It’s worth remembering that Platonism lends itself to conspiracy theories.‖ The belief that appearances deceive easily grows into the conviction that they deceive for a reason: that hidden manipulators want to keep us in the cave and want, literally, to keep us in the dark. Rousseau himself suffered from a lifelong fear that enemies were constantly working to undercut his success—the same people who were working to keep the world corrupt and unjust. Robespierre believed the same thing. When the National Assembly abolished the monarchy in 1792 and the rest of Europe turned to put Louis XVI back
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