Abstract

In this paper, I will first add some thoughts on Cambron-Goulet and Côté-Remy’s analysis of the tension in Plotinus’ and Porphyry’s philosophy between the concept of the soul as genderless and the conceptual link between the soul becoming vicious and the soul becoming effeminate. I will argue that—despite of the emancipatory impulses in their philosophies—both Plotinus and Porphyry stick to conceptual connections which are constitutive for patriarchic discourses, especially to the conceptual link between being human, being male and being rational which makes women “the other.” In the second part of my paper, I will discuss the question of whether the emphasis Plotinus and Porphyry put on the universal nature of the soul helps to explain why they suppress the hierarchy between souls born in male bodies and souls born in female bodies which Plato develops in the Timaeus. I will argue that there is nothing in Plotinus’ conception of the universal nature of soul which principally excludes a hierarchy between the souls of men and the souls of women, so that his emphasis of the universal nature of soul cannot explain his passing over the hierarchy of Plato’s Timaeus.