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Winner of the Gustave O. Arlt Award in the Humanities Winner of the
Istvan Hont Book Prize An ambitious reinterpretation and defense of
Plato’s basic enterprise and influence, arguing that the power of
his myths was central to the founding of philosophical rationalism.
Plato’s use of myths—the Myth of Metals, the Myth of Er—sits
uneasily with his canonical reputation as the inventor of rational
philosophy. Since the Enlightenment, interpreters like Hegel have
sought to resolve this tension by treating Plato’s myths as mere
regrettable embellishments, irrelevant to his main enterprise.
Others, such as Karl Popper, have railed against the deceptive
power of myth, concluding that a tradition built on Platonic
foundations can be neither rational nor desirable. Tae-Yeoun Keum
challenges the premise underlying both of these positions. She
argues that myth is neither irrelevant nor inimical to the ideal of
rational progress. She tracks the influence of Plato’s dialogues
through the early modern period and on to the twentieth century,
showing how pivotal figures in the history of political
thought—More, Bacon, Leibniz, the German Idealists, Cassirer, and
others—have been inspired by Plato’s mythmaking. She finds that
Plato’s followers perennially raised the possibility that there
is a vital role for myth in rational political thinking.
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