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This article's goals are twofold: to demonstrate the fallacy of Popper's depiction of the Athenian democracy in the 5th century BC, especially of its longtime leader Pericles; & to defend Thucydides from Popper's completely unfounded allegations of bias. In line with his vision of an eternal struggle against totalitarianism, Popper attempts to counterbalance totalitarian attitudes whose roots he finds in Plato by expressing the then positive values. He offsets Pericles to Plato, & the Athenian democracy to Plato's idea of the state inspired by Sparta. Popper first finds an enemy & only then constructs the "open society." Democracy in Athens, which Popper advances as a prototype of the open society, in practice, had very little in common with that concept. However, everything that cannot be incorporated into his concept, Popper simply ignores, distorts, & changes. The author dissects Popper's account of the Athenian democracy, & dwells on Pericles's famous funeral oration. He describes how Popper devised the term "open society" by taking Pericles's words out of context, not even shying from using an (altogether) faulty translation of Thucydides. 24 References. Adapted from the source document.

This article's goals are twofold: to demonstrate the fallacy of Popper's depiction of the Athenian democracy in the 5th century BC, especially of its longtime leader Pericles; & to defend Thucydides from Popper's completely unfounded allegations of bias. In line with his vision of an eternal struggle against totalitarianism, Popper attempts to counterbalance totalitarian attitudes whose roots he finds in Plato by expressing the then positive values. He offsets Pericles to Plato, & the Athenian democracy to Plato's idea of the state inspired by Sparta. Popper first finds an enemy & only then constructs the "open society." Democracy in Athens, which Popper advances as a prototype of the open society, in practice, had very little in common with that concept. However, everything that cannot be incorporated into his concept, Popper simply ignores, distorts, & changes. The author dissects Popper's account of the Athenian democracy, & dwells on Pericles's famous funeral oration. He describes how Popper devised the term "open society" by taking Pericles's words out of context, not even shying from using an (altogether) faulty translation of Thucydides. 24 References. Adapted from the source document.

The author claims that the concept of the separation of powers was known to writers of antiquity such as Thucydides, Plato, Aristotle, Polybius, & Cicero, who dealt with the question of the balance of power or the balance of different forms of government. In the modern age, liberal thinkers such as Montesquieu, Locke, Madison, & Hamilton postulated the principle of the tension between the opposing functions of the state as the foundation of a liberal & democratic constitutional system. The principle of separation or division of power has maintained its significance in the 20th-century democracies, despite the relativization of the role of the national state through the interdependence of the global society as well as the development of other principles & mechanisms of curtailing the power of the state (political parties, human rights, the autonomy of the mass media & of various social sectors). The author asserts that the principle of the separation of power is functioning today primarily as a form of labor division among various government institutions; this division gives rise to a miscellany of the participants' opinions & preferences. Adapted from the source document.