ABSTRACT
The reader should note that the Greek words do not have in the Republic the same sense as their derivatives in modern English. Many translators translit erate these Greek words into English, and then complain that what Plato is
talking about does not fit these English words. Greek does not have a word for meritocracy. Plato describes it here as PolgiXikCjtoltov, most royal, and elsewhere as apiGTOKparta (aristokratia).l But ‘royal’ and ‘aristocracy’ in English have connotations of hereditary nobility: Plato, while acknowledging the importance of genetic inheritance, is adamant that selection must be on the basis of ability alone. His ideal society is a meritocracy. His oXi'japxtot is plutocracy. The Greek word ttXovroKparta first appears in Xenophon,1 2 and was probably made up by him. Plato, somewhat diffidently, makes up the words rtpoKparta and npapx^ot for the least bad of the suboptimal consti tutions, which are governed by the ideal of honour npfj. Although he was, indeed, a severe critic of Athenian democracy as a political institution, and draws on some elements of contemporary Athenian society for his picture of SrjpoKpaTLOL, he is not concerned with democracy in either its ancient or its modern sense, but with permissiveness. And permissiveness, he suggests, leads finally to obsessive self-centredness, exemplified in the dictatorship of the autistic autocrat. Our word ‘tyranny’ comes closer to what Plato had in mind than the original Greek TupavuLq, since often, as critics of Plato like to point out, the Greek tyrants were benign-indeed sometimes populist leaders accomplishing the transition from a traditional aristocracy to a more demo cratic form of government. In modern English ‘dictator’ has the pejorative force required, although ‘autocrat’ , and the adjective ‘autistic’ are closest to Plato’s sense of obsessional self-centredness.
