Эрнст Кассирер (1874-1945) Myth of the State (1946)
Part I What is myth?
VI Plato's Republic
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All mere experience, without a dialectic, a conceptual foundation, is declared by Plato to be vain and futile. When a man does not know his own first principle, and his results are constructed out of he knows not what, how can he think that such a fabric of convention can ever become science?
сто пудов... если ты не знаешь, чем ты думаешь, как ты можешь понять, что ты думаешь?
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No historical phenomenon is adequate to the ideal pattern of the state, for, as he says in his Phaedo, the phenomena "aim at being" but fall short and are unable to be like their archetypes.
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No other thinker had such a clear insight into what the Power State really is and means, and no other writer has given such a clear, impressive, and penetrating description of its true nature and character as Plato did in his Gorgias.
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