Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-tf8b9 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-30T16:06:10.345Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Virtue Without Gender in Socrates

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 March 2020

Abstract

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.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © 1992 by Hypatia, Inc.

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Allen, Christine Garside. 1979. Can a woman be good in the same way as a man? In Woman in Western thought, ed. Osborne, Martha Lee. New York: Random House.Google Scholar
Annas, Julia. 1976. Plato's Republic and feminism. Phibsophy 51: 307–21.Google Scholar
Aristotle, . 1941. The bask works of Aristotle, ed. McKeon, Richard. New York: Random House.Google Scholar
Bloom, Alan, ed. and Trans, . 1968. The Republic of Plato. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Bluestone, Natalie Harris. 1987. Women and the ideal society: Plato's Republic and modern myths of gender. Oxford: Berg Publishers.Google Scholar
Cameron, Averil and Kuhrt, Amelie eds., 1983. Images of women in antiquity. London: Croom Helm.Google Scholar
Eva, Cantaiella. 1987. Pandora's daughters: The role and status of women inGreek and Roman antiquity. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar
Cowling, William, and Tuana, Nancy. 1990. Plato and feminism: A review of the literature. APA Newsletter on Feminism and Philosophy. 90 (1): 110–16.Google Scholar
De Riencourt, Amaury. 1983. Women and power in history. Bath: Honeyglen Publishing.Google Scholar
Guthrie, W. K. C. 1969. The fifth‐century Enlightenment, vol. 3 of A history of Greek philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Guthrie, W. K. C. 1975. Plato: The man and his dialogues: Earlier period, vol. 4 of A history of Greek phibsophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Irwin, Terrance. 1977. Plato's moral theory. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Irwin, Terrance. 1979. Plato's Gorgias. Oxford: Clarendon Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lange, Lynda. 1979. The function of equal education in Plato's Republic and Laws. In The sexism of social and political theory: Reproduction from Plato to Nietzsche, ed. Clark, Lorenne and Lange, Lynda. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.Google Scholar
Mishima, Teruo. 1989. Courage and the unity of the virtues in Plato's Laches. Journal of the Faculty of Literature (Aoyama Gakuin University, Tokyo) 31: 112.Google Scholar
Okin, Susan Moller. 1980. Women in Western political thought. London: Virago.Google Scholar
Penner, Terry. 1973. The unity of virtue. Phibsophical Review 82: 3568.Google Scholar
Pierce, Christine. 1973. Equality: Republic V. Monist 57(1): 111.10.5840/monist197357130CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Plato, . 1973. Collected dialogues of Plato, ed. Hamilton, Edith and Cairns, Huntington. (Gorgias trans. W. D. Woodhead; Laches trans. Benjamin Jowett; Laws trans. A. E. Taylor; Meno trans. W. K. C. Guthrie; Protagoras trans. W. K. C. Guthrie; Republic trans. Paul Shorey; Timaeus trans. Benjamin Jowett.) Princeton: Princeton University PressGoogle Scholar
Pomeroy, Sarah B. 1975. Goddesses, whores, wives, and slaves: Women in classical antiquity. New York: Schocken.Google Scholar
Santas, Gerasimos. 1979. Socrates. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.Google Scholar
Scaltsas, Patricia Ward. 1990. Is there time to be equal? Plato's feminism. APA Newsletter on Feminism and Philosophy 90(1): 108–10.Google Scholar
Seltman, Charles. 1956. Women in antiquity. London: Thames and Hudson.Google Scholar
Smith, Nicholas. 1983. Plato and Aristotle on the nature of women. Journal of the History of Philosophy 21(4): 467–78.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Spelman, Elizabeth. 1988. Inessential woman: Problems of exclusion in feminist thought. Boston: Beacon Press.Google Scholar
Vlastos, Gregory. 1981. The unity of the virtues in the Protagoras; and Socrates on “the parts of virtue.” In Platonic Studies 2nd ed. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Vlastos, Gregory. 1984. Happiness and virtue in Socrates' moral theory. Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society 210(n. s. 30): 181213.10.1017/S0068673500004685CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vlastos, Gregory. 1989. Was Plato a feminist? Times Literary Supplement, NB, March 17–23: 276, 288, 289.Google Scholar
Xenophon, . 1921. Xenophontis Opera Omnia, ed. Marchant, E. C.(Symposium.) Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar