Plato on Equality and Democracy

Democracy is “an attractively anarchic and colourful regime, it seems, one that accords a sort of equality to equals and unequals alike” (Rep. VIII 558c2-4). The present essay raises three questions in particular. (1) What precisely is the criticism of democracy here? (2) What kind or kinds of equality and inequality matter for Plato? As all sides agree, he is interested in proportional equality more than he is in its arithmetical counterpart, so that true equality, for him, will always turn out to be a kind of (arithmetical) inequality. But (3) inequality in what? Plato undoubtedly thinks the good and wise deserve a greater share in power just because they are good and wise; does he also think, as some have claimed, that the wealthy also deserve a greater share just because they are wealthy? The answer proposed to this last question in the following essay is a clear no: even if Plato holds wealth to be a good of some sort, the possession of an unequal share of it—despite what may b...