“This ground-plan, conceived by a great architect, exhibits a fundamental metaphysical dualism in Plato’s thought. [...] In politics, it is the opposition between the one collective, the state, which may attain perfection and autarchy, and the great mass of the people—the many individuals, the particular men who must remain imperfect and dependent, and whose particularity is to be suppressed for the sake of the unity of the state (see the next chapter). And this whole dualist philosophy, I believe, originated from the urgent wish to explain the contrast between the vision of an ideal society, and the hateful actual state of affairs in the social field—the contrast between a stable society, and a society in the process of revolution.” IdealismPlatoSocial ChangeConservatismPolitical PhilosophyAuthoritarianismCollectivismPlatonismImmutabilityAutarchy Book:The Open Society and Its Enemies - Volume One: The Spell of Plato Source: The Open Society and Its Enemies - Volume One: The Spell of Plato