Plato: Feminism

In Plato’s Republic, Socrates argues that in the ideal city women and men in the guardian class should receive the same education (451e–52a, 456d–57a) and do the same work (453b–56b); indeed, Socrates emphasizes that the highest office in the ideal city, of philosopher-rulers, will include philosopher-queens and not just philosopher-kings (540c). Socrates’ conclusions might be thought to recognize equality as a value, but in this chapter, we argue that the basis for assigning men and women the same work is a (...) judgment of sameness in nature: with respect to civic contribution, women’s nature is the same as men’s, although on the whole inferior. Fundamentally, the judgment that women and men ought to do the same work irrespective of sex is a method of collecting and dividing kinds according to nature, so that the “ought” is scientific rather than moral. (shrink)

Proclus takes the Republic’s (Book V) recommendation that there should be both male and female Guardians as a serious political proposal, but like Plato, he gives few specifics. A recurring theme in Proclus’ commentary is that political arrangements are just to the extent that they effectively mirror the providential administration of the cosmos. Thus the Myth of Er is not merely an adornment at the end of the dialogue, but contains important information about the cosmic paradigm to which the just (...) human polis should assimilate itself. This paper will consider the role of female Guardians in Proclus’ interpretation of the Republic as a serious suggestion in political theory by looking at the cosmic paradigms for women’s administration of justice in the Myth of Er. I have argued elsewhere that Proclus hypothesises gendered souls corresponding to male and female divinities and that, moreover, the feminine is subordinate to the masculine at the level of the divine. One point to emerge from my reading of the Myth of Er is that the female Guardians are likely to be subordinated to their male counter-parts if they play a role in the ideal polis analogous to the female divinities in the Myth of Er. A second point is that there are aspects of their role that seem to resemble some features of what has come to be called ‘the ethics of care’. (shrink)

Contents 1 Introduction / 2 The Timaeus on dignity: the Demiurge’s speech / 3 Justice as a virtue / 4 The content of just actions / 5 Justice of the law and justice of the state / 6 Equality / 7 Some key issues in Plato’s conception of justice / 7.1 What is more excellent—justice of the soul or justice of action? / 7.2 Which activity is best and what is its best object? / 7.2. Just actions over contemplation / (...) 7.2. The Timaeus and Plato’s teaching on justice / 7.2. The elderly Cephalus on justice: foreword as epilogue / 7.3 The sharing of wives: testing the interpretation on a ‘hard case’ / 8 Conclusions. (shrink)

This book is the first comprehensive study of Plato’s conception of justice. The universality of human rights and the universality of human dignity, which is recognised as their source, are among the crucial philosophical problems in modern-day legal orders and in contemporary culture in general. If dignity is genuinely universal, then human beings also possessed it in ancient times. Plato not only perceived human dignity, but a recognition of dignity is also visible in his conception of justice, which forms the (...) core of his philosophy. Plato’s Republic is consistently interpreted here as a treatise on justice, relating to an individual and not to the state. The famous myth of the cave is a story about education taking place in the world here and now. The best activity is not contemplation, but acting for the benefit of others. Not ideas, but individuals are the proper objects of love. Plato’s philosophy may provide foundations for modern-day human rights protection rather than for totalitarian orders. (shrink)

In this book, Mary Townsend proposes that, contrary to the current scholarship on Plato's Republic, Socrates does not in fact set out to prove the weakness of women. Rather, she argues that close attention to the drama of the Republic reveals that Plato dramatizes the reluctance of men to allow women into the public sphere and offers a deeply aporetic vision of women’s nature and political position—a vision full of concern not only for the human community, but for the desires (...) of women themselves. (shrink)

Despite the prominent argument for equal educational opportunity for women inWe examine carefully Plato’s argument for the equal nature of women in.

In Plato’s dialogues, the Phaedo, Laches, and Republic, Socrates warns his interlocutors about the dangers of misology. Misology is explained by analogy with misanthropy, not as the hatred of other human beings, but as the hatred of the logos or reasonable discourse. According to Socrates, misology arises when a person alternates between believing an argument to be correct, and then refuting it as false. If Socrates is right, then misanthropy is sometimes instilled when a person goes from trusting people to (...) learning that others sometimes betray our reliance and expectations, and finally not to placing any confidence whatsoever in other people, or, in the case of misology, in the correctness or trustworthiness of arguments. A cynical indifference to the soundness of arguments generally is sometimes associated with Socrates’ polemical targets, the Sophists, at least as Plato represents Socrates’ reaction to these itinerant teachers of rhetoric, public speaking and the fashioning of arguments suitable to any occasion. Socrates’ injunctions against misology are largely moral, pronouncing it ‘shameful’ and ‘very wicked’, and something that without further justification we must ‘guard against’, maintaining that we will be less excellent persons if we come to despise argument as lacking the potential of leading to the truth. I examine Socrates’ moral objections to misology which I show to be inconclusive. I consider instead the problem of logical coherence in the motivations supposedly underlying misology, and conclude that misology as Socrates intends the concept is an emotional reaction to argumentation on the part of persons who have not acquired the logical dialectical skills or will to sort out good from bad arguments. We cannot dismiss argument as directed toward the truth unless we have a strong reason for doing so, and any such argument must itself presuppose that at least some reasoning can be justified in discovering and justifying belief in interesting truths. The relevant passages from Socrates’ discussion of the soul’s immortality in the Phaedo are discussed in detail, and set in scholarly background against Socrates’ philosophy more generally, as represented by Plato’s dialogues. I conclude by offering a suggestive list of practical remedies to avoid the alienation from argument in dialectic with which Socrates is concerned. (shrink)

The Platonic dialogues contain passages that seem to point in quite opposite directions on the question of the moral equality of women with men. Rep. V defends the view that sexual difference need not be relevant to a person’s capacity for philosophy and thus for virtue. Tim. 42a-c, however, makes incarnation in a female body a punishment for failure to master the challenges of embodiment. This paper examines the different ways in which two subsequent Platonists, Proclus (d. 485 CE) and (...) Theodore of Asine (d. c. 360 CE), dealt with this tension. (shrink)

Plato’s Timaeus gives an account of the creation of the world and of human race. The text suggests that there was a first generation of human beings, and that they were all men. The paper raises difficulties for this traditional view, and considers an alternative, suggested in more recent literature, according to which humans of the first generation were sexually undifferentiated. The paper raises difficulties for the alternative view as well, and examines the third possibility, advocated by some ancient as (...) well as modern interpreters, according to which there were no first humans, strictly speaking. Although the latter view avoids the pitfalls of the former two views, it crucially rests on a metaphorical reading of the creation story in the Timaeus. (shrink)

Plato's Republic critiques Athenian democracy as practised during the Peloponnesian War years. The diseased city Socrates attempts to purge mirrors Athens in crucial particulars, and his proposals should be evaluated as counter-weights to existing institutions and practices, not as absolutes to be instantiated. Plato's assessment of the Athenian polity incorporates two strategies -- one rhetorical, the other argumentative -- both of which I address. Failure to consider Athens a catalyst for Socrates' arguments has led to the misconception that Plato was (...) dogmatically committed to a single political doctrine for all and for all time. (shrink)

What does the study of Plato’s dialogues tell us about the modern meaning of ‘sex’? How can recent developments in the philosophy of sex and gender help us read these ancient texts anew? _Plato and Sex _addresses these questions for the first time. Each chapter demonstrates how the modern reception of Plato’s works Ð in both mainstream and feminist philosophy and psychoanalytical theory Ð has presupposed a ‘natural-biological’ conception of what sex might mean. Through a critical comparison between our current (...) understanding of sex and Plato’s notion of genos, Plato and Sex puts this presupposition into question. With its groundbreaking interpretations of the Republic, the Symposium and the Timaeus, this book opens up a new approach to sex as a philosophical concept. Including critical readings of the theories of sex and sexuation in Freud and Lacan, and relating such theories to Plato’s writings, _Plato and Sex_ both questions our assumptions about sex and explains how those assumptions have coloured our understanding of Plato. What results is not only an original reading of some of the most prominent aspects of Plato’s philosophy, but a new attempt to think through the meaning of sex today. (shrink)

This paper examines questions regarding the nature of and need for a certain species of equality within the overall design of Plato's prescriptive political philosophy, with particular reference to the Republic and Laws. A common, traditional, reasonable and yet incomplete interpretation of Plato relies on the notion that Plato's political theory and, more particularly, his prescriptions for the city of speech and the second best city rest on an abiding belief in the need for social inequality and political hierarchy, and (...) thereby rejecting in the essence of things equality as a viable political concept. But perhaps a second look at Plato is in order here. This essay attempts to explore those elements of Plato's conceptual and prescriptive theory that reflect a different attitude toward hierarchy, one that cannot be regarded as egalitarian in any modern sense of the word, but that might evince a facet of Plato that is at the very least open to the possibility of a more egalitarian view of politics and at most directed at promoting a more egalitarian politics that has been largely unrecognized by many of Plato's readers and overlooked by most of his commentators. (shrink)

Plato's discussion of women in the Republic is problematic. For one, arguments in Book V which purport to establish that women should guard and rule alongside men do not deliver the advertised conclusion. In addition, Plato asserts that women are "weaker in all pursuits" than men. Given this assumption, having women guard and rule seems inimical to the health, security, and goodness of the kallipolis. I argue that we best understand the inclusion of women by seeing how women's inclusion contributes (...) to the civic unity of the kallipolis. I further argue that Plato's Laws reveals that (a) women will become more virtuous by doing similar jobs to men; and (b) women will be given lesser responsibilities than men in any polis approximating justice. (shrink)

This is in a special issue of the journal entitled 'Thinking Politically'. The material is an earlier version of chapter 1 of Sandford's 2010 book , Plato and Sex (Polity).

Review of Morag Buchan, Women in Plato's Political Theory.

This book examines the role of the female and the feminine in Plato's philosophy, and suggests that Plato's views on women are central to his political philosophy. Morag Buchan explores Plato's writings to argue his notions of the inferior female and the superior male. While Plato appears to allow women equal opportunity and participation of political life in the Ideal State in The Republic , his motivation rests on masculine ideals. Women in Plato's Political Theory examines issues including women's relationship (...) to men, to reproduction, to rational thought and politics in Plato's work, and addresses more generally the problem of sexual identity in philosophy. This book is an important contribution toward a wider interpretation of Platonic philosophy. (shrink)

Critically Influential Western Philosophers And The Philosophers Expanded By Them So That We Understand Their Approach To Gender And Our Own Ideals In This Regard Become More Transparent And We Are Able To Clarify Our Own Goals.

This pathbreaking work pursues two interwoven themes. Firstly, it engages in a deconstruction of Ancient philosopher's texts--mainly from Plato, but also from Homer and Parmenides--in order to free four Greek female figures from the patriarchal discourse which for centuries had imprisoned them in a particular role. Secondly, it attempts to construct a symbolic female order, reinterpreting these figures from a new perspective. Building on the theory of sexual difference, Cavarero shows that death is the central category on which the whole (...) edifice of traditional philosophy is based. By contrast, the category of birth provides the thread with which new concepts of feminist criticism can be woven together to establish a fresh way of thinking. Cavarero develops a philosophical narrative which, by re-interpreting each of the four figures of ancient thought, uncovers several images of the female desire for self-representation. Plato himself had not forseen that one day female subjectivity would assert its autonomy, plundering and throwing into confusion the patriarchal text in order to tell another story. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that Socrates believed that there is no distinction between man's virtue and woman's virtue and that there is no difference in the achievement of virtue between men and women. My analysis shows Plato's position on the moral equality of guardian women and men in the Republic to be a continuation of the Socratic position of nongendered virtue. I thus disagree with Spelman's recent interpretation of the Republic on this issue.

Irigaray's reading of Plato's Symposium in Ethique de la difference sexuelle illustrates both the advantages and the limits of her textual practise. Irigaray's attentive listening to the text allows Diotima's voice to emerge from an overlay of Platonic scholarship. But both the ahistorical nature of that listening and Irigaray's assumption of feminine marginality also make her a party to Plato's sabotage of Diotima's philosophy. Understood in historical context, Diotima is not an anomaly in Platonic discourse, but the hidden host of (...) Plato's banquet, speaking for a pre-Socratic world view against which classical Greek thought is asserted. Understood in historical context, Plato is not the authoritative founder of Western thought against whom only marginal skirmishes can be mounted, but a rebellious student who manages to transform Diotima's complex teaching on personal identity, immortality, and love into the sterile simplicities of logical form. (shrink)

John Darling; Are Women Good Enough? Plato’s feminism re-examined, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 20, Issue 1, 30 May 2006, Pages 123–128, https://d.

In Republic V Socrates offer three successive waves of paradox, the first being that amongst the rulers men and women will be assigned to fulfill the same social functions and the second being that amongst the rulers the traditional private family will be abolished. In her article “Philosopher Queens and Private Wives: Plato on Women and the Family” (Philosophy and Public Affairs (1977)) Susan Moller Okin argued that Plato’s argument is that the second wave of paradox implies the first. In (...) this note I rebut Okin’s arguments and show, in part based on evidence adduced by Okin herself, that for Plato it is the first wave of paradox that implies the second. (shrink)

Not many philosophers have dealt seriously with the problems of women's rights and status, and those that have, have unfortunately often been on the wrong side. In fact Plato and Mill are the only great philosophers who can plausibly be called feminists. But there has been surprisingly little serious effort made to analyse their arguments; perhaps because it has seemed like going over ground already won.

Plato was politically incorrect---gloriously incorrect: hard to ignore and difficult to refute. Read An Engagement with Plato's Republic to argue with him or against him, for contemporary orthodoxies or against them. ``Plato was the first feminist. Women were the same as men, only not so good.''.