Plato’s “Republic”: Sample of Proto-Project Mental Activity and Primary Experience in the Design of New Social Forms

Abstract

The author devotes the article to the analysis of Plato’s “Republic” in the context of the Genesis of project thinking and project activity as an anthropological result going back to the early stages of culture and primary personality-oriented ancient practices. The research attempts to trace the scheme of the movement of “project ideas” proposed by Plato “designer”. Later these ideas would be widely known as “an ideal state” and for many centuries would become a model of government. Plato’s “project ideas” considered by the author still remain in demand and are actively used in contemporary project cultural practices. For this purpose, the author makes the transition to the plane of historical and cultural retrospective of the origin of project thinking phenomenon with the objective twists and turns of its genesis. The author also attempts to reflect on this process, to study and clarify a number of points related to the prelude and dynamics of the development of the project approach to the organization of modern reality. At the same time, the text substantiates the author’s position on the interpretation of Plato’s “Republic” as an early typical example of Proto-project thinking formed in the depths of ancient cultural practices. Project thinking is a promising project of the existence of culture, a kind of matrix of self-realization of a significant part of our contemporaries. The main conclusion of the study is the ability to recognize the work of Plato “State” as one of the first samples of proto-design on the basis of the presence of a large number of typological features of design and the absence of a smaller number of such. We believe that Plato’s work “Republic” on most parameters falls under the concept of “project activity”, because in it we were able to identify most of the components of socio-cultural design.