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Articles

The Philosopher King, the Veil & the Mammoth

Jeff Mitchell on the political rise and fall of Luc Ferry.

Perhaps the most famous argument in Plato’s Republic is that the best form of government would be one in which the key decision makers were philosophers. Equally well known is the fact that in nearly two and a half millennia such a state has never materialized. For better or worse, most philosophers have wielded little political power. There have, of course, been some notable exceptions. Some of the more obvious examples include Seneca, Cicero, Marcus Aurelius, Boethius, Maimonides, Machiavelli, Francis Bacon, the Third Earl of Shaftesbury, John Locke, Edmund Burke, John Stuart Mill, Benedetto Croce and Martin Heidegger.

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