Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-fscjk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-27T09:04:49.374Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Plato's Republic and Feminism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 February 2009

Julia Annas
Julia Annas
Affiliation:
St Hugh's College, Oxford
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

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.

Type
Articles
Information
Philosophy , Volume 51 , Issue 197 , July 1976 , pp. 307 - 321
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 1976

References

1 Rousseau, Émile, ch. 5, and Schopenhauer, ‘On Women’, in Parerga and Paralipontena, are the most striking examples.

2 Lucas, J. R., ‘Because You Are a Woman’, Philosophy (1973)Google Scholar. The claim that Plato was a feminist is very common in discussions of Republic V, and also in recent feminist discussions. Cf. Rosenthal, A., ‘Feminism Without Contrain dictions’, Monist (1973)Google Scholar: ‘The feminism of Plato is exemplary and unparalleled in philosophy or political theory’.

3 The term ‘nuclear family’ may be found dislikable, but it is useful in avoiding the suggestion that Plato wants to abolish the family in favour of impersonal institutions of a 1984 type. He stresses that family affection will remain, though spread over a wider class of people (463d–e).

4 And children, though I shall not be considering them in this paper. In modern discussions the question of children's rights is often raised along with that of women's rights, but significantly no one has ever tried to see Plato as a precursor of these ideas.

5 Plato justifies the abolition of the nuclear family solely on grounds of eugenics and of the unity of the state (see below), and there seems no reason why these grounds should not hold even if women were not full Guardians and had a subordinate status; Plato's second proposal is thus in principle independent of his first.

6 Mill in The Subjection of Women deals with this type of argument as an objection to women having political rights. Nowadays the idea that women differ intellectually from men is directed rather against women having serious careers comparable to men's; cf. C. Hurt, Males and Females, ch. 9.

7 As it certainly is Plato's aim. He does not use the patronizing argument that on grounds of ‘respect for persons’ women should have equal pay and status with men even if their contribution is recognized to be inferior.

8 452a4–5, a10–b3, b8–c2, 453a3–4, 457a6–9, 458d1–2, 466c6–d1, 467a1–2, 468d7–e1.

9 The word is used literally at 459e1, e3, 3nd (possibly) as a metaphor at 451c7–8.

10 It is, however, true that Plato's argument breaks some ground at least, in making it possible to consider women as individuals and not as a class with fixed capacities; at 455e–456a, after the argument just considered, women are compared with other women in various ways, not with men. Hence Plato has removed objections to considering his proposals at all on the ground that women as a class are incompetent.

11 456c4–9: the question is, are the proposals best, beltista (Jowett translates this and similar phrases by ‘most beneficial’). At 457a3–4 the proposals are ‘best for the city’, ariston polei. At 457b1–2 women's nakedness in the gymnasium will be ‘for the sake of what is best’, tou beltistou heneka, and people who find it ludicrous will be foolish, because ‘what is useful (ōphelimon) is fair and what is harmful (blaberon) is ugly’, and the proposals are useful as well as possible (c1–2). Cf. 452d3–e2, where the supposed analogy of men exercising naked is justified in terms of benefit.

12 It is found even in Firestone (The Dialectic of Sex, pp. 206–210), though her main argument is not utilitarian. Interestingly, it is not the main argument in the utilitarian Mill, for whom the main objection to sexual inequality is the curtailment of the freedom, and hence the happiness, of women. Mill causes confusion, however, by also including utilitarian arguments.

13 Of course there are other objections to housewifery as an occupation for women, e.g. that it is hard, unpleasant and unpaid, and these may well be more important from the viewpoint of practical reforms, but the charge that it does not satisfy a woman's capacities is the most relevant to discussion of Plato's argument.

14 However, the equal and free association of men and women appears as one of the bad effects of the completely democratic state (563b7–9). This is discussed below.

15 Plato, ch. 3, ‘Admiration for Manliness’. As the title suggests, Gosling conducts the discussion wholly in terms of male ideals, and does not remark on I any difficulty arising from the fact that half the Guardians will be women.

16 Laws 802e declares that pride and courage are characteristic of men (and should be expressed in their music) whereas what is characteristic of women is restraint and modesty. Plato seems to endorse in the Meno the idea that the scope of men's and women's virtue is different—that of a man is to manage his own and the city's affairs capably, that of a woman is to be a good and thrifty housewife and to obey her husband (71e, 73a). This makes it hard to see how women can possess the thumoeidic part of the soul necessary for the complete justice of a Guardian. The Laws concludes, consistently, that a woman has less potentiality for virtue than a man (781b2–4): Plato says that it is women's weakness and timidity that make them sly and devious.

17 Cf. Laws 917a4–6, where this is clearly brought out.

18 A woman can choose her own husband, if she is an heiress, only in the extremely unlikely situation of there being absolutely no suitable male relative available; and even then her choice is to be in consultation with her guardians.

19 Even so, a limited amount of gymnastic activity and fighting is left open for women in the Laws; this shows how little this has to do with real liberation of women from traditional roles, in spite of the fuss made over it in the Republic.

20 At this point I distinguish ‘radical feminists’ from ‘feminists’, because clearly one can be a feminist without believing that the nuclear family must be abolished.

21 I owe the point about koinonia to S. Pomeroy, ‘Feminism in Book V of Plato's Republic’, Apeiron (1974). Pomeroy holds the implausible view that because Plato uses of the male Guardians' relation to the female Guardians language which can be used of property-owning, it is his considered conclusion that the female Guardians are simply the property of the males.

22 457d6–9: Socrates thinks it obvious that abolition of the nuclear family is useful (ōphelimon) and a very great good (megiston agathon). Its justification is characterized as proof that it is not only possible but useful (ōphelimon) at d4–5, e3–4. At 458b5–6 it is said that it would be the greatest possible benefit to the city and to the Guardians (sumphorōtat' an eiē prachthenta tēi te polei kai tois phulaxin). At 461e7 the koinōnia of women and children is said to be best (beltistē). At 462a2–7 Socrates says that we must see whether or not it fits the greatest good of a city (i.e. unity); at 464b5–6 it is said to be the cause (aitia) of this.

23 Op. cit., pp. 51–54, ch. 3 part 1, 183–186, 187–195, 210–224. This is a common theme in women's liberation literature. Cf. Limpus, , ‘Liberation of Women, Sexual Politics and the Family’ (New England Free Press), Millett, Sexual Politics, especially pp. 61–62, 120–127.Google Scholar

24 Millett, op. cit., pp. 168–176, Firestone, pp. 198–199, Rowbotham, Women, Resistance and Revolution, ch. 6, and her introduction to Alexandra Kollontai's pamphlet ‘Women Workers Struggle for Their Rights’ (Falling Wall Press); W. Reich, The Sexual Revolution, part 2.

25 Millett, op. cit., pp. 157–168, where solid facts are cited which refute the silly attempt by Stassinopoulos, A. (The Female Woman, pp. 76–78)Google Scholar to show that the Nazis were ideologically against the family on the ground that one Nazi sociologist wanted to replace family life with separate male communes.

26 I am grateful to James Dybikowski for very helpful comments on an earlier draft. He will still think that I am too hard on Plato. I am also grateful to Graeme Segal for improvements in the present version.