Wednesday, February 12, 2014

Plato / Socrates / Lebensborn

In Plato's "Republic",  I have almost made it to the middle.  

I don't really know what to make of it so far.  The whole thing seems to be set up as a thought experiment.  Were they serious?  Are these people ever serious?

 But now, our philosophers have a plan to get the "guardians" involved in a kind of breeding  that truly must remind one of the Nazi's and their program "Lebensborn".   Breeding a super race was definitely an objective;  --people would rather walk through fire rather than have their daughters confiscated for such breeding service.  They hid themselves and their families in forests and so on.  It was abhorrent.

It makes me wonder if the eugenists of the 19th and 20th centuries got their ideas from Plato.   There is more than one parallel between this organized state and the so-called Third Reich, its indoctrination and hero worship, it's cultivation of taste and domination of the media.

Strange stuff.

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