PL
The article discuss the problem of culture in light of two key terms of Platonic understanding of human being and society – paideia and mimesis. The culture is a kind of paideia defended in Plato’s State against the mythological order of mimesis. The genuine elucidation of difficult role of mimesis in the Platonic understanding of intellectual culture opens the Girardian interpretation of culture. The Girard’s theory reveals the role of mimesis as the highest factor of destruction inside the ethnological and modern society. The mimesis as the mimetic desire allows new interpretation of the exciting question: Why Plato dismissed poets from his State? Plato did it because such poets as Homer and Hesiod introduced the vision of god, man and society based on the mythological power of mimesis. The new order of Platonic intellectual culture is based on the power of human logos.