1. Platonism is based on the fundamental unity of the structures of knowledge, society, and cosmos. All these domains are three aspects of order.
2. The order of Platonism is based on a vertical topography, structured around the pairs: this — another, one — many, original (paradigm) — copy (icon, eidolon), idea — phenomenon.
3. A complete description of Plato’s categories ([from] the dialogue Parmenides):
This (tauta) — another (allo, eteron);
One (hen) — many (polla);
Being (on) — non-being (me on);
Itself (identitas, tauta) — other (alteritas, etera);
Equal — unequal;
“Absolute” — “relative”;
Resting — moving (kinestai);
Big (megale) — small;
Old/constant (paleo) — young/new (neo);
Indivisible/whole (holon) — divisible (partial);
Like (homo) — unlike (me homo);
Finite (peiras) — infinite (apeiron);
Intangible (me aptesthai) — tangible (aptesthai).
4. A vertical order extends between these categories. It descends from ideas to phenomena and ascends from phenomena to ideas.
5. This order predetermines the normative structure of man, world, society, and cognition. Man is a link in the chain of gods. He is stretched between origins [nachala], and he accomplishes by himself, by his existence, the transference of one into the other — like a demiurge, gods, luminaries [or celestial bodies: svetila]. He creates the order of the cosmos, organizes copies, and he dissolves phenomena in the contemplation of ideas. Creation (poesis) and contemplation (noesis) are man’s two aspects.
6. The cosmos is a cosmos (i.e. beauty) because it is beautiful, and it is beautiful because it is ordered. It also has a structure from the meta-cosmos to the cosmos. At the center of the cosmos is the world soul, animating it. The cosmos is a big man [i.e. person, human, chelovek]. The cosmos is created by the demiurge (eternally) and is eternally dissolved in the luminous world of ideas.
7. Cognition is realized the same way: it brings ideas down to objects (theurgy, among Neo-Platonists) and raises objects to ideas.
8. The Republic [Gosudarstvo] — Politeia — is a slice of the cosmos (the Republic of souls, in the Platonist Chrysippus). Order is not reflected but expressed in it. The Republic (Platonopolis) is arranged from low to high and high to low (poesis/noesis). It establishes in law truths, given by philosophers; the impulse is delegated to guardians, and the artisans embody the directive in the production of empirical things. Philosophers create the Republic demiurgically. The World Soul stands at the center of the Republic. This is the gold of being. It is the noetic concentration of the dynamic exchange between the world of ideas and the world of things. What is worthiest? The ideas. Who is occupied with them? Philosophers. The politeia is ordered when the worthiest is placed above and the least worthy below. Above are the ideas and those who contemplate them. Below are artisans, those who produce things.
9. Power in Platonism is sacral, rational, clear, and ideal. It is the crystallization of the world of paradigms. All the attributes of the One apply to power, hence it must be one [single], and monarchic. At the head of the philosophers stands the king of the philosophers, Prestor John, “the king of the world,” chakravarti. The categories of the One apply to the king-philosopher.
10. Politics, as the art of the politeia, is the same as the art of philosophy. Not similar, but identical.
11. No will to power whatsoever. Power is truth. He who is in the domain of truth is already thereby in the domain of power. He who strives for power (truth) will never attain it. Truth (power) is like lightning. It is not, and then it is. And that is the event. It is not extended in time. It is vertical.
1. The homology of the politeia and ontology in Plato permits the application of the henology of the Parmenides to the structure of the Platonopolis (the normative case of the Politeia), leading us, thereby, to the Neo-Platonism of Plotinus and Proclus. Platonopolis should be constructed not only around the Republic, Statesman, and Laws: [but on] Plato’s teaching completely and coherently in all its aspects.
2. In that case in the bed of Platonopolis we can distinguish layers corresponding to the first four hypotheses of the Parmenides. Everything begins with the postulation of “hen,” the One. Plato’s Republic is a Republic of the One.
3. The first hypothesis postulates the transcendency of the One, which is “epikeina ta panta.” That means that the normative Republic must be open at the top. It cannot be self-identical, since the One does not exist immediately. Hence, the Republic is built around something greater than itself. An apophatic hole must gape at the center of the Republic. Only then will the Republic be holy. That does not detract from the order of the political cosmos but on the contrary ensures its noetic respiration. Thus, the Republic should not be self-identical; it is always something non-identical to itself. This is not simply the Republic but the Republic of philosophers (the predicate is necessary). As soon as it becomes simply a Republic and self-identical, it at once loses the wave of ontological resonance with the paradigm and turns from a copy into a caricature, cartoon, parody, anti-politeia.
4. The second hypothesis. If the One is, it is Many. Hen polla. The Neo-Platonists interpreted this as the second hypostasis Nous. In the Republic, monarchy (hen) must be realized in the field of the philosophers as a noetic caste. There must be many philosophers around the throne of the king of philosophers. They make channels for him that are in contact with many things. But these channels must be intellective. The philosophers around the king of philosophers release [snimayut: also, remove, take off, gather] many things of the Republic by their awareness, harmonize them, open their eidetic sequences, and reveal their semantics.
5. The third hypothesis. One and Many. Hen kai polla. The Neo-Platonists interpreted this as the hypostatization of the World Soul, the third hypostasis of the Triad. “Kai” appears, the union “and.” This is the union of guardians. With the philosophers, plurality exists in displaced form: intellectiveness (noera) displaces the particular (Many). Guardians encounter the Many as placed alongside. Their task is to marshal the Many. They guard the World Soul and do not allow the Many to overwhelm it. They destroy the superfluous. They transfer [perevodyat: transfer, translate] the Many into the One. The guardian stands between friends (Soul and philosophers) and enemies (the Many, detached phenomena pretending to be autonomous).
6. Iamblichus introduces between the third and fourth hypotheses an intermediate one. It can be related to the lower story of hen kai polla occupied by artisans. They also relate to the “kai” (“and”), but if guardians stand in the field of the “kai” closer to the hen, artisans (demiurges) are closer to the polla. They superimpose on the Many the likeness of the One, giving things and elements forms. Thereby they make things beautiful. Beauty is permeated by nostalgia. Nostalgia is the seal of the One. The artisans are artists, but they are lower than the guardians, because they are connected with matter. The first artists were blacksmiths. They descend into mines of matter (properly, polla, the fourth hypothesis) and procure metals therefrom. From metals they forge forms. Blacksmiths bear the seal of Tartarus. Hence guardians stand above them, and sometimes punish them.
7. The last level of Platonopolis is polla. That is plurality. This plurality is, because it is found inside the Republic, and the Republic is a form of existence of the One (hen). The many (polla) does not exist outside a correctly established Republic. In the Platonopolis, to the many (polla) relate slaves, frogs, metals, animals, plants, soils, idlers, the ungifted, two-legged, three-legged, four-legged livestock, mosquitos, and civil society. All this, including mountains, lakes, seas, and clouds, has a political significance, since it relates to the field of the order-forming Polis. Without the Polis they lose ontology.
1. Neo-Platonists included Aristotle in the context of Platonism; they did not exclude him. Porphyry’s texts were ascribed in the Middle Ages to Aristotle. It was a platono-centric interpretation of Aristotelianism and the Stoics. Theoretically, there could also be another interpretation but now we will follow the Neo-Platonists.
2. Aristotle distinguishes three pejorative forms of rule: tyranny, oligarchy, and democracy, and three superior: monarchy, aristocracy, and politeia. I already spoke about the fact that the three pejorative forms relate to the second series of Parmenides’s hypotheses — from the 5th to the 8th — based on rejection of the One. The politics of modernity strictly corresponds to these four hypotheses of a meontological character (as the Neo-Platonists thought). The analysis of the political deviancy of modernity led to the schema of the co-existence of all three pejorative types of the Political in the contemporary global model. At the center, the secret tyrant (the golden calf, the anti-Christ), around it the global oligarchy (multinational corporations, the hundred richest families in the world), and on the outer periphery, democracy as the power of the frenzied, swinish plebeians (who overthrew the feudal system of the guardians).
3. Professor Claudio Mutti, at a meeting of the Florian Geyer Club, justly noted that there is also an example of the superior, positive combination of these three regimes. He pointed to the Roman Empire. In it the principle of monarchy (the consul) was combined with aristocracy (senate) and the committees (politeia).
4. Developing Mutti’s idea, we can correlate Platonopolis, based on the first four hypotheses of Parmenides, with the synthesis of the three superior forms of the Political in Aristotle. The monarchy of the king of philosophers can neighbor the assembly of guardians (the Gerousia of Sparta) and the local self-rule of artisans. We get a subsidiary imperial federalism in the spirit of Johannes Althusius.
5. Without monarchy, aristocracy will become oligarchy, politeia will degrade into democracy.
1. We obtained a structured system of political Platonism, complete and well-founded from every perspective.
2. It is entirely contrary to the spirit of modernity and post-modernity, which go against order, power, transcendency, sacrality, vertical topography, and models of homologies of man, world, politics, and knowledge.
3. The choice between political modernity and political post-modernity, which continues the anti-Platonic program of modernity, on one hand, and political Platonism, on the other, is a matter of free philosophical decision. Any effort to denounce political Platonism with reference to historical examples is nothing but empty and vacuous political propaganda, a primitive means to impose one’s rightness by unfit methods of suggestion, pressure, and hypnosis, containing nothing rational, nothing philosophical, and nothing properly human. It is tendentiously interpreted and deliberately selected facts torn from context, and accidental, unfounded generalizations of a purely rhetorical, not analytical character.
4. The construction of Platonopolis is an open, rational project. There are no arguments, none at all, for why not to be occupied with this, not to wish for it, not to believe in it, and not to strive for it. There is also nothing obligatory in this. This is precisely the domain of free political choice, carried out by a free being.