Plato's De Feminization of The Republic

Plato's De Feminization of The Republic

Plato's suggestion that female guardians do everything male guardians do is a radical and revolutionary proposal in a time when women were viewed as property. However there are complexities and contradictions in the Platonic text on female equality. He makes obvious statements and allusions those women are more cowardly, less trustworthy, innately worse then men. In Book V, he emphasizes that women, as a class are equals to men in capacity, although on the whole, weaker in all pursuits. Plato's ideal society is inadequate for the emancipation of women from the standpoint of feminism today. His proposal is not in the interest of woman as a class whom he supposes to be depraved, but in the interest of the state. The ideal state is emancipation from woman and a complete "de-feminization" of politics.

Through out the dialogues women are classed as natural inferiors, with children, slaves, and foolish people in general. "Now, one finds all kinds of diverse desires, pleasures, and pains, mostly in children, women, household slaves, and in those of the inferior majority who are called free." (Book IV 431c my emphasis). Plato also assumes that there is behavior specific to women and to cowardly men. "…to delete the lamentations of famous men, leaving them to women (and not even to good women, either) and to cowardly men" (Book III 387d my emphasis). In Book VIII Plato states that woman are like children, amused by shiny objects; "And many people would probably judge it to be so, as women and children do when they see something multicolored." (p. 228 557c my emphasis). Even thou he states that woman and men have identical natures (Book V, 453a) in Book X he is inconsistent and observes...

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...t woman should confound to he de-values women and fails to recognize the female as a legitimate a norm as well. Traces of misogyny (and the idea of common ownership of woman), which are exhibited throughout the dialogues, reinforce the idea that in his proposition to change the status of woman, Plato aspired to liberate men from women instead of emancipating women.

Bibliography:

WORKS CITED

Bluestone, Natalie. Women and the Ideal Society: Plato's republic and the Modern Myth

of Gender. The University of Massachusetts Press Amherst, 1987.

Plato, The Republic. Translated by G.M.A. Grube, 2nd ed./revised by C.D.C. Reeve.

Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., 1992.

Vickers, Jill. Reinventing Political Science: a Feminist Approach. Halifax, N.S:

Fernwood, 1997.