AN EVALUATION OFKARLPOPPER'S CRITIQUE OFPLATO'S PHILOSOPHER KING: APOSTULATION FOR THE RE-MAKING OF NIGERIAN DEMOCRACY

Abstract

Karl Popper is well recognized for his advocacy of freedom and critique of tyranny in the most challenging book on Plato written in the 20th century; Karl Popper ercely assailed Plato's support for intellectual aristocracy and caustic critique of democracy. The severe dispute surrounding the 1945 publication of the book The Open Society and Its Enemies has subsided, but it is by no means resolved. For instance, the majority of academics contest the conventional wisdom that Plato was a erce antidemocrat. The debate partly revolves around how one views Plato's utopianism. Is Plato's vision of the ideal just polis a revolutionary aspiration, a manual for change, a yardstick for assessing current constitutions, or something else entirely? For any of these options, a case can be made. It is clear that the ideal polis is not meant to be an attainable ideal because the bar for becoming a good philosopher is so high that even Socrates, by his own admission, does not meet it. This paper argues that despite Karl Popper's criticism of the Philosopher King, there is much to be taken to reposition Plato's philosopher king as the basis to restore hope in the remaking of the Nigerian democratic process. As such, this paper shall reinterpret Plato's thought on the philosopher king and attempt to reconcile the philosopher king as a necessary postulation to underscore democracy in Karl Popper's Social and political thought. The paper shall employ a critical analytical and qualitative research method to explore Karl Popper and Plato.