Tae-Yeoun Keum was mesmerized by Plato as a freshman in college. She most loved the myths, “these vivid, fantastical stories that Plato invented and integrated into his philosophical dialogues.”

Later, reading a treatise by Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, a 17th-century German philosopher, she came across a myth obviously inspired by Plato. This got her to thinking: Who else was doing this? And why would a modern political philosopher even want to do that?

That curiosity led to “Plato and the Mythic Tradition of Political Thought” (Harvard University Press, 2020), her examination of a tradition of political thinkers who sought to understand the place of myth in politics, and who in particular turned to Plato for guidance in their efforts.

Today a UC Santa Barbara assistant professor of political science, Keum notes that myths are often seen as the opposite of reason, irrelevant or undesirable in a political philosophy committed to rational progress. And Plato, she said, is celebrated as someone who invented philosophy by making critical thinking and discourse, over myth, central to this enterprise.

“I want my book to convince readers that this is an incomplete portrait of both Plato and his influence in the history of political philosophy,” she said. “We cannot understand Plato’s legacy without recognizing that both Plato and some of his most celebrated successors were participants in a coherent tradition of writing and thinking about myth.”

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