophy as the foundation for the progress of art and science. By the 19th century, Plato's reputation had revived, at least on a par with Aristotle's.

Since then, many Western philosophers have also based their theories on Plato's writings. Plato's influence was particularly great in the world of mathematics and science, especially in the world of mathematics and science, especially Gottrob, Frege, and his students such as Coulter, Gödel, and Alonzo Church.

Albert and Einstein also adopted Plato's proposition that there is an eternal and immutable reality, and opposed Niels and Bohr's physical universe and his explanation of quantum mechanics.

Conversely, philosophers who are detached from the ontological theoretical model 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 criticized Plato in his book The Open Society and Its Enemies (1945) as a typical totalitarian regime.

Leo and Strauss are seen by some as the main philosophers who restored Plato's influence in moral philosophy, and he adopted 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 criticism in the dialogues.

Note: The Open Society and Its Enemies examines the origin and development of historicism from the tradition of Western philosophy.

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

Historicism is also seen as a form of consciousness in a closed society, which is incompatible with the spirit of rational criticism on which open societies depend.

Therefore, all historicists are the enemies of an open society. In particular, he criticized the historical theories of Plato, Hegel, and Marx, saying that they were all "false prophets".

The first volume of the book is subtitled "Plato's Incantations" and the second volume is "The Climax of Prohecy: Hegel, Marx, and Their Consequences."

This shows the author's ambition to use the materials of the history of philosophy to fight against historicism. Criticism of Plato's "ideal state" is a totalitarian model, an anti-democratic aristocratic revival.

He sees the "ideal country" as a utopian project out of fear of change.

Plato divides man into three classes and regulates the position of each person in the whole, which the author sees as a closed society, an open society that encourages competition, and a man's position is earned through his own efforts.

Although Hegel established the most complete system in the history of philosophy, he was also ruthlessly attacked. The author argues that Hegel's philosophy was valued because it met the needs of the Prussian king to establish cultural hegemony and became the "official philosophy".

At the heart of Hegel's historicism is the "supremacy of the state", or more precisely, the "Prussian supremacy of the state".

According to Hegel, it is the laws of history that govern the spiritual movement of the world, according to which the spirit of the world has gone through three stages: the Eastern countries, the Greek and Roman countries, and the Germanic countries.

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

The author then points the finger at Marxism, which he describes as the right and left wings of Hegel's philosophy.

In Marx's eyes, the law of history is no longer the law of the spirit of the world, but the law of material production. History develops according to the law of the interaction between productive forces and production relations, and has experienced primitive communist society, slave society, feudal society, capitalist society, and socialist society respectively.

The author believes that Marx's historiography is a kind of economic historiographism, that is, Marx's historical materialism believes that social existence determines social consciousness, and the economic superstructure determines the superstructure of politics and law.

The author acknowledges the importance of the economy in social development, but rejects economic determinism. He said: "It is not the economic power that governs the political power, but the political power that controls and subdues the economic power. 」

The author's emphasis on the role of politics over the economy is to justify Marx's violent revolution and class struggle with reformist programs.

It is true that Marx's critique of the ills of the liberal capitalist period is to the point, but Marx's theory is outdated because the state intervenes in economic activities through political means and has greatly alleviated social contradictions.

This kind of political method does not come from the "utopian social engineering" drawn up by historicism as a total transformation, but from the so-called "detailed social engineering" that is gradual, gradual, and titration.

The superiority of this kind of social engineering lies in its experimentation, which does not need to destroy everything and rebuild it, but through gentle improvement, it can be adjusted and corrected according to the facts at any time, so as to avoid the huge cost of social turmoil.

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

The author says: "The Poverty of Historicism and The Open Society and Its Enemies are my efforts for war. In my opinion, under the influence of the Marxist revival and the idea of mass planning, freedom will become a central issue. Thus these books are meant to defend freedom against totalitarianism and vegetarianism, and to warn of the dangers of historicist superstition. (To be continued......)