In order to explain the distinction between justice and injustice more fully, Plato devoted much of the remainder of The Republic to a detailed discussion of five different kinds of government (and, by analogy, five different kinds of person), ranked in order from best to worst:

A society organized in the ideally efficient way Plato has already described is said to have an aristocratic (Greek

ἀριστοκρατία aristokratía, from ἄριστος aristos "excellent/best," and κράτος kratos "power") government. Similarly, an aristocratic person is one whose rational, spirited, and appetitive souls work together properly. Such governments and people are the most genuine examples of true justice at the social and personal levels.

In a defective timocratic [from the Greek words timē (τιμή), meaning "price" or "worth", and -kratia meaning "rule" (as in government)] society, on the other hand, the courageous soldiers have usurped for themselves the privilege of making decisions that properly belongs only to its better-educated rulers. A timocratic person is therefore someone who is more concerned with belligerently defending personal honor than with wisely choosing what is truly best.

In an oligarchic [Greek oligarkhia, from olígos few + -archy] government, both classes of guardian have been pressed into the service of a ruling group comprising a few powerful and wealthy citizens. By analogy, an oligarchic personality is someone whose every thought and action is devoted to the self-indulgent goal of amassing greater wealth.

Even more disastrously, a democratic [Greek

δημοκρατία (dēmokratía) "rule of the people",^[1] which was coined from δῆμος (dêmos) "people"] government holds out the promise of equality for all of its citizens but delivers only the anarchy of an unruly mob, each of whose members is interested only in the pursuit of private interests. The parallel case of a democratic person is someone who is utterly controlled by desires, acknowledging no bounds of taste or virtue in the perpetual effort to achieve the momentary satisfaction that pleasure provides.

[Oligarchy then degenerates into democracy where freedom is the supreme good but freedom is also slavery. In democracy, the lower class grows bigger and bigger. The poor become the winners. Diversity is supreme. People are free to do what they want and live how they want. People can even break the law if they so chose. This appears to be very similar to anarchy.

Plato uses the "democratic man" to represent democracy. The democratic man is the son of the oligarchic man. Unlike his father, the democratic man is consumed with unnecessary desires. Plato describes necessary desires as desires that we have out of instinct or desires that we have in order to survive. Unnecessary desires are desires we can teach ourselves to resist such as the desire for riches. The democratic man takes great interest in all the things he can buy with his money. He does whatever he wants whenever he wants to do it. His life has no order or priority.]

Finally, the tyrranic society is one in which a single individual has gained control over the mob, restoring order io place of anarchy, but serving only personal welfare instead of the interests of the whole city. A tyrranic person, then, must be one whose entire life is focussed upon the satisfaction of a single desire at the expense of everything else that truly matters. Governments and people of this last variety are most perfectly unjust, even though they may appear to be well-organized and effective.

Although Plato presents these five types of government or person as if there is a natural progression from each to the next, his chief concern is to exhibit the relative degree of justice achieved by each. The most perfect contrast between justice and injustice arises in a comparison between the aristocratic and the tyrranic instances.