ABSTRACT
This chapter shows that how arguments concerning circularity generate the liberal democratic model of democracy in the Theaetetus. The Greeks invented both democracy and constitutionalism. Democracy signifies self-rule by the people of a specific polity; constitutionalism denotes a set of norms, of regularized procedures, to limit the scope and impact of democracy. Socrates establishes a conceptual linkage between Protagorean notion that man is the measure of all things and the Heraclitean conception that everything is in flux. Tucked away in the argument of the Theaetetus are the theoretical seeds of another democratic tradition aside from liberal democracy. The Platonic philosopher molded after the Socrates of the Theaetetus is able to challenge more effectively than anyone else the possibility of substantive outcomes, theories, and justifications. A lesson that social-contract theorists learned from Machiaveli is that state-making should consist in minimizing overt uses of power.
