Is Plato A Feminist? part 2 Essay - 3,870 words

... is no distinction between strangers and citizens (563a) - calling into question the very structure of a polis that cannot identify its own citizens. Everything (one) blends into the other. We can no more tell moderation from cowardice than we can tell a father from a son, a teacher from a student, or a citizen from a noncitizen.In contemporary understandings, the absence of hierarchy translates into equality, but that is too simple a translation for what occurs in the Republic; equality entails the identification of those who are equal, an apprehension of the forms that unite and separate. The democracy of Book 8 gives us such a radical view of gender equality that there is no foundation for recognizing those who are equal or unequal, which in turn would lead to a hierarchy - whether of male over female, humans over animals, or Greeks over barbarians. Likewise, an Aristotelian theory of distributive justice, of equals to equals and unequals to unequals, cannot survive Book 8s radical equality or the formlessness of a democratic regime that, according to its principles of freedom, refuses to impose forms.In the beginning of Book 8 Plato forgets the effacement of the differences between the male and female that initiated the radical proposals of Book 5. As Plato addresses the difficulty of deriving the correct nuptial number, he ignores this earlier effacement and worries instead about reproduction and the mingling of the two distinct sexes. Therewith, a latent misogyny surfaces.


In Book 5, Plato dismissed any natural inferiority of female to male; in Book 8, imposing eide on male and female establishes classes and hierarchies that appear prominently when Socrates describes the rise of a timocracy. Miscalculation of the proper nuptial number results in the lawless mixing of iron, silver, and gold (547a), but the emergence of the timocratic man is more dramatic than this obscure lawless mixing suggests. A nagging wife and mother, the eidos of the female such as would appear in an Aristophanic comedy, gives rise to the timocrat. He hears his mother express anger that her husband (ho aner) is not a ruler, does not seek wealth or engage in civil suits. He is not ambitious, she complains; he is unmanly (anandros) (549c-e). Adeimantus, never one to speak positively about women, wholeheartedly agrees: Many such things belong to women.


With the reintroduction of the eide of male and female, with the reenforcement of the differences between them, there is the identification of particular qualities associated with each, and the term unmanly becomes a derogatory epithet. In Callipolis, the conflation of male and female precluded such language.Plato, speaking though Socrates, makes the analogy that if a man with as a full head of hair is known to be a good cobbler, it does not necessarily follow that a bald man is not suited to the same profession, (Bar On, p. 5). He is again making the distinction between mind, or soul, and body. His claim is that the body is irrelevant to the nature of a person to be proficient in a profession, and thus concludes that a woman could be a philosopher as well as a man. Plato does not preach equality, but the potential for equality.


He does not claim that all woman can and should practice philosophy, merely that the possibility exists for a female with a philosophical nature, (Bar On, p. 5). Plato asks for the meaning of virtue. The response he receives is that virtue for men consist in managing affairs of the city, and a virtuous woman is obedient to he husband. Plato argues that virtue cannot change because of who carries it, (Bar On. p.


6). A quote attributed to Plato by Xenophon, wherein Plato comments on a female juggler entertaining at a party suggests a slightly different view of women. In the performance of this girl, as on many other occasions, it is evident that female nature is not in the least inferior to that of the male. It only lacks intellectual and physical strength. (Dahl, p. 4) Although many a feminist eyebrow will be raised at the final sentence, the statement was probably a bold one for the day.


For all of the leaps Plato seems to have made in the direction of feminism, many of his writings suggest otherwise. A big part of Platos works is the distinction between soul and body, the body being seen as inferior and as a hinderance to the ambitions of the soul. In the Apology he urges philosophers to abandon the needs of the body as much as possible to allow for growth of the soul and a promising afterlife, (Bar On p. 8). In the realm of Pythagoras ideas men are seen as the opposite of women, the men being of a spiritual nature and the women of a material nature. Indeed women are seen, especially in the areas of reproduction and child rearing, as having more of a connection and dependence of a bodily nature. Men, in this method of thought would be seen as being more connected to the soul and things of a spiritual nature. Plato embraced this idea, as did many of his contemporaries.


Plato went so far as to say that men and women have different types of souls and a female body may not necessarily contain a female soul. He went on to explain that a soldier who is more concerned with protecting his body than fighting has a more body-centered soul and will return to life as a woman. Conversely, a woman who displays skills of a philosophical nature and does not care for things of the body will re-enter life as a man, (Bar On, p. 17). The notion that life in a female body is punishment for co ...................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................

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Essay Tags: plato, female body, feminist, philosopher, platos republic

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