According to C.G. Jung the human being has four modes of mental activity:

1. Thinking.
2. Feeling.
3. Sensing.
4. Intuiting.

If a person is too one sided consciously (it does not matter which of the four) the person is out of balance and the other opposite mode shows itself in the unconscious. Plato in this way held the thinking function as the only valid function.

Moreover even though Jung got the term archetype from Plato, I believe he was talking about a matrix (something akin to instinctual neural net tendencies) into which our actual life could fit in. It is as though you have a mother archetype into which you place your female role model into (this need not be your birth mother but could be your grandmother, aunt or some other female figure). The same is true of other archetypes.

However, the Platonic archetypes (the forms or ideas) are somehow imaterial and independent of the existence of brains. Thus they are the ultimate reality. Also Plato, the Greeks and many others had this ridicolos idea that perfection meant not changing. Since tings which do not chnage cannot be observed (we only percieve change) unchangeable thing do not exist within our realm (they are like the Platonic forms which have no reality but are just posited in the most subtle “astral plain” with no interaction with anything).

Also I mentione that I thought Plato was wrong about all learning being relearning. I’m not doubting that he was a great genius and teacher. My point is that we have moved forward in the last thwenty four undred years.

The audio book I listened to, analyzed the Republic as a piece about the ideal utopean city (not the ideal city as a metaphor for the ideal mind and justice). And when we look at the Republic as a political piece we see that Plato who was a member of the Athenian rulling classes (unlike Socrates who was amongst other things a great soldeir) prescribed an extremely authorotarian rule by the guardians who lived in communes (no blongings or attchments not even spouses or children which were held in common).

Whether Hitler and Stalin had ever read Plato, I don’t know but in the thirties as these two tyrants were becoming more powerful and having their respective guardian like storm troopers and communist youth league, some British philosophers commented that they had got their philosphy from Plato’s Republic.

It is interesting that the current proto-fascist the  neocons get their philosophy from Leo Strauss who wants to return us to the Athenian roots where democracy meant ten thusand out of half a million had any rights (just the nobility) the rest were slaves, children and women with no rights.

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