Platon: Précurseur de la pensée démographique?

Since Malthus, several commentators have noted quantitative considerations in Plato's work, regarding him as a forerunner of demographic thinking. But how to explain several demographic contradictions between the Laws and The Republic? This paper brings out the consistency of Plato's thought, which cannot be demonstrated at a purely demographic level. His fascination for mathematics and the influence of the Pythagorician school should first be taken into account. However, the City, as an ideal concept and as a concrete social organization is the key to Plato's thought. Confronted with a basic problem of political philosophy, that of power and justice, Plato proposed to restore the harmony between the City as a political body and the individual citizens. Hence policy measures which we regard unduly as eugenic and demographic, are in fact based on a conception of man quite different from ours.