“All power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Lord Emerich Edward Acton (1834-1902)
“Those who don’t know history are destined to repeat it.” Edmund Burke (1729-1797)
As a young man, Plato (428/427 BCE -348/347 BCE), did not share the mistrust of politics and politicians that his teacher Socrates (470 BCE -399 BCE) had. Although this began to change after the trial and execution of Socrates, he held on to the belief that the mishaps of politics could be avoided by a Philosopher King, that is, a ruler who was well-educated in philosophy. He made a total of three trips to Syracuse with the objective of teaching Philosophy to the new king. His first trip, around 368 BCE, when he was nearly forty, was to teach Dionysius the Younger, who, according to his friend Dion, wished to be just and was open to philosophy. Given Syracuse’s systemic corruption, making a philosopher out of the new king was a very tall order. These sojourns in Syracuse were full of mishaps caused by court intrigues that included the spread of fake news that Plato and his friend Dion were plotting against the king. In the end, Dion was murdered and Plato was arrested. It was after his second trip that Plato founded the Akademia of Athens, considered today the forerunner of the universities, and, he started writing up the Socratic dialogues.
Plato’s Akademia was supposed to be about learning and not about politics. After Plato’s death, politics did not allow Aristotle to be the new head of the Akademia. More than two thousand years have passed since the creation of the Akademia but politics still afflict the universities and many academics still dream of advising heads of government. And when they have a chance, they almost always fall prey to court intrigues.
Round Table. Provocations & Reflections 