ABSTRACT
The chapter critically assesses Rancière’s views on democracy with the help of a subtle re-reading of Plato, here enlisted in support of the democratic cause. In Heinze’s reading, public discourse emerges as the foundation of democratic legitimacy and ensures the irreducibly political character of a citizenry distinct from its government. While Rancière places the anarchic demos as ‘the ungovernable upon which all government must definitively discover itself to be founded’, Heinze suggests that it is precisely that element before and beyond government, identified as public discourse, which itself constitutes government as legitimate.
