The Open Society and Its Enemies
References and Quotes
Reference
Cleaning The Canvas
Karl Popper’s book The Open Society and Its Enemies reveals with great clarity how old the idea of tabula rasa (erroneously attributed to John Locke) actually is. In writing of Plato’s great utopia, The Republic, Popper shows Socrates telling auditors: "They will take as their canvas a city and the characters of men, and they will, first of all, make their canvas clean—by no means an easy matter. [...] They will not start work on a city nor on an individual [...] unless they are given a clean canvas, or have cleaned it themselves."[p.223] Popper continues:
Quote
Used in: Cleaning The Canvas
They will take as their canvas a city and the characters of men, and they will, first of all, make their canvas clean—by no means an easy matter. [...] They will not start work on a city nor on an individual [...] unless they are given a clean canvas, or have cleaned it themselves. (p. 223)
Quote
Used in: Cleaning The Canvas
In the same spirit, Plato says in the Statesman of the royal rulers who rule in accordance with the Royal Science of Statesmanship: ‘Whether they happen to rule by law or without law, over willing or unwilling subjects; … and whether they purge the state for its good, by killing or by deporting [or ‘banishing’] some of its citizens …—so long as they proceed according to science … this form of government must be declared the only one that is right.’ [...] This is what canvas-cleaning means. He must eradicate the existing institutions and traditions. He must purify, purge, expel, banish, and kill. (p. 224)