His analyses of human organization drew from the underlying assumptions of Arhenian democracy an equality, that must always be faced with the problem of boundaries, who is included in that democracy. By going beyond the plethora of in stitutions that marked Athenian democracy, Plato in both the symposium and the Republic homed in on that underlying principle and its theoretical implication ; not on the autonomy and the self-expression of the principle of openness and thus a resistance to discrimination, whether it be between the ugly and the beautiful, the male and the female, the wise and foolish.