Plato's Critique of the Democratic Character

Author(s): Dominic Scott

Source: Phronesis , Feb., 2000, Vol. 45, No. 1 (Feb., 2000), pp. 19-37
Published by: Brill

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 Plato's Critique of the Democratic Character

DOMINIC SCOTF

ABSTRACT
This paper tackles some issues arising from Plato's account of the democratic
man in Rep. VIII. One problem is that Plato tends to analyse him in terms of the
desires that he fulfils, yet sends out conflicting signals about exactly what kind
of desires are at issue. Scholars are divided over whether all of the democrat's
desires are appetites. There is, however, strong evidence against seeing him as
exclusively appetitive: rather he is someone who satisfies desires from all three
parts of his soul, although his rational and spirited desires differ significantly from
those of the philosopher or the timocrat.
A second problem concems the question why the democrat ranks so low in
Plato's estimation, especially why he is placed beneath the oligarch. My expla-
nation is that Plato presents him as a jumble of desires, someone in whom order
and unity have all but disintegrated. In this way he represents a step beyond the
merely bipolarised oligarch.
The final section of the paper focuses on the democrat's rational part, and asks
whether it plays any role in shaping his life as a whole. For the disunity criti-
cism to hold, Plato ought to allow very little global reasoning: if there were a
single deliberating reason imposing a life plan upon his life, the fragmentation
of life and character discussed earlier would only be superficial. I argue that Plato
attributes very little global reasoning to the democrat. Aside from the fact that
the text fails to mention such reasoning taking place, Plato's views on the devel-
opment of character and his use of the state-soul analogy show that the democ-
rat's lifestyle is determined just by the strength of the desires that he happens to
feel at any one time.

Although often viewed as a critique of political democracy, Plato's

Republic also discusses in some detail a character whose soul is the micro-
cosm of the democratic state (558c-562a). This passage is less well known
than some of those concerned with political democracy, yet it raises
important and difficult issues in Plato's moral psychology. For one thing,
it is unclear exactly how we are meant to understand the nature of the
democratic character. Much of the passage analyses him in terms of the
desires that he fulfils; yet it sends out conflicting signals about exactly
what kinds of desires are at issue. A second problem concerns the ques-
tion of why the democrat ranks so low in Plato's estimation. The passage
in question comes as part of a longer argument in which four different
character types are compared - the timocrat, the oligarch, the democrat
and the tyrant. Plato's main charge against the democrat seems to be that

? Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2000 Phronesis XLV,J

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 20 DOMINIC SCOTT

he is something of a dilettant
ranks only just above the tyrant and below the oligarch, who is himself
hardly a very attractive character - obsessed by money, deeply conflicted
and prone to abuse orphans.' In this paper, I wish to show how these prob-
lems, which are closely interconnected, can be resolved.

1. Background

First, we need to sketch in the background to the account of the degen-

erate characters. At the end of Republic 4, Socrates and Glaucon seem
confident that the just person is better off than the unjust (445a5-b5).
Nevertheless, Socrates proposes to clarify their conclusion by analysing
injustice and vice more closely. At this point he is about to embark on an
account of the principal types of vice, making heavy use of the state-soul
analogy in which there is a type of corrupt state to correspond to each
type of vice in the soul. Instead he is interrupted and challenged to elab-
orate upon the arrangements for the rulers of the ideal state; this in turn
leads him on to their education and the epistemology and metaphysics of
books 5-7. It is only at the beginning of book 8 that he returns to the pro-
ject mentioned at the end of book 4 and embarks on a description of the
four principal types of vice: timocracy, oligarchy, democracy and tyranny.
Rather than simply classifying the different types of vice in state and
soul, Socrates presents them as a series in a narrative of moral degener-
ation, starting with timocracy and culminating with tyranny. In summary,
decline of the soul is as follows. First in line after the just soul is the tim-
ocrat, devoted to the pursuit of honour. His son degenerates into the oli-
garch, who seems to value money above everything and puts all his efforts
into acquiring it. He in turn has a son who becomes the democratic char-
acter, feeling all kinds of desires and giving them freedom and equality.

Accepted September 1999

The judgement on the four different characters is made explicit at 580a9-c8. It is
left to Glaucon to affirm the democrat's ranking (580bS-7), and so one might try to
dissolve the second problem by claiming that Socrates himself does not agree with
this verdict. (This approach was suggested to me by Rosslyn Weiss.) But I can think
of no explanation as to why Socrates would leave a major blunder on Glaucon's part
uncorrected. In the absence of such an explanation, I shall assume that Socrates
endorses the Glaucon's response. Furthermore, Socrates has already committed him-
self to the same ranking of the political constitutions at 568c9-dl by placing them in
an ascending scale, with democracy only just above tyranny at the lower end. If
Socrates did not also endorse the same ranking of the individual, it would be very
strange for him not even to allude to the fact.

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 PLATO'S CRITIQUE OF THE DEMOCRATIC CHARACTER 21

In the final stage of the decline, the son of the democrat turns into the
tyrant, who is dominated by the very worst kind of desire (described as
some sort of eros or lust) and who shows total ruthlessness in the lengths
he will go to satisfy it.
To understand this pattern of degeneration we should start with the role
that the theory of the tripartite soul plays throughout books 8-9. The just
soul is dominated by reason and, as one goes down the series of deviant
characters, the non-rational parts assert themselves in various ways. This
is obvious in the case of the timocratic man, who is ruled by spirit - bet-
ter than appetite, but inferior to reason. Plato then analyses the remaining
three characters by making various divisions within the appetitive part.
The oligarch is introduced by the distinction between necessary and un-
necessary appetites (554a5-8), and described as someone who restrains
his unnecessary appetites, spending his money only to satisfy the neces-
sary ones.2 The same distinction is invoked with the introduction of the
democrat, although this time it is more carefully explained: necessary
appetites are for things that lead to or preserve health or, more generally,
are practically useful, the unnecessary for things that are superfluous, and
sometimes actively harmful (558d4-559d2). The oligarch's son transforms
into the democrat when he puts all appetites on an equal footing. Finally,
when introducing the tyrant, Plato makes a further distinction, this time
between those unnecessary appetites which are 'lawful' and those which
are 'lawless', and portrays the tyrant as someone who gives his lawless
appetites full rein.3
The fact that each of the last three stages in the decline is introduced
with a discussion of different types of appetite suggests that the appetitive
part provides the key to understanding all three characters and their
respective ordering. In particular, it is tempting to assume that each one
is dominated by some kind of appetitive desire. In the case of the oligarch
and the tyrant, this assumption is correct: they subjugate everything to
necessary and lawless appetites respectively. If we are to fit the democrat
into this pattern, we might claim that he too is essentially appetitive,
wedged in between the oligarch and the tyrant: better than one because
he restrains his lawless desires, worse than the other because he gives the

2 Sometimes the oligarch's goal appears to be the maximisation of wealth, at

others the satisfaction of necessary desire. I take it that Plato means to explain the
former in terms of the latter: wealth provides the security against being unable to sat-
isfy necessary desires.
I 571b4-572b8. The examples of actions corresponding to lawless desires include
bestialism and incest.

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 22 DOMINIC SCOTT

rest of his unnecessary appetites full rein. This view appears to be sup-
ported by two back-references in book 9, where the democrat is presented
as a mid-point between the other two characters (572bl0-d3 and 587c7).
On closer inspection, however, Plato's democrat proves reluctant to fit so
easily into this mould.

2. The range of democratic desires

Much of the description of the democrat focuses upon the way he trans-
forms from his oligarchic starting-point. There are actually two stages in
his journey to full democracy. As a youth, he restrains his unnecessary
desires just like his father and, in the first stage (558c8-561a8), we hear
of the way in which he is tempted to give up this restraint. After holding
back initially, he gives in and casts his oligarchic upbringing aside, treat-
ing necessary and unnecessary desires on a par. The 'junior' democrat, as
I shall call him, lives the life of a voluptuary, despising the thrift and cau-
tion of his upbringing.
As he grows older and once 'the great tumult within has spent itself',
some of the elements previously expelled are let back in (561a8-b2). From
now on, he puts all his desires on a footing of equality:

And so he lives, always surrendering rule over himself to whichever desire comes
along, as if it were chosen by lot. And when that is satisfied, he surrenders the
rule to another, not disdaining any, but satisfying them all equally.4

In this account, the political analogy is very much to the fore. Desires cor-
respond to citizens in the state and, just as each citizen is given an equal
share of power (558c5-6), each desire in the individual's soul is allowed
its moment of satisfaction. The result is that he has a truly diverse
lifestyle, sometimes partying, then economising, fasting and exercising; he
also has aspirations to the military life, politics and even (what he imag-
ines to be) philosophy.
The issue I wish to focus upon is the assumption that the 'senior' demo-
crat is essentially appetitive. Here is the description of his life-style once
he reached full egalitarianism:

Sometimes he drinks heavily while listening to the flute; at other times he drinks
only water and is on a diet; sometimes he goes in for physical training; at other
times, he's idle and neglects everything; and sometimes he even occupies him-
self with what he takes to be philosophy. He often engages in politics, leaping

4 561b3-5. Translations of the Republic are by G. M. A. Grube, rev. C. D. C. Reeve

in Cooper (1997).

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 PLATO'S CRITIQUE OF THE DEMOCRATIC CHARACTER 23

up from his seat and saying and doing whatever comes into his mind. If he hap-
pens to admire soldiers, he's carried in that direction, if money makers, in that
one. (561c7-dS)

This makes him sound like someone who dabbles in all sorts of things
that others pursue more single-mindedly. But are all the desires satisfied
in this life-style appetites? The references to military and political aspira-
tions suggest that he supplements his enjoyment of the appetitive plea-
sures with the satisfaction of spirited desires: on some days, he champions
a cause and the pursuit of victory becomes his goal. Again, his pursuit of
some sort of intellectual interest (though not, in Plato's sense, philosophy)
suggests that he is someone for whom discovery can occasionally be a
goal and that he satisfies rational desires.5 The impression that he is more
than merely appetitive is reinforced a few lines later, when he is pre-
sented as some kind of psychological salad, composed of elements of the
other characters:

I suppose that he's a complex man, full of all sorts of characters, fine and multi-
colored, just like the democratic city, and that many men and women might envy
his life since it contains the most models of constitutions and ways of living.
(561e3-7)

The problem is that, although there are no explicit statements that the
senior democrat is essentially appetitive, the broader context of books
8-9 suggests that the democratic character is located in the middle of an
appetitive triad; when we actually encounter him, he appears to wander
freely among all the different categories of desire.6
One way to tackle the problem would be to insist that, appearances
aside, all the democrat's desires come from the appetitive part. This would
result in making his desires for warfare, politics and 'philosophy' radi-
cally different from those that motivate the just person or the timocrat.7
But if I am right that the democrat is occasionally attracted by the prospect

True, in flitting between his different pursuits he is said to be giving in to any

Ent0suia that arises (561c7), and this is the word that Plato sometimes uses to refer
to the desires of the appetitive part (cf. 439d7). But each part of the soul has its own
desires, and the word intugia can be used broadly to refer to all such desires in gen-
eral (cf. 580d8).
6 For a robust statement of the claim that the democrat's desires are all appetites,
see Cooper (1984) 9 with n. 13. White (1979) 216 attributes to him desires of all three
kinds. Reeve (1988) seems to join White by saying that the democrat is not always
ruled by the appetitive (156-7; cf. 47), although elsewhere (257) he describes the
democratic psyche as 'ruled by nonlawless unnecessary appetites'.
7 Cooper (1984) 11-12 attempts to see his dabbling in philosophy as the satisfac-
tion of an appetite.

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 24 DOMINIC SCOTT

of achieving victory in a cause or of satisfying his curiosity, there is a

problem with this approach. When differentiating the three parts of the
soul and their corresponding desires, Plato often implies that each part, by
its nature, pursues a characteristic type of object. Where the appetites are
concerned, many of the examples given suggest that they are to be con-
strued as biological urges for food, drink or sex, or at least as desires for
bodily pleasures more generally.! Because such pleasures are procured by
money, the appetitive part is sometimes called the money-loving or gain-
loving part (581a6-7 & 586d5). This choice of name underscores the fact
that Plato characterises it in terms of its objects. The same goes for spirit:
at a number of places, it is called the 'victory-loving' and 'honour-lov-
ing' part, and those dominated by it characteristically make victory and
honour their goals (550b6-7, 553b7-d9; 581a9-b3, 586c7-d2). Reason too
is associated with the love of learning, and is named accordingly (435e7,
581b9-10). Notice that this way of characterising the three parts is par-
ticularly conspicuous at 580d3ff., a passage in which Socrates reminds
Glaucon of the tripartite theory in preparation for the final arguments in
favour of justice. As this is no preliminary sketch of the theory but a sum-
mary of its essentials presented to the most sophisticated of Socrates'
interlocutors, it is safe to assume that the object-orientated approach is
central to the tripartite theory. So if the democrat does occasionally aspire
after victory and learning, the characteristic objects of the spirited and
rational parts, it becomes very difficult to classify all his desires as
appetites.
Perhaps we should challenge the claim that, by engaging in political
and military pursuits or dabbling in 'philosophy', the democrat pursues
goals associated with the non-appetitive parts of the soul. To take the case
of the spirited part, one might argue that whatever he does on the battle-
field (if he ever gets that far) has nothing to do with the love of honour
or victory. But this suggestion is undermined by another problem in deny-
ing that the democrat only satisfies appetites. Is it after all plausible that
he has no desires in his spirited part? Spirit was present in his father, the
oligarch, but was held firmly in check (553dl-7): it was allowed to hon-
our money-making, so the oligarch would clearly feel surges of pride in
successful financial ventures. Furthermore, there is also a reference at 554e7-
555a6 to the oligarch having to stifle spirited desires for victory which
threaten to assert themselves more widely. In general, Plato is extremely
generous about who is capable of feeling spirited desires: children and
even animals are included (44 1a7-b3). So it seems very implausible to say

8 See e.g. 436alO-bl, 439dl-8 & 580dl 1-581al.

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 PLATO'S CRITIQUE OF THE DEMOCRATIC CHARACTER 25

that the democrat does not feel spirited desires of some kind. Once this
is granted, it is easy to see that, given his liberal attitude to desire satis-
faction, these desires will find their way into action.
Although this point is clearer for the case of spirit, I think a similar
case can be made for the democrat's rational part. In his father this was
allowed to deliberate only about maximising wealth (553d2-4); any other
form of intellectual pursuit would have been considered a waste of time
(cf. 581d2). Once the plutocentric constraints are lifted, however, it is
plausible to assume that the satisfaction of curiosity becomes a goal from
time to time. In other parts of the Republic, Plato is happy to allow char-
acters who rank well below the philosopher to pursue some form of intel-
lectual interest.9
But if we abandon the attempt to treat all the democrat's desires as
appetites, his place in the series of degenerate characters becomes puz-
zling. He no longer appears a straightforward compromise between oli-
garchic and tyrannical tendencies. There are spirited and rational aspects
to his life that make him appear an anomaly in the process of degenera-
tion. In particular, these aspects seem to constitute redeeming features that
make his position beneath the narrowly appetitive oligarch mysterious.
To find a way out of this problem, we need to look at another aspect
of the distinction between the three types of desire. Aside from the con-
nection with bodily pleasure, another essential feature of the appetites is
that they are not based upon considerations about the good. This point
emerges almost as soon as the appetites are introduced in the argument
for tripartition in book 4: in itself an appetite is just for e.g. drink, not for
a good drink."' To feel an appetite for something is to pursue it just
because it offers one pleasure, not because one independently sees any
goodness in it. By contrast, the rational part, at least in the case of the
just soul, is able to form a desire for something based on the realisation
of its goodness." One may immediately ask how this binary distinction
relates to the presence of the third part of the soul, but spirit seems to
straddle the divide: when it is functioning properly, it responds to reason
with a sense of the rightness of the course of action, for instance - hence
its associations with pride, shame, and indignation."2

9 495c8496alO, for instance, alludes to people who dabble in what they take to
be philosophy. I agree with Cooper (1984) 5-6 that for Plato the desire to know is
present in everyone to some extent and in some form.
10 See 438alff. with Adam (1963) 1 250-1 & White (1979) 124-5.
" 441c1-2 & 442c5-8.
12 It has been proposed that the issue of whether a desire is based on the good is
the underlying rationale for the tripartite distinction. See Irwin (1977) 192-3 & (1995)

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 26 DOMINIC SCOTT

For our purposes, the important point is this. Appetites are by their
nature not based on considerations of the good. If it is functioning cor-
rectly, reason can and ought to seek the good. Similarly, spirit can and
ought to ally itself with the value-judgements of reason. In deviant cases,
however, it is possible to have a desire of reason for knowledge, and a de-
sire of spirit for honour, without basing these desires upon considerations
of the good. So long as such desires are orientated towards certain kinds
of goal - honour or discovery - they can count as spirited or rational.'83
This, I would suggest, is the key to understanding the democrat. He is
someone who has desires for many different things: parties, exercise,
money, victory and discovery. But he just 'goes for' these different things;
they capture his fancy, nothing more; he pursues them all merely because
he happens to enjoy them, and not because he independently considers
them to be worthwhile.
This allows us to say, as the text so clearly implies, that he does sat-
isfy desires from all three parts of the soul.'4 On the other hand, since his
spirited and rational desires do not arise from the proper functioning of
those two parts, these desires differ radically from their analogues in the
just person and the timocrat. In fact, by lacking the evaluative basis under-
lying the desires of better characters, the democrat's desires all resemble
appetites. His desires for victory or discovery feel to him just as they
would if they were desires for a drink. Although his essence is not appet-
itive, it is quasi-appetitive. This explains why all the objects of his pursuit
appear to him on a par. He would put a moment's conversation with Socrates
in the same category as the satisfaction of an unnecessary appetite.

ch. 13; also Penner (1971). But there is no evidence that rational and spirited desires
necessarily involve reference to the good. Also, as I have said, we should not under-
estimate the importance of the fact that Plato so frequently differentiates the types of
desire by referring to their characteristic objects. He makes no explicit mention of
whether a desire is based on the good when he comes to sum up the main points of the
tripartite distinction in 580d3ff.; rather, he concentrates on the types of objects pur-
sued by the different parts.
'1 Recall that animals and children have spirited desires.
'4 As I said above, there are no explicit statements that the senior democrat is essen-
tially appetitive. Plato certainly thinks that the distinction between necessary and
unnecessary desires is crucial to understanding the transition from oligarch to demo-
crat; he also analyses the junior democrat as appetitive. But none of this conflicts with
the claim that eventually the character satisfies desires from all parts of the soul. True,
when he reminds us of the democrat in 572blO-d3 and 587c7 he alludes only to the
appetitive desires, but this need not be taken to deny the presence of other desires.

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 PLATO'S CRITIQUE OF THE DEMOCRATIC CHARACTER 27

3. A jumble of desires

I now wish to focus directly on the question of why the democrat is

placed beneath the oligarch. This is a character who represents a form of
vice because he does everything in the service of appetite (even if it is of
the best kind), and because the existence of unnecessary but forcibly
restrained appetites produces inner conflict. Both these criticisms can be
understood in terms of the psychological theory, and are reinforced by the
political analogy. When criticising the oligarchic state, Socrates had lost
no time in saying that it was ruled by those who lack the relevant qualification
(551c2-d2). Analogously, the oligarch is ruled by an element inferior to
reason. The other criticism of the oligarchic state was that it was a double-
state, divided between rich and poor (551d5-7).
But the oligarch still holds a relatively high position in Plato's series,
and this is explained in terms of his redeeming feature, restraint. Through
forcible repression, he does at least attain a surrogate for the order that
characterises the just person. He represents a simulacrum or shadow of
justice. In fact, he espouses a morality of a kind,'5 even though his atti-
tude to virtue is superficial and belies his real defect of character, as is
shown in his behaviour towards the vulnerable (554c4-9). This superficial
virtue also makes the oligarch appear outwardly ordered (554e3-4). I take
this to mean that corresponding to his simulacrum virtue is a simulacrum
unity, and it is only when we look inside him that we see the underlying
conflict in his nature.
When it comes to ranking the democrat below the oligarch, the issue
of unity continues to play a crucial role. What is explicitly said to be
wrong with him is that he has no order (at4tq) or compulsion (a&va&yi) in
his life (561d5-6). The first of these claims shows how he differs from the
just person in whom harmony of desires produces order and thus unity,
the quality that Plato so prizes in state and soul.'6 In having no compul-
sion in his life either, he abandons even the oligarch's surrogate for ratio-
nal order.'7 His life has become a jumble of desires, and thus he has taken
a decisive step beyond his merely bipolarised father. As initially stated,
this is a point about the democrat's life, rather than his soul as such.'8 It

'" This is clear from a later passage, in which his son is said to repudiate what his
father would regard as virtues (560d2-6). Predictably, these include temperance and
moderation.
16 See e.g. 443c9-444a2, esp. 443el & 520a3-4.
1" Cf. 561d5 with 554cl & d2.
18 Cf. 561d5-e2.

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 28 DOMINIC SCOTF

is clear, however, that Plato also wants to accuse him of being a disunified
person when he likens him to the democratic city and calls him 'a com-
plex man, full of all sorts of characters ... and ways of living' (561e3-7).'9
In the end, his soul itself has just become a jumble of desires.
That the democrat suffers in some way from disunity is reasonably clear
from the text,2" but to understand the force of the criticism we need to
keep the conclusions of section 2 above well to the fore. At first sight, the
fact that the democrat satisfies desires from all three parts of his soul
might seem to offset the criticism of him as radically disunified: he might
compensate for the loss of coherence by his occasional forays into the
higher realms of reason and spirit. But any redeeming power these desires
might have vanishes when we remember that, although his desires are not
all appetites, they are all like appetites. Indeed the disunity upon which
Plato ultimately focuses is the result of the fact that his life is just a string
of good-independent desires and their satisfaction.2'

4. Reasoning, unity and the democrat

In this section, I want to probe further into the role that reason plays
in the democrat's life. We have seen how Plato allows him to follow ra-
tional desires from time to time. But there is an important question to be
asked about whether his reason has any global function - whether it plays
any part in shaping his life as a whole. Imagine the oligarchically-reared
youth shortly before his slide into democracy. Does Plato present him as

" This claim, that the democratic man embodies all sorts of characters, goes well
beyond saying that he fulfills all sorts of desires. Taken literally, it implies that the
democratic man veers between one character and another (timocratic, for instance, then
oligarchic), as if he were the victim of a multiple personality disorder. I assume this
part of Plato's description is a joke: such radical flux is incoherent on his view of
character as something developed over the long-term. The point is rather that the
democrat, in flitting between his desires, mimics the other characters. Plato makes an
analogous exaggeration in saying that the democratic state is full not just of different
types of citizens, but also of constitutions (557d8). Again, we should not take him
mean the democratic state is literally an oligarchy one day, a timocracy the next.
20 See Annas (1981) 302.
21 When it comes to diagnosing the democrat, Plato focuses primarily upon his
internal state rather than on the kinds of action he performs. This is to be expected
from 443c9ff. Nevertheless, although it is the oligarch who is accused of such things
as abusing orphans (554c7-9), there is nothing to rule out something similar with the
democrat; he would just do so more erratically.

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 PLATO'S CRITIQUE OF THE DEMOCRATIC CHARACTER 29

reasoning dispassionately about his father's repressed and frustrated life,

and concluding that his own would be much happier if he treated all his
desires on a par? If so, we ought to be puzzled by Plato's complaint about
the disunity of his life, and even more about the disunity of his soul: on
the view just outlined, there is a single deliberating reason which thinks of
his life as a whole and imposes a plan upon it; the fragmentation of life
and character that Plato talks about would, in this case, only be superficial.
Plato's critique is far more intelligible if we imagine the democrat
rather differently: his spontaneous life-style is not the result of a rational
decision at all; instead, he is simply led along by whatever desire happens
to arise at any one time, and there is little more to his life over and above
its being a random series of desires. It is not that he has rationally decided
to eschew discriminations between desires; his reason may be so weak-
ened that it is incapable of operating globally and of imposing any direc-
tion on his life.
The fact that Plato presents the democrat as radically disunified already
creates a strong presumption in favour of allowing global reasoning only
a minimal role in shaping his life. This would also tie in with the fact
that, at the 'local' level, his individual desires are not derived from rational
evaluation. I now wish to show that there is plenty more evidence in the
text to support this, most of which can be found by looking carefully at
the way in which each stage of his transformation is described. I shall
start, however, by asking how far reasoning about ends is involved in the
oligarch's life,22 because Plato's views on moral education elsewhere in
the Republic suggest that, if the oligarch's own rational part (XO7tOTlKOV)
is in bad shape, the same is likely to apply to his son.

(a) The oligarch in 553a-555b

There are two points at which Plato explicitly mentions reasoning and
the oligarch.23 The first comes at 553dl-4:

22 This question could be asked of any of the four deviant characters, all of whom
are presented as undergoing the personal analogue of a political revolution and as mak-
ing a global change to their life-styles. Despite the importance of the issue, it is not
often discussed. One exception is Irwin (1994) esp. 286 who argues that reasoning
about ends is heavily involved in the lives and attitudes of all four characters.
23 As I am interested in the oligarch's influence on his son, I shall focus not upon
his own transformation from timocracy, but on the activity and strength of his rational
part once he is settled into the oligarchic character.

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 30 DOMINIC SCOTT

He makes the rational and spirited parts sit on the ground beneath appetite, one
on either side, reducing them to slaves. He won't allow the first to reason about
or examine anything except how a little money can be made into great wealth.

Here the activity of the rational part is confined to a narrowly instrumen-

tal role: the oligarch apparently has a single goal, and the only kind of
activity permitted to reason is that which promotes that goal. By specify-
ing the one and only operation allowed to reasoning, Socrates is thereby
excluding any other. Here is someone in whom the process of non-instru-
mental reasoning is stopped dead.24
In this passage, Socrates says that reason is made a slave to appetite.
It is important to stress that he is not using this metaphor to describe a
case of acrasia where reason has made a value-judgement with which
appetite conflicts. The corruption of reason is deeper. Under the influence
of appetite, it is prevented from reasoning in such as way as to produce
judgements that conflict with the goals of the appetitive part.25
But here there is a distinction to be made. 553dl-4 certainly implies
something about the way in which the activity of the rational part is con-
strained. But it is a separate question as to whether the value-judgement,
'money matters before anything else', is located in the rational part or in
the appetitive. We might suppose that the rational part has become silent
on the question of what constitutes his overall goal, and so infer that the
value-judgement resides in the appetitive part. Alternatively, reason might
form a judgement that wealth is the only ultimate goal, but form it entirely
under the influence of the appetitive part. In 553d3 he says that it is not
allowed to reason about (Xoyit'caOat) or consider (axoneiv) anything apart
from how to make more money out of less. If we take these words to sug-
gest mental effort of some kind,26 we can allow room for a lower grade
of belief formation; the rational part does form a belief about ends, but
under the influence of appetite. It is its reasoning that is confined to the
instrumental sphere.
What is not in dispute between these two interpretations is the fact that

24 Kraut (1973) 212-3 discusses this passage, and takes it to show merely that
appetite has taken what he calls 'normative control' over reason, i.e. that the oligarch
prefers wealth above all else. But Plato is saying more than this: he is talking about
what reason is allowed to reason about, not just what the person values.
21 Flattering the appetitive part is said to be typical of a weak rational part at
590c3-6.
26 Like ko {4EOOat, awiOtEiV is regularly used to imply a deliberation of some kind,
as at 553e4.

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 PLATO'S CRITIQUE OF THE DEMOCRATIC CHARACTER 31

reasoning about ends has collapsed by this stage in the decline. Can we
choose between them? One approach would be as follows: like all the
characters, the oligarch has a conception of the good. Our question, in
effect, is whether this is to be housed in the rational or the appetitive part.
One might argue that it has to be put in the rational part because appetite
is incapable of conceiving of the good: appetite, surely, is 'good-inde-
pendent', as we saw above. This, however, is too quick. Although appetite
cannot produce desires based on a conception of the good, this is not to
say that it is incapable of having a conception of the good at all. It may
be that, as result of desiring or taking pleasure in something, appetite con-
ceives of it as good. If so, the difference between appetite and reason is
not that one conceives of the good and the other does not; it lies in the
'direction of fit': in whether the good provides an independent and antece-
dent ground for the desire.27 On this view, then, the value-judgement could
still be housed in the appetitive, and the rational part, in its evaluative
capacity, could be silenced.28
It is in fact extremely difficult to show that the appetitive part cannot
form value-judgements and that they must instead be located in the ra-
tional part. Perhaps a closer look at book 4 would help to determine the
issue. But as far as the overall topic of this paper is concerned, we can
safely leave the issue on one side. For the sake of argument, let us assume
that the oligarch's rational part does house the value-judgement. I shall
go on to argue that, even if this is so, and even if the democrat's belief in
the overall value of freedom is housed in the rational part, in his case the
functioning of that part is still too minimal to offset the disunity criticism.
Before returning to the democrat, we need to look at one more text con-
cerning reasoning and the oligarch:

He holds [his evil appetites] in check, not persuading them that it's better not to
act on them or taming them with logos, but by compulsion and fear, trembling
for his other possessions (554dl-3).

Here Plato is implicitly drawing a double contrast with the just person.
One difference is that the just person calms his appetites, thus producing
harmony rather than the conflict that characterises the oligarch. The other
is that the just person's restraint is achieved by reason: the rational part

27 I am grateful to John Cooper for clarifying this point for me.

28 For the suggestion that there can be value judgements in the appetitive part, see
Rep. 442c10-dl & Phaedr. 255e4-256al with Sorabji (1993) 10-11.

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 32 DOMINIC SCOTT

performs its function of seeing what the good of the whole soul is, and
governing in the light of this knowledge. But in 554dl-3 the oligarch's
reason does not play this role. Instead, his necessary appetites, together
with the associated fear that they might not be satisfied, turn out to be
stronger and more intense than his non-necessary appetites.29 That neces-
sary appetites, rather than reason, should be the cause of his restraint fits
with the use of the state-soul analogy: the state is run by a clique of greedy
plutocrats (the analogues of necessary appetites), not of misguided intel-
lectuals.
So both these texts, 553dl-4 and 554dl-3, tell strongly against the view
that the oligarch is someone whose pursuit of money is grounded in an
autonomous decision of the rational part. His day-to-day choices restrain-
ing unnecessary appetites do not involve evaluative reasoning and, even
if his overall choice of ends is somehow housed in the rational part, it is
not maintained by rational reflection.

(b) The junior democrat

Let us now turn to the first stage of the democratic transition, the total
rejection of oligarchic restraint, to see whether it involves the use of auto-
nomous (though misguided) reasoning. Even before we look at the text in
any detail, we can find two reasons against this view, based on the way
in which we have characterised the oligarch.
The first is that, for Plato, the rational part does not just appear at a
certain age of maturation in decent working order; unless it is nurtured by
someone whose own rational part is already in a healthy state, it is most
likely to be stunted."' If the oligarch 'enslaved' his own reason and lim-
ited it to instrumental deliberation, how could it come to be so healthy in
his son? Plato admits the possibility, but thinks it very unlikely to be
realised (558b3).
Second, if the democrat's transformation were the result of renewed
functioning of the rational part, it is again unclear why he is put so low
on the list, lower than the oligarch. Our principal question is how the unity
criticism is supposed to work if the democrat's decision is underpinned

29 In saying that the oligarch does not persuade himself with reason, I am only talk-
ing of reasoning about ends. In assessing the financial risks of yielding to unneces-
sary desires, he will of course use instrumental reasoning. I also assume that instru-
mental reasoning would play an important role in his attempts to warn his son away
from licentiousness (559e9-10).
30 See, for instance, 558bl-cl & 591al. This, of course, is the thesis behind so
many of Plato's proposals for moral education.

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 PLATO'S CRITIQUE OF THE DEMOCRATIC CHARACTER 33

by the activity of the rational part. But a 'rational' democrat would have
another advantage over his father. Although he might sometimes choose
to follow worse appetites than his father, the rational part would have con-
trol, and so he could be persuaded out of his choice.3'
If we now look at the text in more detail, we can find further evidence
against allowing a global function to reason. The transition is decribed as
follows. Making heavy use of the state-soul analogy, Socrates describes
how internal and external elements work together to tempt the youth to
give up the restraint of his unnecessary desires, just as a democratic fac-
tion within a city might plot revolution with the aid of an outside demo-
cratic power:

... doesn't the young man change when one party of his desires receives help
from external desires that are akin to them and of the same form? (559e5-7)

At first, the oligarchic forces, both within and without, resist the pressures.
In other words, the encouragement of family and servants, as well as the
restraint imbued in him by his upbringing, quells the rising tide of unnec-
essary desires within him. But after subsiding, they grow strong again and
finally, with the help of the 'lotus-eating' friends, bring about the revolu-
tion that failed before.
The actual transformation is described at 560a9-561a4. In secret, the
former desires breed a multitude of others and make another attempt, this
time successful, on the young man's soul. The next result of this victory
is that false beliefs become established and then, if any of the old oli-
garchic allies try to re-establish control, he is said not even to give them
a hearing (560c6-dl). He refuses to engage in any kind of dialogue.
This passage offers three further reasons against supposing that his
rational part is active in the revolution. One is that the initial pressure is
exerted by unnecessary appetites, from within and without. Plato goes out
of his way to stress the role of the appetitive part in the process by talk-
ing not of the associates themselves bringing about the change, but their
desires (559e5-7). There is also an argument from silence: in the actual
transformation, no mention is made of any deliberation, and his associ-
ates are at no point said to win him over by argument. If there were any
reasoning going on here, it is extremely strange that Plato makes no men-
tion of it, or attempt to describe what it is like.
Finally, we need to pay close attention to the use of the state-soul anal-
ogy. It is very noticeable that Plato keeps appealing to the model of a

31 On this compare Aristotle N.E. 1146a31-4.

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 34 DOMINIC SCOFT'

democratic revolution to help explain the transformation of the democra-

tic man. Since he is so keen to highlight the analogy, any interpretation
of the passage needs to ensure that its account of the individual's trans-
formation finds a clear analogue in some aspect of the political revolu-
tion. By presenting the transformation non-rationally, we are able to do
this: it is the unnecessary appetites, as the surrogates for the democrati-
cally-minded rebels, who do the work of expelling the old rulers. By con-
trast, it is difficult to see how the 'rational' interpretation can make much
sense of the analogy at all. The problem in fact would apply every time
one tried to make the transformation of a character a rational process. The
rational part would have to be reintroduced at each transition to hand over
power to another part, like an authority stepping in to take power from
one faction and give it to another. So in the case of the democratic man,
one would have to imagine some authority that thought the city would go
better if it was allowed a spell of democracy (at the same time reserving
the right to change its mind and try out another constitution). But the way
in which Plato actually uses the analogy is completely different, and sim-
pler: one faction yields to another directly.32
Now Plato does talk of false X6yot and opinions siezing the citadel of
the young man's soul (560c2-3). But this happens only once the desires
have paved the way and, again, there is nothing in the text to support the
idea that reasoning about ends is taking place. In fact, the way the koiol
are described at 560c7-dl as not even prepared to listen to another view-
point helps rule out this idea. Instead, the formation of these beliefs should
be compared to the way in which the oligarch held value-judgements, per-
haps housed in his rational part, by the strength of (necessary) appetites.
Similarly, the democrat now values freedom, and also has a list of virtues
to accord with this (560d2-561a4). Again, even if these value-judgements
are housed in the rational part, they do not arise from its autonomous func-
tioning, but from a process of non-rational belief formation.'+

32 Irwin (1994) 287, in defending the rational interpretation, admits to having

difficulties with the analogy: '. . . one aspect of the political analogy has to be
modified . ..'. This concession is somewhat understated: there is a radical difference
between Plato's use of the analogy and Irwin's 'modification' which reintroduces
reason at each stage as a transitional authority.
33 The phenomenon of non-rational belief formation has already featured in the
Republic and re-appeared more than once. At 412b8ff., Socrates addresses the prob-
lem of ensuring that the trainee guardians retain the beliefs inculcated into them by
their education. This leads on to a discussion of the ways in which beliefs can be
changed. One of these is that someone can be forced to relinquish a belief out of pain

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 PLATO'S CRITIQUE OF THE DEMOCRATIC CHARACTER 35

(c) The senior democrat

The second stage of the democrat's transformation is described at 561

a8-b3:

If he's lucky, and his frenzy doesn't go too far, when he grows older, and the
great tumult within him has spent itself, he welcomes back some of the exiles,
ceases to surrender himself completely to the newcomers, and puts his pleasures
on an equal footing.

The starting-point for this change is the calming of his passions. Notice
that there is no suggestion that this is the result of the rational part sooth-
ing the appetites; all we are given as causes are age and good fortune.
As a result of this change, he starts to gratify a much wider range of
desires than before. On my interpretation, what has happened is simply
that the new tranquillity allows other pleasures, which would previously
have appeared colourless, to make an impression on him. He follows the
modified lifestyle simply because a wider range of things now appeals to
him. On the 'rational' interpretation, on the other hand, the point would
have to be that the new state of calm allows a previously distracted reason
to recover and deliberate towards a modified life-style. Again, however,
there is good evidence against supposing that any substantive activity of
the rational part is involved in this transformation.
As before, there is an argument from silence. If the rational part sud-
denly kicks into activity, why does Plato not mention it? After all, it would
be a crucial psychological difference between the stages of the democrat.
Furthermore, the suggestion that this character now reasons towards his
ends makes him a substantial improvement on his father, so that the rank-
ing question is once again thrown open: if, unlike the oligarch, he does
allow his rational part to deliberate about ends, and does not enslave it to
non-rational desire, he is far more amenable to persuasion and only needs
to be presented with the right arguments.
Finally, we need to bear in mind Plato's views on education and the
development of character. In the previous section, I asked how the junior
democrat could have developed an autonomous rational part given Plato's

or grief (413b9-10); also, they might be bewitched by pleasure or fear (cl-3). To put
the point in terms of the theory of the tripartite soul, beliefs can be formed by the
strength of desires in the non-rational parts, especially the appetitive. So, for instance,
if one started with a view about something being one of one's ends, this might be
'driven out' by excessive appetite. See also 429c5ff., esp. 430a6-b2. On the signifi-
cance of these passages to the Republic as a whole, see Scott (1999).

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 36 DOMINIC SCOTT

strictures about the need for someone else to nurture it carefully. He also
believes that yielding to appetite not only strengthens it, but weakens rea-
son, enslaving it to appetite (442a4-b3 & 588e3-589a2). A consequence
of this is that yielding to appetite in one's youth will affect the state of
one's reason later on. This makes it improbable that, after giving himself
over to each and every appetite in his youth, the democrat's reason will
thereafter be in any position to reassert itself.
So if we take into account his lack of rational education and subse-
quent bout of appetitive indulgence, by the time we get to his mature
phase, his capacity to reason about ends has been irretrievably weakened.
He may find himself experiencing all kinds of desire, but will have nei-
ther the ability nor the inclination to discriminate between them; he has
become pathologically indiscriminate.
As with the oligarch and the junior democrat, I am not denying that
the senior democrat has a conception of the good (freedom) and a policy
of eschewing discrimination (561b7-c4), which may be housed in the
rational part. Nevertheless, these are not principles arrived at by the activ-
ity of that part, which is by this point in too weakened a state to function
autonomously. Rather, they result from the fact that he is no longer capa-
ble of discrimination and are merely made to suit (or 'flatter') the state
that his desires have now reached.'4

In the earlier part of this paper, I argued that the democratic character
should not be seen as essentially or exclusively appetitive. He is, how-
ever, 'quasi-appetitive', which in turn helps to explain how Plato is able
to present him as a rabble of desires, someone in whom order and unity
have all but disintegrated. I then raised the question of what role reason
might play in shaping his life. If the disunity criticism is to hold, Plato
ought to allow very little global reasoning. With a more detailed exami-
nation of the text, we saw that this was confirmed by three points in par-

." In allowing for this type of evaluation at the global level, we should also think
of the democrat's individual or 'local' desires. In section 2, I said that none of these
are derived from independently conceived evaluations. This does not exclude the pos-
sibility that his desires are accompanied by some form of evaluation. He may con-
ceive of something as good merely from taking pleasure in it. In this way, each of his
desires might seem good to him, each as good as any other. (This is perhaps suggested
by 561c4.) Nevertheless, if value-judgements do accompany his desires in this way, it
is crucial to remember that they are not the source of his desires, but their products.

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 PLATO'S CRITIQUE OF THE DEMOCRATIC CHARACTER 37

ticular - Plato's failure to mention any global evaluative reasoning, his

views on the development of character and his use of the state-soul anal-
ogy. All these point towards the same conclusion: what the democrat chooses
to do is determined just by the strength of the desires that he happens to
have. There is no unity underlying his manifold lifestyle, because there is
no longer sufficient reasoning power to provide it.35

Clare College, Cambridge

References

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31 Earlier versions of this paper were given to the Philosophy Departments of Pittsburgh
and Trinity College Dublin, and to the 1998 Princeton Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy.
I would like to thank all those who made comments and especially John Cooper,
Vasilis Politis, Christopher Rowe, Susan Suave Meyer and my commentator at the
Princeton Colloquium, Rosslyn Weiss. I am also grateful for the support of the Center
for Hellenic Studies, Washington D.C.

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