Mythical Determinants of the Political (Plato’s Political Project)

The article is devoted to the explication of the mythological determinants of Plato’s political doctrine. The author raises the question about those axiomatic propositions that underlie the political philosophy of the ancient Greek thinker: what is it, the rudiments of mythical consciousness or the rationality of the nascent philosophical logos? The article shows that there are two opposite answers to this question. One is associated with the tradition of conceptualizing myth as fiction and fantasy (Georg Hegel, Auguste Comte, Feokhari Kessidy), the other with the understanding of myth as a special type of rationality underlying a certain ontological reality (Friedrich Schelling, Alexey Losev, Kurt Huebner). The author shows that modern Platonists are increasingly inclined to the second approach and consider myth as an indispensable element of Plato’s philosophy as such. The central element of his system, the doctrine of ideas, is genetically linked to classical mythology. Plato’s ideas are rationalized supernatural entities, divine substances. This understanding finds comprehensive manifestation in Plato’s political project. The peace of a self-identified being is the ideal of a perfect polis. Justice, on the other hand, is conformity to one’s nature i.e., ultimately, conformity to the divine substance expressed in the idea. Thus, the author concludes, justice in Plato’s project is primarily not a social or political