ABSTRACT
Plato’s conception of mediation and communication, and his anxieties regarding writing and sophistry, are both heavily influenced by a general distrust of the masses. In his longest and most famous dialogue, The Republic (1997: 1063), which sets out to envision the perfect citystate, this elitism is demonstrated clearly, portraying ‘children, women, household slaves, and […] those of the inferior majority who are called free’ as largely uneducated, unwise and thus controlled by their irrational passions and desires. In his estimation, this makes such people unworthy of making political decisions. In spite of living in one of the
first democracies in the world, Plato is no democrat, let alone a populist. Athens itself was hardly an inclusive, liberal democracy by modern standards, excluding women, slaves (including those who had been freed) and foreigners from citizenship, and thus from the opportunity to participate in politics, and Plato for the most part follows these conventions. In particular, Athens would appear to have been especially misogynistic even for its time (compared with Sparta, for instance) and this attitude is reflected in Plato’s frequently expressed contempt for the intellectual capacities of women.
