Chapter 12 - The Reception of Plato on Women

Summary

This chapter surveys reactions to Plato’s famous proposal in the Republic to allow women to engage in military action and political rule in his ideal city. After a methodological discussion relating this topic to the issues looked at in the volume as a whole, the chapter goes on to set out some of the interpretive debates concerning women in the Republic in modern-day secondary literature. It is then shown that interpreters from late antiquity to the Renaissance responded to some of the same concerns. For example, Proclus was at pains to reconcile the apparently contrary views on women found in the Republic and Timaeus. On the other hand, we find that in Proclus, Ibn Rushd (Averroes), and Lucrezia Marinella, wider concerns shaped reactions to Plato: for instance Ibn Rushd tries to fit the idea of potential virtue in women into an Aristotelian framework while Marinella offers a reading of Plato on women that brings him into conversation with the Renaissance ’querelle des femmes’.