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  • Chapter 8 - On German Culture and Post-war Re-education

  • Christopher Burke, University of Reading, Adam Tamas Tuboly, HUN-REN Research Centre for the Humanities
  • Book:
    Otto Neurath in Britain
    Published online:
    09 January 2025
    Print publication:
    23 January 2025, pp 208-231

  • Summary

    This chapter examines an intriguing debate that Neurath started along with co-author J. A. Lauwerys by denouncing Plato’s Republic as a totalitarian vision with affinities to Nazism. They did this in the context of planning German re-education after the war. Neurath had a theory about the inherent tendencies in what he called the ‘German climate’ for subservience to grand ideas of duty, and he felt that continued reverence for Plato could lead young Germans astray in this respect. His attack on Plato provoked an angry response from countless educators and scholars in 1944, raising issues that are still relevant today. Neurath and Lauwerys’ views were overshadowed by Popper’s similar treatment of Plato in The Open Society and Its Enemies and, to Popper’s annoyance, he was lumped together with them by some critics.