Ancient Thought and its Relevance to Modernity: Plato’s Dialectical Method

Abstract

History has shown numerous philosophers who claim original ideas and try to establish new ways of thinking. Starting from spiritualism and concluded up to rationalism idealism philosophy transformed to the abstract discipline and therefore popular interest towards it has been lost. Antique philosophy has become the subject of a critique from the rationalist school of thought by imputing the argument that metaphysics is unable to cover the problem of a material world, which places the limitation on a broader development of rational reason. In this regard, Greek metaphysics became unpopular since so-called mechanical progress could not recognize the material usefulness of its value. However, antiquity today is still widespread among researchers and scholars but the question remains open: how relevant is ancient thought and can we use it to analyze the modern political system?

This article will try to determine actuality of Plato’s masterpiece “Republic” in modern times and figure out reasons why people of democratic order lack the essential notions of realization of the “justice” and “good”.