Of Gorbachev’s Perestroika, Plato’s Noble Lie, the Utopian Tradition, and the Third Sophistic

Abstract

"In this essay, I...suggest that it is rewarding to view Mikhail Gorbachev’s glasnost and perestroika and the subsequent infusion of a new, neoliberal capitalist ideology in Eastern Europe from the mid-1980s onward through the combined lenses of two ancient doctrines: first, Plato’s concept of the noble lie as outlined in the Republic—which also means casting a look at the Western utopian tradition of which glasnost, perestroika, and the noble lie are constituents—and, second, Plato’s, Aristophanes’s, and Aristotle’s criticism of the Sophists as pseudophilosophers."