PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Buráň, Jan
TI  - Popper's Interpretation of Antisthenes - A Revision
DP  - 2018 Mar 30
TA  - Aither
PG  - 4--29
VI  - 10
IP  - 1
AID - 10.5507/aither.2018.001
IS  - 18037879
AB  - Unlike his portrayal of Plato, Karl Popper's interpretation of Antisthenes has been given surprisingly little attention. For Popper, Antisthenes was "the last of the Great Generation", which laid the foundation for the open society in Athens: the last one left to defend it against one of its gravest enemies - Plato. Allegedly, he was also an egalitarian, democrat, humanist, liberal, and severe nominalist critic of Plato's essentialism. Examining one by one the validity of attributing each of these traits to Antisthenes, the current study shows that even though The Open Society and Its Enemies is still a remarkable contribution to political theory, its depiction of Antisthenes is quite wrong.