GERASIMOS SANTAS

PLATO’S CRITICISM OF THE “DEMOCRATIC MAN” IN THEREPUBLIC

(Received 29 December 1999; accepted 18 September 2000)

ABSTRACT. The article discusses two puzzles about Plato’s account of the democraticperson: (1) unlike his account of the democratic city, his characterization of a democraticperson is markedly incorrect. (2) His criticism of a person so characterized is criticism of astraw man. The article argues that the first puzzle is resolved if we see it as a result of Plato’sassumption that a democratic person is a person whose soul is isomorphic to a democraticconstitution. Such a person has a desire satisfaction theory of good and adopts liberty andequality of desires as a basis for action. The article then argues that Plato’s criticism bringsup two problems endemic to desire satisfaction theories of good, the problem of bad desiresand the problem of conflicts of desires. The criticism is that the democratic person’s wayof dealing with these problems, by applying the social principles of liberty and equality tohis desires, is irrational.

KEY WORDS: bad desires, conflict of desires, democracy, democratic man, desires,desire satisfaction, equality, good, Plato,Republic

Plato’s remarks about what he calls “the democratic man” in theRepublic(Book VIII) are puzzling. One puzzle is that his definition or account of thedemocratic person seems to be obviously incorrect and has been rejectedby the subsequent tradition, even though his definition of the democraticcity is roughly correct and accepted by the subsequent tradition.1 Thesecond puzzle is that Plato’s criticism of the democratic person seems moreirony and sarcasm than criticism; and if and when we begin to make senseof it, we are still faced with the prospect that it seems worthless since it isa criticism based on a misconception of what a democratic person is.

I try to address the first puzzle by showing that the definition of thedemocratic person is a consequence of one of the most central assump-tions of Plato in theRepublic: the isomorphism between the Platonically

1 It agrees in essentials with Aristotle’s account of democracy in thePolitics and theAthenian Constitution. On the other hand, his definition of a democratic person seemsunique and wrong headed. For a characteristic reaction, see, for example, Julia Annas,AnIntroduction to Plato’s Republic(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981), p. 301: “But the kind ofperson he depicts has no obvious connection with democracy.” The standard definition of ademocrat would be, roughly, that s/he is a person who subscribes to the political principlesof democracy, liberty and equality, or to a constitution which satisfies these principles.

The Journal of Ethics5: 57–71, 2001.© 2001Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

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just city and the four unjust cities, on the one hand,and the Platonicallyjust person and the four unjust persons, on the other. First, I set out theisomorphism between a just city and a just person, since it is more explicitand can guide the rest of the discussion. Then I set out more informallythe isomorphism between the (Platonically unjust) democratic city and thedemocratic person. As in the case of Platonic psychic justice, whose defin-ition also appears incorrect,2 here too we can see that Plato’s apparentlyincorrect definition of a democratic person is a consequence of his correctdefinition of a democratic city and the assumption of the isomorphismbetween the two. The isomorphism is the source of our puzzle. And Plato’sconception of a democratic man, as one whose soul is isomorphic to ademocratic city, can be contrasted to the subsequent tradition’s conceptionof a democratic person, as one who subscribes to a democratic constitutionor its leading principles of liberty and equality.3

In the second half of the paper I try to explain what is Plato’s criticismof his democratic person. I argue that it is not of a total misconception; andthat it suggests some problems for a conception of the human good whichthe moderns favor, the human good as the satisfaction of desires. Plato iscriticizing a possible version of this theory: the good as thedemocraticsatisfaction of one’s desires. Though this may not be the most rationalway to satisfy our desires, it springs from problems that all theories of thegood as desire satisfaction have to face: the problem of bad desires and theproblem of conflicts among desires. And it is not clear that other versions,more modern, solve these problems.

1. THE ISOMORPHISM BETWEENJUST CITY AND JUST PERSON, AND

BETWEEN THE DEMOCRATIC CITY AND THE DEMOCRATIC

PERSON

I set out here, rather dogmatically and ignoring many problems aboutit, what I take to be Plato’s assumption of the isomorphism between thePlatonically just city and the Platonically just person. I embed it in the

2 Since George Grote in the 19th century and David Sachs in 20th century, it has beenargued that Plato’s definition of a just person seems incorrect because it makes no referenceto the just person’s conduct toward others, or to any laws or principles of social justice; andso there is no suffient reason to believe that a Platonically just person will also be just by thestandards of social justice; or by the rules of non-maleficence in terms of which Glauconconceives of social justice. For the latest version of the problem, see T. Irwin,Plato’s Ethics(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), p. 256ff.

3 Parallel to the subsequent tradition’s definition of a just person, roughly, as one whosubscribes to the principles or laws of a just society.

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context of the argument by which Plato derives the definition of a Platon-ically just person from his elaborately constructed definition of a just cityand the independent arguments for the division of the soul. Here I am usingthis isomorphism only to elucidate the subsequent isomorphism between ademocratic city and a democratic man, which in turn helps us understandPlato’s definition of a democratic person.

Plato does not construct the definition of a just person by the procedurehe used to construct a definition of a just city.4 Instead, he uses (1) thedefinition of a just city (social justice) he had already constructed; theprinciple of isomorphism (2) that a just city and a just man do not differat all with respect to justice; and (3) the division of the soul into psychicparts which correspond in some sense to his three natural divisions of thecity and corresponding functions for the three psychic parts. The divisionof the soul is required and guided by (1) and (2), but it is arrived at by anargument independent of (1) and (2).

I construct the argument in four stages as follows

1. A city is just when each of the three natural kinds of people init performs its own (i.e., its optimal) social function (Republic,433,435b).5 I call this theformal principle of social justice.

2. The main social functions are ruling, defending, and provisioning thecity (Republic, 369bff., 374ff., 428dff.).

3. There are three natural kinds of persons in the city: persons of inbornhigh intelligence, persons of inborn high spirit, and those of inbornabilities for arts, crafts and trades (Republic, 415, 435).

4. The optimal social function of people of high intelligence is ruling thecity; those of high spirit defending it; and those of abilities in arts andcrafts provisioning the city (Republic, 434).

5. Therefore, a city is just when those of high intelligence are assignedto rule, those of high spirit to defend, and those of artizan abilities toprovision the city (from 1–4, andRepublic, 433). I call this thefulldefinitionof justice, combining formal and material elements.

4 I take that procedure to be based on the abstract theory of function and virtue, and toconsist of three steps: (1) assign functions to the city, (2) imagine a city that performs thesefunctions as well as possible (a “completely good city”), and (3) discover the conditionswhich enable the city to do so, on the assumptions that justice (as well as the other virtuesof the city) will be among these.

5 I take the idea of optimal function from Plato’s definition of function atRepublic,352e and 353a: “that is the work [ergon, function] of a thing which it only or better thananything else can perform” (Shorey, translation). I call the first “exclusive function” andthe second “optimal function.”

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6. If things, whether large or small, are [correctly] called [by] the same[name], they will be alike in the respect in which they are called thesame (Republic, 435a).

7. We [sometimes correctly] call cities and persons [by the same name]just (Republic, 435a).

8. Therefore, a just person and a just city will not differ at all with respectto the kind justice (from 6 and 7;Republic, 435ab).

9. Therefore, a person is just if each of the natural kinds in his/her psycheperforms its own i.e. its optimal] psychic function (from 1 and 8,Republic, 435ac, 441e).

10. The functions of the soul are to rule oneself, to defend oneself, and toprovide for one’s bodily needs (from 1, 2, 8;Republic, 441e, 442).

11. The human psyche has three parts, reason, spirit, and appetite.12. Reason is the psychic part which corresponds to the class of people

of high intelligence, spirit to the class of high spirited individuals, andthe appetitive part to those with artisan abilities (Republic, 440, 441).6

13. Therefore, the optimal function of reason is to rule the person, of spiritto defend, and of appetite to provide for bodily needs (from 4, 8, 10,11; Republic, 441e).

14. Therefore, a soul is just when reason is assigned to rule the person,spirit to defend it, and appetite to provide for one’s bodily needs (from9 and 13;Republic, 441e–442a).7

In this argument the pattern of inference is from Plato’s conceptionof a just city to his conception of a just soul,via the assumption ofisomorphism. This may be only the order of discovery and may be compat-

6 How to characterize the artisan class so as to make it correspond to the appetitive partof the soul, or conversely, is one of the problems I bypass here. On the basis of Platonicsocial justice, we have to say that the artisan class is the class of persons best suited (i.e.,whose optimal function is) to provide the city’s material needs. Perhaps we can think ofappetites as signaling and motivating (though not very accurately) the bodily needs whichcorrespond to the city’s material needs.

7 The isomorphism between just city and just person, as expounded here, does not tellus completely what the relation is between a just city and a just person. If we consider thepassage where Plato tells us that a person who has justice in his soul will pronounce thoseactions just which tend to produce and preserve that just state of soul, and unjust thosewhich destroy it (Republic, 443e), we can see that both definitions (of just cities and justpersons) put requirements on conduct. We can then say that at least internal consistency ofPlato’s theory of justice, social and individual, demands that the kinds of behavior whichsocial justice requires (namely performing one’s own optimal social function) does notconflict with the kinds of actions individual justice requires; the two “justices” cannot haveconflicting requirements with respect to conduct. But why Plato thought this consistencyrequirement would be satisfied no one, so far as I know, has suceeded in making clear.

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ible with Plato’s remark that city justice is an image of psychic justice.8 Butin any case, inRepublic, Book VIII, where Platonically unjust cities andsouls are described, the order in which Plato proceeds is again the same:from a timocratic city to a timocratic person, from an oligarchic city to anoligarchic person, from a democratic city to a democratic person, and atyrannical city to a tyrannical person. In all these cases the isomorphism istaken for granted; in all of them the descriptions of the four unjust citiesseem uncontroversial; some if not all the descriptions of the correspondingtypes of persons is at least dubious; and what seems responsible for thesedoubts is the isomorphism.

Plato does not set out the inference from his description of the demo-cratic city to his description of the democratic person as succinctly andexplicitly as he does in the case of the inference from city justice to psychicjustice. He proceeds more informally as follows.

He defines the democratic city by the principles of equality and freedomof all the citizens; and he mentions some institutions and procedures bywhich the equality of citizens was achieved. Democracy comes into being,he tells us, when everyone in the city is granted an “equal share in bothcitizenship and offices and for the most part these offices are assignedby lot” (Republic, 557a). The equality of the citizens is strictly satisfiedin the Assembly: every citizen is a member and has exactly one vote;while in the Council and the Jury Courts equality is achieved by rotationin office and selection by lot. In the principle of freedom Plato includesfreedom of speech, the freedom to do as one pleases in his life, includingthe freedom to choose any career one pleases and to move from any voca-tion into politics. Plato ends his description of democracy with a heavydose of ironic criticism: “it is a delightful form of government, anarchic

8 Republic, 443c. Nick Smith brought this passage to my attention. How importantthis issue is can be seen in Brian Barry’s dismissal of Plato’s theory of justice, afterremarking, “One theory [of justice] is his own [Plato’s], a hierarchical notion accordingto which a just society is one modeled on a well-ordered human soul” [Theories of Justice(U.C. Press, Berkeley, 1988) Volume I, p. 5]. But the story in theRepublicis much morecomplex on this very point. There may be several priorities involved, some logical, somecausal. Plato has other relations going, besides the relation of isomorphism and the order ofdiscovery, between just and unjust cities and just and unjust persons. For some of the causalconnections, see, e.g., Jonathan Lear, “Plato’s Politics of Narcissism,” in T. Irwin and M.Nussbaum (eds.),Virtue, Love, and Forms(Edmonton: Academic Printing and Publishing,1994), who has brought out some of these relations, which he calls “externalizing” and“internatlizing.” They come into light mostly in Book VII. Irwin also, inPlato’s Ethics,pp. 256ff., has a subtle discussion of relations between cities and persons in Book VIII. Inthis paper, I am abstracting somewhat from these other relations. I am mainly relying onthe isomorphism and follow Plato’s order of discovery or exposition.

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and motley, assigning a kind of equality to equals and unequals alike”(Republic, 558c, Shorey).

It is fairly easy to see that the democratic principles of political equalityand freedom are in conflict with his full definition of city justice, andarguably with his formal principle of city justice as well.

Plato characterizes the democratic person by two conditions, whichseem to be applications of the principles of political equality and freedomto the human psyche, and so parallel to the two conditions by which Platocorrectly characterized the democratic city.9

We see one condition by contrast to the other three types of unjustpersons. The oligarchic person, for example, has a dominant desire toaccumulate wealth, and he makes all his other desires subordinate orsubservient to it; he also thinks that wealth is the good and makes all othergoods subordinate or subservient to it. And similarly with the timocraticand the tyrannical persons. All these persons may be mistaken, as Platoholds, in thinking that wealth or honor or power is the good and in makingreason nothing but an instrument for gaining these ends; but all the same,these priorities do bring some order and instrumental rationality into theirlives. By contrast, the democratic person has no dominant end or stabledominant desire by which to bring order into his desires and make choicesaccordingly; nor does he think that any one (or subset) of the things hedesires isthegood. Consequently, lacking the kind of priorities reason canset in Plato’s just person, and the kind of priorities the other unjust personshave,10 the democratic person adopts the political principle of equality tohis desires, regards them all as equal and equally worthy of satisfaction.

The second condition is that the democratic person does not observe thedistinction between “necessary” and “unnecessary” appetites and pleas-ures, which Plato draws as follows: necessary appetites are those whichwe cannot get rid of by training and education, those which are necessaryfor survival, and those whose satisfaction promotes one’s own good; forexample, the desire for bread is one whose satisfaction is necessary forsurvival, while the desire for lean and fat-free food is one whose satis-

9 Plato not only characterizes or defines the four unjust cities and corresponding char-acters, but he also gives some accounts of how a just city can turn into a timocratic one,a timocratic into an olicharcic, and so on; and he does the same for the correspondingcharacters. In each case he speaks of the “origin and nature” of each, as Glaucon did in thecase of contractarian justice in Book II. InPlato’s Politics of Narcissism, J. Lear discussesthese historical and psychological accounts. I abstract here from Plato’s discussion of theorigin of the democratic city and person from the oligarchic ones, except in so far as theseaccounts help us to understand his conception of the nature of the democratic city andman.

10 See, e.g., the contrast to the oligarchic man inRepublic, 559d–560e.

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faction promotes the goods of health and strength (Republic, 558d–9e).Unnecessary appetites are those that exceed what is necessary for survival,those that can be gotten rid of by training or education, and those thatare harmful to the body and the soul (Republic, 559bc).11 The democraticperson refuses to distinguish between good and bad desires and to restrainany of them on such grounds. He is thereby deprived of another way ofbringing order into his life, the way Plato’s just person brings order intohis life, namely, by ordering his desires on the basis of criteria external todesires themselves, such as the goodness of their objects independently oftheir being desired. All this Plato sums up:

. . . he establishes and maintains all his pleasures on a footing of equality forsooth, and solives turning over the guard house of his soul to each as it happens along until it is sated,as if it had been drawn by lot for that office, and then in turn to another, disdaining nonebut fostering them all equally. . . and does not admit or accept that some pleasures arisefrom good desires and others from those that are base, and that we ought to practice andesteem the one and control and subdue the other. . . and avers that they are all alike and tobe equally esteemed. . . and lives out his life in this fashion indulging the appetite of theday . . . (Republic, 561bc, Shorey translation).

Though our texts here are not as clear as in the case of justice, we can thinkof the psychic equality of desires as corresponding to the political equalityof citizens, and the psychic refusal to restrain any of them as correspondingto the political refusal to restrain the freedom of citizens (except by thesimilar freedom of other citizens).12

Thus we can set out the democratic isomorphism argument, by whichPlato infers his characterization of the democratic person from his charac-terization of the democratic city, as follows:

1. (a) If things are called [correctly] by the same name, they will be alikein the respect in which they are called the same. (b) We call cities andpersons “democratic.” Therefore, (c) democratic cities and persons donot differ at all with respect to being democratic.

11 It is not clear to me whether Plato has two or three classes of necessary appetites; inparticular whether those which cannot be rid of by education or habituation are the same asthose that are necessary for survival [See N. White’s discussion inA Companion to Plato’sRepublic(Hackett, Indianapolis, 1979)]. Whatever the case, I take the distinction to importcriteria from outside desire for distinguishing between good and bad desires.

12 There is a question here about what corresponds to citizens: just the desires of theappetitive part, or the “desires” of spirit and reason as well? This may depend on howwe are to understand Plato’s division of thepsyche, and also how to understand desires inthe theory of the human good as the satisfaction of desires. Many of the complications inPlato can be seen in, for example, Irwin’sPlato’s Ethics, pp. 256ff.; and the correspondingcomplications in, say, J. Elster’sSour Grapes(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,1987).

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2. A democratic city is a city in which (a) all citizens have equal politicalshares, and (b) all citizens have equal (maximum possible) freedomsto do and live as they please.

3. The principle of equal political shares is implemented through (a)all citizens being members of the Assembly with one vote each; (b)rotation in office and (c) selection by lot in the Council and the JuryCourts. The principle of equal maximum freedoms is implementedthrough the fewest possible political contraints on freedom to do as onepleases.

4. What corresponds to citizens in a democratic city are [parts of the soulor] desires in a democratic person.13

5. Therefore, a democratic person is a person in whom (a) all desireshave an equal shares in ruling, and (b) all desires have equal maximumfreedom to be satisfied (from 1c and 2ab).

6. Therefore, the democratic person is a person in whom (a) each desirehas one vote (equal claim to satisfaction), (b) desires take turns (rota-tion) for satisfaction, and (c) desires are selected for satisfaction by lot(from 1c, and 3abc).

In the passage we last quoted we can see that Plato comes very closeto applying the democratic egalitarian devices of rotation in office andelection by lot, to thepsycheof the democratic person, presumably to bringsome order into it and make choices possible.14

Here we can perhaps see that Plato’s definition of a democratic personis not totally mistaken. We may still have a hard time seeing why ademocratic person has to apply the principles of political equality andfreedom of citizens to his psyche; why a democratic person is not simplya person who subscribes to the principles of political equality and freedomof citizens, as, let us say, the Socrates of theCrito seems to be, surelyno democrat of thepsyche. But we can at least see why Plato’s demo-cratic person might prefer to live in a democracy. Such a person would

13 Again, it is not entirely clear which Plato has in mind, desires or parts of the soul, ascorresponding to citizens. Probably desires, no matter what their origin, rather than parts ofthe soul; in any case, the latter might be incoherent, since all appetites of the appetitive partof the soul would then have to be grouped together as having a claim to satisfaction equalto those of spirit or reason. Of course, it is not clear that the democratic person wouldadmit Plato’s division of the soul and what it implies about desires. The most plausibleview seems to be that Plato’s democratic person speaks of desires in some common senseway, as simply whatever a person happens to want.

14 I inserted premise 3 and conclusion 6 into the argument, just to indicate how the fullargument might go, taking seriously the application of the political devices or rotation inoffice and selection by lot to the humanpsyche. The latter device would be necessary incases where severa appetites demanded satisfaction at once.

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prefer a democratic constitution to any of the others Plato discusses inthe Republic, because it gives him greater political freedom to do as hepleases: in a democracy he has fewer external (political) constraints onhis attempts to satisfy his desires, and he has at least as much politicalfreedom to do so as anyone else. In Plato’s ideal city, and in timocracies,oligarchies, and tyrannies, Plato’s democratic person would have no suchfreedom (or equality); unless he were a philosopher-king, which he couldnot be, or happened to be a general in charge, a wealthy person, or a tyrant.In addition, a democracy seems to prize the very values he applies to hisown soul, freedom and equality; whereas in an oligarchy, for example,he would be in disagreement with the dominant value of that society,wealth.

If we assume the isomorphism, as Plato does, we can see that therewould be reciprocal relations between a democratic city and a democraticperson: a democratic person would have to be pretty exactly what Platosays he is. And if he is as Plato defines him, then we can see why he wouldprefer a democratic constitution.

This resolves the first puzzle, not in the sense that it makes Plato’s defin-ition of a democratic person correct, but in that it makes it understandableto us, by revealing its basis. We are more familiar with a similar puzzleabout Plato’s definition of a just person, from the Grote-Sachs objection tothat definition, now a century and a half old; I think it presents a similarpuzzle and it may have a similar resolution.

2. PLATO’ S CRITICISMS OF THEDEMOCRATIC MAN

Plato’s cricitisms of the democratic person, though not entirely explicit,assume the two conditions by which Plato defined him: psychic equalityof desires and freedom of desires from psychic (presumalby reason’s orspirit’s) constraints.

The first objection is that since the democratic person has no dominantdesire but treats them all alike, he has no rational way for making choiceswhen his desiresconflictwith each other and cannot all be satisfied at once,perhaps not even successively. Examples of conflicts of desires abound:say, one wants to smoke, and she wants to be healthy, one wants to take avacation and finish her book, and so on. In case of such conflicts, how isshe to choose? The objection takes it as afact that our desires sometimesdo conflict, and suggests that the theory of democracy, when applied tothe psyche, has no way of guiding choices in such cases. So at best, thetheory isincomplete; and if such conflicts are frequent, as they appear to

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be, the theory may be devastatingly incomplete. I will call this the “conflictof desires problem.”15

The second objection is that some desires are for thingsknownto bebad for us: for example, if we happen to have no desire for food we mayhasten our death; if we have desires for fat foods, their satisfaction maybe bad for our health. The desires for smoking, for fat foods, for avoidingschool, are all desires for things known to be bad for us. And if this isso, it is a mistake to treat all desires as equal. I call this the “bad desiresproblem.”16

Plato himself, as far as I can tell, suggests no reply on behalfof his democratic person to the bad desires objection: the distinctionbetween necessary and unnecessary appetites, based as it seems to beon a theory of good external to desire, would provide a solution, but itamounts to abandoning the freedom of desires from internal constrainsand abandoning their equality.

To the conflict of desires problem Plato does suggest a solution (inthe passage quoted), and with heavy irony implies that it is very muchmistaken. The solution is for the person, when faced with conflict ofdesires, to adoptfor hispsyche the democraticpolitical devices for solvingconflicts among persons (citizens): to the conflicts in his own psyche heapplies the devices of rotation in office and selection by lot. When hisdesires conflict, he tries to satisfy them in turn. And further, if there is aconflict about which desire to satisfy first, he uses selection by lot. Thelucky desire is satisfied first, and the unlucky second, and so on.

Plato seems to think that this is areductio ad absurdumof the demo-cratic person’s theory of value. He is probably right in supposing that it isabsurd to treat all desires as equal, as these two political devices do whenthey are applied to thepsyche. After all, it is clear enough that desires differextrinsically with respect to their objects, such a survival, food, health,pleasure, knowledge, wealth, honor, and so on. An they differ inherentlywith respect to their intensities, durations, and cycles of recurrence. Thedesire for food occurs with periodic regularity, it can be very intense, andits generic object (food) is necessary for health and survival. None of this istrue of the desires to go to the theater, attend the assembly, or travel abroad.As a general strategy, to rotate the satisfaction of these four desires over a

15 Plato presents us with vivid descriptions of such conflicts in his democratic person, ine.g.,Republic, pp. 560ff.

16 Insofar as Plato admits incontinence or weakness of will in theRepublic, as he iscommonly supposed to do on the basis of his division of thepsycheand the story ofLeontius, he admits that a person may desire something which even he knows or believesis bad for him.

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four day period is simply irrational, if not outright mad. And to select bylot which of these desires to satisfy first, second, and so on, is even worse.

But now we are faced with the second part of our second puzzle: wemay have made sense of Plato’s criticism ofhis democratic person; but ifa democratic person is one who subscribes to the political principles of theequality and freedom of citizens, and not necessarily one who applies theseprinciples to his very psyche, what is Plato criticizing? The obvious answeris, of course, that he is criticizing the democratic man as he conceives him.But what about him is he criticizing?

My suggestion is that he is criticizing a version of a desire satisfactiontheory of the human good.

One piece of evidence is that Plato seems to correlate every constitutionwith some theory of the good of the individual, and seems to attributesuch a theory to the corresponding person. In an oligarchy, for example,wealth is the dominant value, institutionalized by putting a high propertyqualification for office; wealth is also the dominant value of the oligarchicperson, it is the good, correlated with his dominant desire to accumulatewealth. Similarly, honor is the dominant value of timocracy and dominantvalue of the timocratic man; power for tyrannies and the tyrant. The sameis true, I think, for Plato’s theory of the ideal city and the ideal person:his political theory of justice and the other social virtues is correlated with– based on, I would say – his theories of functional and formal good andreason’s unique ability to discover them. If we now ask, what theory of thehuman good does Plato correlate with the political theory of democracy, avery plausible answer is that it is the good as desire satisfaction: becausein the relevant passages the satisfaction of desire is precisely what Plato’sdemocratic person prizes and goes after.17

A second piece of evidence is that Plato takes away from his demo-cratic person the distinction he draws between necessary and unnecessaryappetites, though he seems to allow that distinction to all his other typesof character.18 If we interpret this distinction as importing criteria for the

17 It might be that the theory of the good that Plato attributes to his democratic person ishedonism, rather than a desire satisfaction theory. It is not entirely clear that Plato distin-guishes the two, either in theGorgiasor theRepublic, but I think the objections he makeshave a much better target in desire satisfaction theories rather than hedonistic ones.

18 Though they might draw it differently. For example, the oligarchic man, to whomPlato explicitly allows the distinction, draws it by reference to his dominant value, wealth,or possibly even only his dominant desire for wealth. This is different from the way Platoactually draws it, which presumably is the way the Platonically just person draws it. Theessential point is that Plato’s democratic person refuses to draw this distinction, either asPlato’s other unjust persons do or as his just person does; and so he is deprived of theseways of bringing order and rationality into his choices.

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goodness of a desire from outside desires, then what we seem to have leftseems to be a person who seems to think that his good is the satisfactionof his desires and tries to make his choices accordingly.

A third piece of evidence is that the chief objections Plato has to theway of life of his democratic person, what I called the problems of conflictof desires and of bad desires, are indeed among the chief problems that anytheory of the good as desire satisfaction faces.

If the suggestion is correct, we can look on Plato’s criticisms of thedemocratic person as criticisms of theories of the good as the satisfactionof desire, and even ask how sound they are.

Now to begin with, a desire satisfaction theory need not adopt thedemocratic political devices of rotation in office and selection by lot tosolve the psychic problem of which of conflicting desires to satisfy. Thesepolitical devices seem rational applied to thepolis and irrational appliedto thepsyche, but a desire satisfaction theory has no commitment to suchirrationalities. A person who holds a desire satisfaction theory of goodneed not be a democrat in Plato’s sense. And if he is a democrat in thenormal sense (one who subscribes to the principles of freedom and equalityof citizens), he does not have to adopt rotation in office and selection bylot in order to make choices in his life. So Plato’s criticisms of psychicrotation and psychic selection are not sound criticisms of all versions of adesire satisfaction theory of the good, or of a person who is a democrat inthe normal sense.

Moreover, the problem of bad desires which Plato brings up against thedesire satisfaction theory, is indeed severeif the theory is that a person’sgood consists in the satisfaction of heractual desires, the desires shehappens to have at any given time and over a lifetime. But this is anäiveversion of the desire satisfaction theory of human good.

The moderns who favor desire satisfaction theories, from John Rawlsto Richard Brand to Jon Elster to John Broome, all admit thatactualdesire satisfaction theories of good are false: because, they admit, it isa widespread and well known fact that human beings sometimes desirethings which are known to be bad for them (and, we can add, if we admitweakness of will, knownby the subjects themselvesto be bad for them).The desire to smoke is a well known example.

The moderns propose a different solution to these problems, of baddesires and conflicts of desires, from Plato’s democratic solution: the solu-tion is to define the human good not in terms of the satisfaction of actualdesires, but in terms of the desires a person would have under certainconditions, the satisfaction ofhypotheticaldesires.

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Thus Rawls tells us not that the good is the satisfaction of desire, butthat it is the satisfaction ofrational desire. Rationality, in turn, he explic-ates by a series of conditions: the counting principles and deliberativerationality.19

Here are Broome’s conditions: A person’s good consists in the satis-faction of all the desires (preferences) shewould haveif she werewellinformed and rational.20 This definition, which seems to be anidealiza-tion, is supposed to overcome the objections to the view that the good isthe satisfaction of desires.

Broome treats this theory as overcoming the bad desires objectionand the conflicts objection. Presumably, being well-informed answers thebad desires objection; and being rational answers the conflict of desiresobjection, since rationality requires at least consistency.

This is not the place to examine whether these theories do successfullyresolve these problems, a huge task which, in any case, requires a lot morethan I know. But it is not clear to me that they do, and in any case there iscertainly disagreement whether they do.

It is not clear, for example, how information about facts would enableus to decide, within the desire satisfaction theory, that some of the thingswe desire are bad for us. Suppose we desire to smoke and we learn thatsmoking will cause an early death. How can this affect our choices on themodern theory? Presumably it will affect our choice only if we want toavoid an early death. But now we have reduced the problem of bad desiresto a problem of conflicts of desires: we want to smoke and we want to avoidan early death, but how do we decide which desire to satisfy?21 Elster, forone, has argued that rationality, what he calls “thin rationality” – that isto say,consistencyand information – does not exclude known immoraldesires or desires for things bad for us: one can have consistent immoraldesires and make no factual errors; and consistent desires for things badfor us. Elster mentions, voluntary suicide, homicide, and genocide as allbeing consistent with rationality as consistency and information.22

Again, how is rationality supposed to resolve conflict of desires?Rationality requires consistency of preferences, for example, transitivity

19 A Theory of Justice(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971), Chapter 7, Sections63 and 64. Rawls admits that the counting principles and deliberative rationality are notsufficient for making rational choices in all cases.

20 John Broome,Weighing Goods(Cambridge: Blackwell, 1971), p. 133.21 Nor will the receiving of the information by itself lead to the extinction of one of the

desires, even if we could decide which is bad for us to satisfy, if weakness of will occurs;even when we know the better we can still desire the worse. We may have all the pertinentnegative information and still desire the object.

22 See Elster’s brilliant discussion inSour Grapes, pp. 15ff.

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of preferences; so that we have no conflicting or inconsistent preferences.Presumably, this is supposed to answer the conflict of desires objection.But if conflicts occur in ouractual desires or preferences, how are wesupposed to eliminate the conflict and become consistent? By eliminatingwhich desires, which preferences? If we admit consistency into the desiresatisfaction theory, it is not clear howto reachconsistency, how to decidewhich of the actual conflicting desires to eliminate (or satisfy).23

Now one might suppose that Plato would agree with the idealizedversion of the desire satisfaction theory: in his terms, he might agree thatthe satisfaction of desire is good if it is guided by reason. But though true,this is misleading, because he has a different notion of the powers andfunctions of reason from the moderns (as well as a different theory of thegood – the functional-formal theory now out of favor). Plato believes thathuman reason is capable of knowing what is good in itself; it is capableof knowing functional good and ultimately the forms and the form of thegood. So rationality includes the capacity to know ultimate human good.It is not simply instrumental rationality or simply formal rationality, or aconjunction of the two.24

That is why, for Plato, not only the democratic person, but also the timo-cratic, the oligarchic, and the tyrannical, are all (both unjust and) unhappy:they all share the characteristic of putting reason to a purely instrumentaluse: to discover means to victory, to honor, wealth or power. Only Plato’sideally just person assigns reason to its correct functions: to discover whatis ultimately good, as well as correct means to it; and for that reason todeserve the role of ruling the soul.

23 There are some modern arguments that inconsistency, lack of transitivity of prefer-ences for example, is bad for one. It is not always clear what these arguments show. Theymight be taken to show that in addition to desire satisfaction, consistency is also a good;but in so far as they do that they bring in value from outside desire, and desire satisfactionis then no longer the only source of value (thus the title of Chapter 7 of Rawls’A Theoryof Justice: “Goodness as Rationality,” rather than his earlier phrase for the theory, the goodas “the satisfaction of rational desire”). Or they might be taken to show that consistencyis a necessary means to maximizing the satisfaction of desires. But such arguments stillleave us with the problem of how to bring about consistency: by eliminating which desires,which preferences?

24 For a fine discussion of some differences between the ancients and the moderns onthe scope of human reason, see M. Frede, “The Affections of the Soul,” in G. Striker andM. Schofield (eds.),The Norms of Nature(New York: Cambridge University Press, 1986).It is not entirely clear, though, that the relevant differences are just in scope, or even inscope at all. It may well be that the relevant differences are differences about the nature ofgoodness. Plato may have a theory of goodness such that human reason, endowed with thepowers Hume attributes to it, can apprehend goodness; whereas on David Hume’s theoryof good this may not be so. Metaphysical differences, say, between nominalists and logicalrealists, may come in here too. The matter is certainly more complex.

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But the moderns seem to use a much thinner notion of rationality,formal and instrumental rationality, a rationality which excludes the capa-city to know things good in themselves or intrinsic goods or ultimategoods.25 So there remains a very substantial disagreement between Platoand the moderns on rationality; and consequently on their idealizedversions of desire satisfaction. On Plato’s view, desire – desire which is notitself the result of reasoning – has nothing to say about what is good, eitherultimately or instrumentally; these are reason’s functions. This is certainlytrue of appetite; while the so-called desires of reason are reason’s tenden-cies toward the good, or desires based entirely on reason and reasoning,not desires in the modern sense.

On the modern view, reason only operates on desires, given fromoutside reason, to make them rational: that is, consistent, a formal cognitiveand value-neutral function; and, with the help of the senses, well informedabout their objects (and their causes and effects), an empirical cognitiveand value-neutral function. That is all. But the problems Plato raised forhis version of a democratic person, the problems of bad desires and ofconflicts of desires, keep intruding into the modern versions of desire satis-faction theories of the human good, which use this limited notion of reason.Whatever the present state of affairs with respect to these problems, Platomay have been the first to recognize and articulate them, admittedly in aroundabout way.26

Department of PhilosophyUniversity of CaliforniaIrvine, CA 92717-4555USA

25 See Rawls,A Theory of Justice, Section 60 (the opening section of Chapter 7), andElster, Sour Grapes, on notions of “thin” practical rationality. Roughly speaking, thinnotions are required by the idea that if we explicate goodness in terms of desire andrationality, we cannot turn around and explicate rationality in terms of goodness. Thatwould be a vicious circle.

26 Earlier drafts of this paper were read at an American Philosophical AssociationSymposium in Berkeley in 1997, and at the conference on Plato at the University ofArizona in 1998. I am grateful for comments by several participants, and especially bymy commentators, Jean Roberts and Dale Cook.